I Love Petsmart!

[kribensis12]

I went to petsmart today just to browse. At first i saw that they had crayfish, and i asked them about them, adn i guess that they come in with the goldfish. So they gace me 2 for free!!!!! You would think that they would sell the to make a profit? Then i walked over to their guppys( which are resonably healthy for their price!). I look in there and noticed that the female are a $1.29, so i thought why not get 2? I look in the other tank and it is full of males, thught about getting 1 buy not enough money to also get a female( i already have 1 at home). So i look at the females and i notice that there are about 10 males in their!!!!!!!!!!!! So i pointed 1 of the males out and they caught it for me( the guy was new and knew nothing about fish, and didnt even notice it was male), then i had him get out a female. So he looked htem over( still not even noticing that one was male), priced them as female and gave them to me. I almost broke down laughing after leaving the store!!!!! Here is what the male looks like: http/www.arofanatics.com/members/guppyma...ery/image19.jpg
The in the pic is way prettier than mine, but when i get it for $1.29, i'll take it!!!!!!!!! The female is a standerd black delta( she is very pregnant!). Just figuerd i'd share this, comments are welcome.
Kribensis12

 

[Zeoth]

Good to hear that but....the link dose not work

 

[kribensis12]

Well he is a dull blueish black, not exactly pretty but........... Thanks

 

[Zeoth]

 

[Bignose]

I'm gonna play a little devil's advocate here, because I think what you did here was wrong. Since you knew better, you should have told the guy which ones were the males and the females and how to tell them apart. First and foremost, this is the kind of knowledge a new employee needs. You could and should have done this guy a great service by teaching him what proper fishkeeping is. You could have told him how important keeping the correct sex ratios are. You could have told him so that next time when he sells fish to people, he could them tell them, and then those customers can keep their fish healthier and happier. Your knowledge could have gone a long way towards helping a lot of his future customers keep healthier fish.

But, secondly, because you knew better, you basically have stolen goods from a store. You knew what the fish really were, you knew what the prices were supposed to be. You may not have done this physically, but basically what you did here was take the price tag off of a cheaper item and place it over the price tag of a costlier item, so that you get the costlier item at a cheaper price. In a word, this is stealing. People make mistakes, and if you didn't know any better, and then got home and found this out, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But, from your story, you knew exactly what was happening, and I think it was dishonest of you to pay the wrong price. If you couldn't afford the fish you wanted, either don't buy them or buy something else. Preying on the ignorance of an employee is the same as stealing.

Finally, Petsmart isn't just going to take this loss, small though it is. They will just raise prices on their other fish or products to make up for this loss. That loss will be accounted for somewhere else. So, everyone, next time you think to yourself "why are fish and equipment so expensive?", you just have to remember this little story by krib. You should have paid what was a fair price.

I don't think that this is something to be proud of krib. I think that it is something to be ashamed of. I hope you don't think of this as a lecture, because that is not how I intend this to sound; but I'd hope that this has inspired you to look at this from a different point of view than just your own personal gain. If you had found a good fish that was on sale, or Petsmart had it listed at a price cheaper than their competitors, that would be a good find, in my book. But, like I said above, in my opinion, because you knew exactly what the employee was doing and didn't tell him, it amounts to theft.

I am very interested to read what other people think.

 

[kribensis12]

I'm gonna play a little devil's advocate here, because I think what you did here was wrong. Since you knew better, you should have told the guy which ones were the males and the females and how to tell them apart. First and foremost, this is the kind of knowledge a new employee needs. You could and should have done this guy a great service by teaching him what proper fishkeeping is. You could have told him how important keeping the correct sex ratios are. You could have told him so that next time when he sells fish to people, he could them tell them, and then those customers can keep their fish healthier and happier. Your knowledge could have gone a long way towards helping a lot of his future customers keep healthier fish.

But, secondly, because you knew better, you basically have stolen goods from a store. You knew what the fish really were, you knew what the prices were supposed to be. You may not have done this physically, but basically what you did here was take the price tag off of a cheaper item and place it over the price tag of a costlier item, so that you get the costlier item at a cheaper price. In a word, this is stealing. People make mistakes, and if you didn't know any better, and then got home and found this out, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But, from your story, you knew exactly what was happening, and I think it was dishonest of you to pay the wrong price. If you couldn't afford the fish you wanted, either don't buy them or buy something else. Preying on the ignorance of an employee is the same as stealing.

Finally, Petsmart isn't just going to take this loss, small though it is. They will just raise prices on their other fish or products to make up for this loss. That loss will be accounted for somewhere else. So, everyone, next time you think to yourself "why are fish and equipment so expensive?", you just have to remember this little story by krib. You should have paid what was a fair price.

I don't think that this is something to be proud of krib. I think that it is something to be ashamed of. I hope you don't think of this as a lecture, because that is not how I intend this to sound; but I'd hope that this has inspired you to look at this from a different point of view than just your own personal gain. If you had found a good fish that was on sale, or Petsmart had it listed at a price cheaper than their competitors, that would be a good find, in my book. But, like I said above, in my opinion, because you knew exactly what the employee was doing and didn't tell him, it amounts to theft.

I am very interested to read what other people think.

