Careful when buying corals online

rogergolf66

im an addict lol
So long story short back in November of 2013 one of the major sellers on the national board had a bunch of stuff for sale. I paypal him about $300. The weather was really cold this winter so we kept putting off the shipping January cam around he had a few more things posted that I purchased from him. Thought I would add to the current order since the first one couldn't ship because of the cold.

A couple weeks later goes by and he calls and said he lost all his sps to temp swing if I remember right and he would refund my money but it would take him a while because he had 10 shipments ready to go out and he had to pay back a lot of money to these 10 people. So I asked him if the zoas did ok he said yes. I said well to make things easier for u send me the value in zoa and paly then so u don't have to come up with so much money to refund. He said wow that's great of u. So I waited and waited about 3 weeks later nothing. Messaged him every week in the beginning then every couple weeks then every month and no corals just excuses .So fast forward to now August 9 months later still no corals so I messaged him on a whim thinking who know maybe... So he got back to me apologized and sent me out some corals. They arrived today. Very small nubs. Not labeled. who know what they were. all corals bleached out. Could have been shipped that way for all I know. Sent him pictures of the corals still in the bag white as a piece of paper. Guess what he hasn't responded.

This is just a warning to all the shoppers out there.

This was the short version of the story. There is more excuses but not worth dragging this on

Roger
 
wow that sucks. lets hope you can revive some of the corals you did get.

The only reviving of bleach white sps is cutting the coral off the plugs and reusing the plugs. Now I have 9 empty plugs worth over $300. Any one interested in buying 9 empty coral plugs. These corals r past reviving they r out on the front lawn they had no skin on them at all to try and save.
 
What's that person's name? If you don't think you're getting your money back let everyone know so we can avoid doing business with them. No point of protecting someone who basically stole your money.
 
What's that person's name? If you don't think you're getting your money back let everyone know so we can avoid doing business with them. No point of protecting someone who basically stole your money.

At this point I am still waiting to see if he will make it right but if he doesn't I will add a name to this in the feedback forum. Being that this transaction has been going on for 9 months I was very disappointed with the size of the dead coral I received. Even it they were alive they were nubs. For the price, and the patients I have had I was very disappointed in the size of the frags too. Also as I mentioned I don't even know what corals where sent. I have 60 different sps as it is. He could have sent me stuff I already had. Who knows :(
 
Sorry to hear about that Roger.

I'm personally done with ordering online and shipping. I've had nothing but bad experiences. Nationally known vendor shipped me corals (to Florida with 4 heat packs). Yes, everything was dead. Replacements? Same thing. Ebay, forget it, nubs.

If I can order online and pick it up, okay, but otherwise, too many bad experiences for me.
 
Sorry to hear this. Here's a story of my bad online experience. I didn't get robbed, but it was terrible nonetheless.

I've placed 1 order online and will never do it again. Divertom or Toms Carribean Tropicals was my bad experience. You would think it wouldn't be that difficult to get a package of invertebrates, macro algae and photosynthetic gorgonians to arrive alive from the Keys to Palm Harbor, FL with a total transit time of 20 hours via FedEx Overnight. But for them I imagine they're killing over half of the stuff they ship.

I picked up the package as soon as FedEx opened and the box was slightly wet. Uh oh. It was also labeled "perishable" and not "live animals". Which makes a difference because FedEx will make sure to climate control a box that is labeled "live animals". So, I got it home and opened the box to find there was no insulation, most online retailers will package the box with a styrofoam cooler. Nope, not here, they used a few sheets of newspaper. Also, they used one single cool pack which was nothing more than 2oz. of water in a bag. The animals were packaged in single bags with minimal water. One had leaked which explains the wet box. Needless to say, every bag was dark, murky and stunk to high heaven. The big, once beautiful, gorgonians tissue fell right off.

One purple frilly gorgonian appeared to still be alive. Boy was I wrong... I did a 4 hour slow drip acclimation/observation to try to make sure it was alive. None of its tissue was falling off, I thoroughly inspected it and gave it a brief gentle dip in iodine. After all of this I thought it had survived and against better judgement I put it in my tank. I woke up the next morning to find all of the tissue gone and my tank looked like purple kool-aid. AHHHH. Every coral was closed up and I figured I just crashed my tank. After 3 consecutive water changes and 3 more changes the following days and changing out my carbon everyday and gfo every other day my tank finally cleared up. There was still a residual bacterial bloom that went away about a week later. Incredibly all of my inhabitants survived. The only coral that was ****ed long term was my red planet. It stayed closed up for three weeks, but is now back to normal.

