At this point, I am getting frustrated to say the least. Last October, my hub lost an employee and instead of replacing them, corporate cut the hub hours to 3pm-5pm only. More and more sellers shipping policies state they will not ship to a residence or at best void live arrivals. I really am becoming disheartened by these changes because I can barely open an ad or auction without some sort of push back about shipping to me now. What are my options? Do these sellers think every hub is accessible to everyone? I cannot simply leave my work between 3pm and 5pm. I have received probably 200+ animals to my house the last 5-6 years without any issues. I’ve shipped out 40+ animals to residences myself without issue as well. I don’t really know what to do at this point if this trend continues.
It’s only become an issue more recently as the number of people moving to online shopping instead of in-person means that your animals are possibly put into more dangerous situations when packed onto trucks for delivery to home.
I prefer shipping to a hub because it means the animal is in a safe and temperature controlled area until you are able to pick them up. Not on a truck where depending on where you live, the temperatures can skyrocket easily in transit. Or where the main focus of the hub is to get as many packages on the truck as possible sometimes. A roommate of mine used to work fedex dock and has had a coworker’s stack of packages tumble down on them multiple times.
You can always talk to a breeder directly and explain the situation. The worst that you’ll get is a no. I just had my last snake delivered to my home directly, but that was because we waited for the temps to line up finally after waiting from Nov-April and the best day to ship was one where I wouldn’t have access to a car. I live within 15 minutes of the hub and I was home and waiting by the door for her.
The other reason is that MorphMarket has pretty tight rules for sellers that are shipping their snakes. So in order to make sure the animals are arriving with as little risk as possible is important. I have received animals DOA in shipments to my location from offsite sellers. And morphmarket does hold the seller responsible. Here are the default policy for sellers shipping animals in a morphmarket sale. Full Refund and Return = (FRR):
Animal Health
- Seller guarantees the animal was shipped out in a healthy state and shipped according to all FedEx rules and regulations.
- Seller IS responsible for shipping delays and mishaps (which should be rare with good shipping practices and offset with shipping insurance). If an animal dies or is lost due to an unforeseeable shipping mishap, seller is responsible for FRR.
- This does not include issues caused by the buyer (e.g., wrong address given, door not answered when delivery is attempted, etc.).
- If an animal dies or is lost due to Seller negligence in shipping then Seller is responsible for FRR.
- SoL for disputes involving shipping mishaps is 60 days from the date of the original shipment.
- Seller IS responsible for shipping delays and mishaps (which should be rare with good shipping practices and offset with shipping insurance). If an animal dies or is lost due to an unforeseeable shipping mishap, seller is responsible for FRR.
As a breeder, my #1 priority is always my animals’ health. I’ve seen the trucks they’re transported on for home delivery, I’ve had them delivered to me 5-6 hours late, I’ve had heat and cool packs malfunction, and I’ve seen the way they’re sometimes tossed around by delivery drivers. Due to all of this, I’m one of those breeders that preferentially ships to hubs, because that’s the best way I can guarantee the animal’s safety, both for its sake and also for the customer’s live arrival guarantee.
Now, I am open to working with someone - if there is a real barrier preventing you from making it to a hub then I have shipped to residences before. But I am very up front with customers that I ship hub to hub and have the right to turn down residential sales, and I absolutely have turned down residential sales when animals would be on trucks all day, weather was especially hot or cold, or I had other reasons to doubt. At the end of the day, you as the buyer have the right to request residential shipping but I as the seller also have a right to refuse that, and I absolutely have before.
Voiding live arrivals isn’t necessarily up to the seller either. Especially during COVID, I was not able to purchase live arrival insurance for shipments and I still am often not able to do so, especially for residential deliveries.
I have always scheduled time off work to pick up animals at the hub. While I understand this isn’t always possible for everyone, there are also lots of folks who just don’t want to do that. And for me, the animal’s safety will always trump customer convenience.
^ This
Some breeders will work with you, some breeders will look for another local hub if possible to ship, and some will ship to your residence but void any guarantee on the animal. I’m sorry to hear about your hub hours and what they’ve done.
That is simply incorrect. 5-6 hours isn’t affecting anything if you properly packed the animal and shipped in safe shipping temps. Snakes have been lost for days and arrived fine when correct shipping and temps was the case. I actually had a snake sent to my house recently that had a malfunctioning heat pack in the box. The pack was 20 degrees above normal, 125+ degrees. Had that snake sat in that box at my hub until pickup, it would still have probably cooked. Personally, I open packs and temp gun them 30-60 minutes after opening or throw in a cryopack for good measure. she only survived I believe because the seller used a bigger box and stayed on that cooler truck fortunately. my hub is also barely warmer or colder than outside temps. This is my point, it’s placebo.
