Something I often fail to remember is that people don’t hold the same level of respect as each other.
I picked up a couple racks from someone i regarded as a friend, to find out the tubs were in poor shape, the heat tape had multiple burn out spots and the racks were missing hardware.
Alas I’ll be able to make them work but, the amount of effort and added expenses will make them a wash. To add insult to injury i sliced open my finger while cleaning the biohazard that were the tubs bit didn’t notice immediately… so if I drop dead unexpectedly we’ll know why lol.
They really don’t! I had a similar situation happen!
A local breeder I used to work for sold my friend (who also worked for them much longer than I did) a used rack, friend ended up not using it and sold it to me… and while giving it a good scrub down I noticed the tubs all had heat damage on the bottom and one even had white duct tape on the INSIDE of the tub to cover up a crack.
I also uncovered a lot of other things while talking to my friend about it, and why I made a post about wanting to pursue starting up our own expos.
So I’ll have to replace all of the tubs and likely the heat tape too since it’s warped from overheating. It sucks but it is what it is.
Yeah. I traded a valuable animal for two racks with heat. The guy I was trading with was supposed to provide ship the racks at the same time as I shipped the animal, but I didn’t receive them for weeks, after much lies and runaround. When the racks showed up, there was no heat tape, and the racks were so crooked and poorly made that they barely fit together, and the heat tape would not sit straight. It took a lot to make them usable.
I understand buying second hand stuff if you don’t have the money, or think a deal is a deal. But, for this reason alone I save up the extra coin and go new unless I have put eyes on whatever I’m buying BEFORE money changes hand.
I tend toward new or self built except for vision cages, since they’re straight forward and hard to hide crimes, and I’ve become fairly adept at repairing damage to them. (I think I’ve repaired and sold around 20+ of them over the past several years).
Honestly had these racks been offered up by someone that I wasn’t friends with I’d have never considered them.
I get this 100% i just recently bought a used boamaster 3x2 from this lady. I drove over an hour to meet her just to find that the top railing of the enclosure was broken clean off. The doors had nothing to sit in on the top. I had already gone that whole way for that particular cage and my partner convinced me ‘we could fix it’ but now I’m $60 extra and hours of labor in the hole and now the doors don’t fit, they gotta be cut!
I just don’t understand the audacity of some people tbh.
I don’t understand why I didn’t tell her to shove it and walk away. I got played.
It’s always a bummer when people misrepresent used stuff they’re selling. It’s bad enough when a stranger does it, but a friend doing it is even worse.
I haven’t bought a whole lot of used animal stuff, but so far I’ve gotten lucky with the few things I’ve bought. But I always make it clear to the seller that I need to see the item in person before committing to purchasing it, and I’m always ready to back out if it turns out to be in worse condition than the seller represented.
I had already gone that whole way for that particular cage and my partner convinced me ‘we could fix it’ 
but now I’m $60 extra and hours of labor in the hole and now the doors don’t fit, they gotta be cut!