Fortunately and against the companies policy, they refunded all of my money including shipping. But I was ****ed and I'm sure they sensed it. I would have no doubt disputed the charge. It's a shame because their pricing is incredible, but whatever leaves their facility has likely just been sentenced to death.

I should have done a little more research because after this I started looking for similar experiences from them and sure enough I found them.

Talk about irresponsible. I hope you find a resolution to your issue, but for me, I'm done buying anything online.
 
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Thank you for sharing guys. Before I found this forum I had a couple of good experiences and some pretty horrible ones. Nothing as bad as what Roger went through, but bad enough to keep me away from buying live stuff online ever again.

First was my great experience, I placed an order with Blue zoo aquatics and the process was very smooth, the corals arrived healthy, they were even bigger and much nicer than the pics they posted on their site. The corals were packed very neat, with paper filler to keep them from moving, heat pad since it was December and a nice acclimation kit.

This was 8 months ago and with the exception of the chili coral(Which I was not target feeding and I might have killed), all the other corals are still alive and very healthy.

My bad experiences were with reefs2go. In a few words, they suck. They have no idea how to pack corals, use no cooling or heating pads, the corals they sent me were not even the same color they said on their site and they were almost all super small and almost dead. To give you an idea, I orders 7 corals and 2 bags were broken and had lost almost 100% of the water.

When it comes to customer service, they are even worse. It took me months to get them to cancel an order that was placed months before and was still in back order. They never answered the phone and the only way to get the issue resolved was to actually take some time off work and drive down to St Pete to their "Store" which is actually a warehouse and yell at them for an hour, before they decided to budge and give me my money back.

Two very different experiences, but I have to say that after I found Marine Warehouse and FAOIS, I have never placed an order online for fish or corals.
 
use your american express. tell AmEx and let them know. no hassling. I attach my AmEx to my paypal account. Simple as calling and telling them.
 
These online horror stories always make me cringe. I've only done 1, and had a great experience with Aqua SanDiego. All my frags came in healthy, as advertised, and i got a rainbow acan as a freebie. And that was overnight from California. I have another one next week coming in from Cherry Corals. Anxious to see how it turns out. I hope that I never have a bad experience like these. I'm just gonna stick with large, popular, well known retailers or local.
 
The vendor Mr. Coral on another Popular Forum, website, and e-bay store.

STAY AWAY!

Those people are "Bad News Bears"!

Ship you non healed corals & SPS frags are less than an inch not even encrusted on plug.

Also will not tell you when they ship! Terrible communication.

By far the best two vendors I have had personal experience with is Jason Fox and World Wide Corals.

You get what you pay for in the retail world.
 
I've heard a ton of bad stuff about Mr. Coral, and the problems only START with the microfrags you get from him.
 
I think if there were more frag swaps across the country people wouldn't get caught up in this mess. It seems like large swathes of the country have little to no local support for the hobby. Saltwater shops can be hard to find and a long drive. No organizations to arrange events for trade/buy opportunities.
 
I have much respect for high quality LFS's.

Keeping up a high caliber LFS, takes constant work.

My opinion, it is best to stick with your preferred or few preferred LFS.

At least you know what you are going to get and you feel good knowing you are supporting the financial well being of someone you can develop a relationship(s) with.
 
I have much respect for high quality LFS's.

Keeping up a high caliber LFS, takes constant work.

My opinion, it is best to stick with your preferred or few preferred LFS.

At least you know what you are going to get and you feel good knowing you are supporting the financial well being of someone you can develop a relationship(s) with.

Yep. Supporting local small business. Not to mention, it's nice to know my go to LFS keeps their water at a high quality, the same quality I keep my water. I still drip acclimate everything just to be on the safe side and it buys me time to dip and visually inspect anything going in my tank, but I'd bet I could drop whatever I buy right in my tank and I know it would it would be just fine.
 
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