Not only that, but look at my experience the other day. I now have to rely on sellers, I have never met, shipping safely or correctly or I’m out the snake and the money? Explain to me how that doesn’t look ridiculous from a buyers perspective.
Next closest hub is 80 miles away. Breeders are excluding a lot of rural buyers or basically telling us that we need to trust that you are shipping a healthy animal safely. voiding live arrival to a residence, how do I know they are even shipping correctly? a LOT of sellers do not from my personal experiences.
I was a certified shipper in ancient times. I was out of the hobby for a long time, and when I returned, there was this new, prevailing “Hold At Location” paradigm for shipping. I did not like it.
But after receiving a bunch of animals this way, and shipping a number out myself, I have to say that I’m on board with it. That final step from Hub to your doorstep is fraught with uncontrollable risk variables that go well beyond heat or cold packs. If I were shipping and receiving non-living merchandise, maybe some of those risks would be more acceptable.
You missed my point. I cannot pick up at my hub because the hub cut hours to 3pm-5pm only. As such, many sellers have now told me live arrival is void to my house, so I’m left trusting people I don’t know shipping snakes correctly. If they don’t and the snake dies, I’m out the snake and the money through no fault of my own. Fortunately, I’ve never had a DOA to my house in 6 years.
No, I got it. I was just defending the preference a shipper might have for the practice, or even the demand that it be done that way. I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere, so I get what a pain in the ass it can be in so many ways.
But if I ship a live animal to John Doe on the outskirts of Death Valley, I don’t want to take the risks involved in getting it into his hands. Will the driver find his remote cabin? Is the front step in the 108 degree shade? Is that mystery guy still stealing packages? Can a hungry coyote sniff out a snake in a box? Know what I mean?
That isn’t how the placebo effect works.
And just because they can live for a while in the box, how would you feel if you got crammed in a box that you could barely move in while being on a shaky truck? I am going to guess you would want to get out of there as quickly as possible
If it’s an animal you absolutely need and can’t get that time off to go pick it up, have a friend or someone you trust go pick up the snake themselves. Otherwise, you’re just going in circles with people. You can’t trust anyone who ships a snake, but if you’re buying from a breeder that has nothing but 5 star reviews with, let’s say 20+ reviews, and their packing is mentioned numerous times - then I’d trust that buyer. You gamble with however you ship a snake or any animal for that matter.
Is it truly that you CAN’T pickup from the hub, or do you just not want to? I completely understand that your hub hours suck and make things difficult, but I do agree with Anna - if you truly cannot take an hour off of work when you know the shipping day in advance, have a friend or trusted family member do it. If animals arrive safely regularly from the seller, it’s a good bet that they’re packing them well.
At the end of the day, it’s really an individual thing. You absolutely have the right to be frustrated. However, I also have the right to refuse a sale to someone who refuses to pick up at a hub. If you insist on receiving animals at your residential address, the natural consequence of that is that some people may not sell to you. Which is perfectly reasonable, where the health and safety of a live animal is concerned.
Like I said, I’m willing to work with people. I have shipped to residences before. But I’m not going to automatically do it just because someone expects it. I’m going to make a call based on the weather, the distance from the hub to the residence, my confidence in the buyer and other factors.
This is incorrect, actually, because you’re not accounting for anything outside of parameters. All the proper packing in the world is not going to help if the package ends up in direct sunlight, next to a heat source, crushed under falling packages in the truck, with a driver that purposely mishandles it due to contents, etc. You yourself mention a malfunctioning heat pack incident. There’s also the fact that cold packs only last so long and that time goes down the higher the temperature they’re trying to combat. Phase packs can also only mitigate so many issues.
Because it is part of the MorphMarket rules for selling, and if they don’t, they’re liable for reimbursing you if the animal arrives dead or injured due to their negligence. As @inspirationexotics said, voiding live arrival is often not a choice made by the seller, but due to the fact that live arrival insurance isn’t available for that shipment.
Most sellers are hobbyist breeders operating on very small budgets with little to no profit. Thus they rely on shippers to provide the coverage for on time/live arrival. It’s a big ask of ANY small business to refund (depending on species & price) several hundred dollars or more in a short period of time. It’s just people protecting themselves and their animals from avoidable issues. It’s well known that the more time a shipment spends in transit, the more hands it passes through, the greater chance for delays/mishandling/loss. Many sellers ship the way they do for animal safety, and honestly you aren’t going to make a lot of people want to work with you by pushing back on that.
