Customer Survey to Petco... they may regret sending me that

3FordFamily

In Memoriam
So I must preface by saying I am much happier in the past few months with the quality of their livestock than when I occasionally used them 2-4 years ago.

As I said in other threads, their powder blue tang they sent me had a sunken stomach, was literally so ill it was clear, and died within hours of acclimation. However, most of the fish I have received have been good or satisfactory. I often buy tough to keep fish so I understand some issues. I saw some of the same issues when dealing with live aquaria. I would still rate live aquaria as having a superior product offering than petco, but the real issue with Petco is their processes and customer service. Here is what I wrote:

"This particular interaction, very little could have been done to improve the situation. The lady was very nice, helpful, and got the job done. However, the process of altering orders, canceling orders, adding to orders, etc. is ridiculous. Your supervisors and customer service representatives claim to have no other communication with your saltwater fish distributors other than email? It takes up to a week or more to cancel an order? Meanwhile, you may go ahead and ship the fish anyway and bill me. That's unheard of.

The customer service representatives are not at fault, but your communication with your distributors and everyone throughout the value chain is horrendous. It takes up to two weeks to process refunds for dead fish. You've created so much red tape to the various processes that it makes me want to go to your competitors.

In addition, your customer service representatives are not empowered with decision making capabilities OR even elementary information. What they see is the same information I see on your website (often old and incorrect). For instance, replacement fish status' change all the time. From "backordered" to "in progress". I assume this happens to bolster your benchmarking processes (appears as if customers do not wait long for backordered fish to ship, etc). They only see what the website shows, which is not always the same as the status email that you send out which is yet another issue.

I have learned more about your various processes in the two or three months I have ordered from you than any of your customer service representatives have. Again, the issue appears to be a lack of available information, not necessarily training. They are left in the dark to deal with angry customers such as myself. I tried to change an order 10 minutes after I made it and was told I cannot. If I call live aquaria, I can change anything until about 30 minutes until it is shipped out. They're so much easier to deal with. I hope with your merger you learn some basic operations, processes, supply chain, etc. skills that you can apply to this business."
 
Yeesh, I have yet to order any fish online, but I would think LA/DD would be my first choice, then BZ or petsolutions (I like them for my salt, but haven't bought any live product from them).

If LA merged with Petco, why not just buy from LA? I hope Petco's business practice will improve for customers.

Did they send you a new tang?
 
Yeesh, I have yet to order any fish online, but I would think LA/DD would be my first choice, then BZ or petsolutions (I like them for my salt, but haven't bought any live product from them).

If LA merged with Petco, why not just buy from LA? I hope Petco's business practice will improve for customers.

Did they send you a new tang?

They refunded me for the tang, I did not wish to buy another one. My guess is that it may be representative of others from that distributor and did not wish to "pull" more powder blues through that source and torture. I ordered one from Live Aquaria and he is doing fantastic. Much fatter, better color, ate within 20 minutes of being placed in the tank.

Honestly, Petco has sent me great red coris wrasse, solar fairy wrasse, exquisite fairy wrasse, blonde naso tang, queen angel, magnificent foxface, purple firefish, and a few others.

I ordered one flame angel from them and was not impressed. But they're tough I had difficulty even from DD and LA with them. I ended up buying one from a fellow hobbyist hes doing great. My emperor purchase from them has not eaten, it's been five days. I doubt he makes it. I wouldn't say definitively that is Petco's fault, however. Some of them don't adapt well to captivity.

I will say though that Petco often ships larger fish than you order. Some may like this, but I usually order a certain size for a reason. In the case of large angels, a 3-5" REAL sized angel is more likely to adapt to captivity and accept foods. This emperor was ordered as this size and came about 7+ inches. They're very difficult at that size. They're difficult anyway, but especially at that size.
 
Also FWIW I buy 95% of my fish from LA, DD or Petco. I am generally happy. More so with LA or DD, but Petco is sometimes as much as 1/2 price. On fish that are generally hardier, I usually choose Petco. LA has more variety in offerings. My red coris wrasse was a tough cookie to keep in captivity and he did great from petco. The same fish was 2x as much on LA and came in 1/3 the size, not even changed completely, and died almost immediately. The petco fish are much larger and seem hardier for this species. Just my .02
 
LA fish come straight from Quality Marine, DD fish are held in Wisconsin and Petco.com gets all of their fish from Tropical Fish International or CIS Holdings is the other name for TFI
 
Petco was hit or miss for me. They definitely ship larger then I ordered. I am the same way, I like to order my fish on the small side and watch them grow out.
 
Petco, is good for newbies, but for good quality fish LFS, cause you get to see them and you have a change buy them and pick them up in a few day, not just get them in the mail and they die, that really hard on them.
 
I was sad to find out today Petco now owns Live Aquaria. If you have a Petco in your state and live in a state other than Florida, Wisconsin, or California you will now have to pay sales tax on your order.
 
I was sad to find out today Petco now owns Live Aquaria. If you have a Petco in your state and live in a state other than Florida, Wisconsin, or California you will now have to pay sales tax on your order.

Yep this was discussed a few weeks ago in another thread.
 
I don't have the link but I believe it was under reef discussion. The short of it is no one is happy about it, not the acquisition or the taxing... Also petcos customer service is a far cry from what LA has built their name on for all of these years. Search under Petco acquires live aquaria/ divers den I think it was
 
I don't have the link but I believe it was under reef discussion. The short of it is no one is happy about it, not the acquisition or the taxing... Also petcos customer service is a far cry from what LA has built their name on for all of these years. Search under Petco acquires live aquaria/ divers den I think it was

Will do!! Thank you very much.
 
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