What I’m getting from this thread is a lot of misplaced frustration. You say it’s ridiculous to have to rely on sellers to ship safely or you’re out the money, I’d say it’s even more ridiculous to expect a business to change their stated operating procedures for one customer over issues that have nothing to do with said business. It’s up to you as someone with limitations to find something that works or an alternative. As @akmorphs mentioned, get someone else to pick up the animal for you if you can. Maybe see if there are any breeders or keepers local to you that would be willing to help get shipments to you.
Back in the day, before businesses like Redline or Ship Your Reptiles were essentially handling the certification for individuals, I did the necessary aid to become a certified shipper with FedEx. Back then, shipping to a home address was usual. Times change. Shipping volume has changed in the world at large, goosed by many factors during the pandemic. This has resulted in many more shipments of all kinds going astray and being delayed or even lost. If the sphagnum moss I order is delayed, I figure so what. When it happens to an animal, it is potentially a problem. Shipping to a hub is indeed the accepted best practice today.
As both a buyer and a seller, I vastly prefer that animals are held at a hub. The animals’ safety is THE priority, and this method eliminates many unknowns. I have to drive about an hour each way to get to a hub, but that’s okay. Do they still get delayed? Yes. But when they make to the designated hub, they stay put in a climate controlled area. Much safer than being on a hot or cold truck for unspecified hours.
You will always have to trust a seller to correctly package and ship the animal you buy. Sellers should be conscientious about the animal’s safety. Frankly, I would be suspicious of anybody who didn’t prefer shipping to a hub over shipping to a home address.
I’ve shipped to a home address for rare circumstances. Inconvenient hours wouldn’t be among the circumstances I would include in my list of reasons for that. Sorry, but I have to drive an hour each way to get to a Fedex hub. If that doesn’t work for my schedule, I assign someone else to pick up or drop off a shipment.
ok, pedantic? exactly what does the exact use of placebo have to do with my topic? and frankly, I used it as intended outside a bit less risk on the truck, a properly packed animal shipped in the correct temps will be fine for HOURS. I have pics of the overheated heat pack that would have cooked the snake at the hub if you want to argue. also, you are arguing points that arent even relevant to my problems. the hub isnt open during the majority of the day, the animal is going to be in that box 5 hours more at the hub than shipped to me.
I’m not sure how your heat pack ‘malfunctioned’.
They’re an uncontrollable heat source. Which is why I prefer to ship when temps don’t require them. Yet another reason I personally prefer the hub as well. Room temps are better than a cold truck or a too hot box
Uniheat even states: " * provides an average warmer surface temperature of 100 degrees fahrenheit"
AVERAGE. Meaning higher temps or extreme hot spots are absolutely possible.
Edit: I also absolutely forgot about the stolen package aspect. We had to get a door camera on my current home 2 years ago for that exact reason. @_@
I can’t help but feel like you came here expecting everyone to rally behind you and push for breeders to ship to your door. But everyone’s given very valid and sensible reasons why shipping to a hub has become the norm, and you’ve done nothing but try to fight and argue the points being made. I can’t help but wonder why this is the case.
Everyone here is saying the animals are their #1 priority. Shipping has changed in the past few years. Delays are dangerous, if not fatal. There are safer options, like hub pickups, that allow the animal to be at much less of a risk, hands down.
Noodlehaus’s attitude isn’t the problem here. You posted in a public forum inviting folks to discuss, and you just seem upset that everyone isn’t agreeing with you. Some breeders are comfortable shipping to residental addresses and some are not - that’s just an objective fact and I’m not really sure what you’re trying to get out of this thread.
I don’t say this in a mean way, but if we’re being honest, if you had contacted me wanting to buy a snake and then we had this very conversation about shipping, I would have made the decision not to sell to you. Based on the way you approach this and your attitude, I don’t necessarily trust that the animal’s health is your priority.
This is the last I’ll say on this. With shipping to a hub you get much safer climate controlled temperatures overall but especially if an animal is delayed and then put on a truck for another 8 hours. It’s an easy way for a seller to verify an animal has been picked up, because lots of folks at residential addresses just disappear and don’t update when they receive it, and they also sometimes don’t come to the door on the first try which means that the snake is potentially then on the truck even longer. It controls temperature, handling, transport, delivery drivers, and other unknown variables.
You are not being forced to do anything - if you want to buy a snake from a breeder and the breeder refuses the sale, you go find another animal with a breeder who will ship to your residence. You don’t have the right to try and force a breeder to ship in a way that feels less safe to them, just like you don’t have to go pick up at a hub - if you don’t want to, then you find a different animal. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done it a hundred times and had no issues - it only matters that shipping to and from a hub is objectively safer and eliminates a lot of the uncontrollable and unknown variables. Animal health is #1, your convenience is always second. So if you don’t like breeders who only ship to hubs, you’re free to go find other animals from breeders who will ship to your residence.
Let’s keep our discourse professional and avoid going after each other here.