I have my values. If the tank had males and female's i would have told him that it was a male. But since they seperate it themselves, i figured that it was their loss. Second of all, i didnt say i was proud, i just said that i was amazed he didnt tell the difference. It would be different if i said" i am so proud that the man didnt know the difference between the male and female". Third, i highly doubt that a mislabeld item would result in world wide petsmart price rises, so dont even try to point a finger at me. I didnt even think of him not knowing it, until i left the store. I figuerd that maybe they had been on sale or somthing, being that that all the male's wee the same color, and the others tank males came in all kinds of snakeskin varites, red tux, orange, yellow, adn every other color imaginable, except blackish-blue. I think that next time you acuse( maybe not the right word here, but cant think of a good word), question, and then acuse. Sorry to sound mean, but i took offense to your post, but i did say comments are welcome.

 

[Squidman]

Cool! At the petsmart close to my home i dont like very much because they never stock any of the fish that i really want. They never have Pearl gouramis, German blue rams or any of my favorites ,but you got a fantastic deal.

 

[Bignose]

Don't get offended at me when you are the one who did something wrong and I am just the one who called you on it. Sure, a one time a loss of a few cents isn't going to kill Petsmart. But, if this is repeated again and again, prices will be raised -- on everything. This, "well, one time isn't going to hurt anybody" argument doesn't hold water. Because if everybody did it, then it does mean a lot. Why should you be so special as to be the only one who doesn't have to play by the rules? What if your employer took away one hour a week from your paycheck -- "but I'm taking an hour away from all the other employees, too, so it's ok." Now it means something doesn't it? For most of us, not getting paid for one hour of labor probably isn't going to be a big deal. Losing one hour on every week's paycheck will add up to a big deal. Either way, even just losing one hour, isn't right, is it? You are owed the fair amount of money for your time and labor. Just like Petsmart is owed the fair price on their fish.

I can give you another example. Sometimes the newspaper ads will run a wrong price on an item. I remember a local paper accidentally listing a sale price on a computer for $99.99 instead of $999.99. Ads are not a contract -- the store does not have to give you that item at that price, if mistakes are made. Sometimes the wrong price is run on the ad, but the store honors the mistaken price anyway to build good rep. You didn't even give Petsmart the choice to honor their mistake or not, because you didn't correctly identify the fish you were purchasing for the employee who didn't know any better.

Same thing with your fish. Just because a few males are in a different tank, doesn't mean that they should automatically be cheaper. You knew what the fair price for the males was, but you took advantage of an employee's ignorance to pay a cheaper price that was fair. You preyed on the ignorance of the employee, and didn't pay Petsmart the fair value for their fish.

And finally, on your attitude of pride or not. It is was just an impression I got from the text. If I mis-read the tone of your post, then I sincerely apologize; I do know the problems in correctly identifying tone. But, I will point out why I got the impression of pride from your post. 1) the subtitle of this thread is "because they [Petsmart] are stupid!!!!" 2) you posted pictures to show off the illicit fish 3) you made sure to point out several times how the guy didn't know the difference between a male and female 4) and the biggie, about how you almost broke out laughing as you left the store. Taken all together, I got an impression of pride on "pulling a fast one" over on Petsmart. Again, if this isn't what you meant, then I apologize.

But, to sum up, don't get offended at me for calling you on something you did that was wrong. Namely, you willfully took advantage of an employee's ignorance to pay a less than fair price. Like you just wrote "I figured it was their loss," and I'm just saying that I don't think that that is right. It is "their loss" only because you took advantage of a new employee. I think that it is only fair that you either pay Petsmart what they ask for a fish or you don't buy it from Petsmart. I don't think that it is fair to take advantage of ignorance just to get a better deal. If you didn't want to pay the price Petsmart was asking, you should have not bought it from them. Period.

 

[kribensis12]

I felt bad and was going up again to night, and the other guy( the person who orders the fish) said that if they are in there, then that is their price. I said are you sure, adn he said, if we did not seperate them right, then our loss, but thanks for telling us, then he offered me 6 free crayfish( so no hard feelings). When i said they are stupid, is becasue they seperated them wrong, when i said that he didnt know the diff, was becasue i was frankly amazed, and was going to see if he was going to say anything, when i almost broke down laughing, it was becasue i thought that him not being able to tell was funny, and the reason i posted pics, is the same reason others opst their pics, becasue i wanted to show off( even though mine isnt very pretty). So there, that is my explantaion, i do realize what i did was wrong, but that is the past. Over with. Happy?

 

[Bignose]

I'm neither happy nor sad or anything. If you really did that, then that was the right thing to do. If you explained what was correct, and the store didn't care, then so be it. If you ever own a store, I don't think that you'd want what happened to happen to you. It's a simple as that. There is always two or more sides to a story, and I just wanted you to look at it from a different point of view, and consider if it was fair to the store.

 

[Erikson45]

What a fascinating debate!

Well I suppose it's also partly the fault of the employee and the chain itself for hiring such inexperienced workers. In the spirit of the holdiays, many things happen... The poor guy was probably confused anyways. My lfs does that to meh all the time. A couple freebies on "accident" when they get in new shipments or are overstocked. Furthermore, it seemed that they were very generous! If that'd happened to me, I'd be like "Yahoo! I got an awesome deal!"

Best of luck to your bargain fish

 

[Yetti]

I guess he just enjoys free-riding. I agree with Bignose.

 

[Esfa]

If the shop are too lazy to give proper training to their employees, then they deserve to lose a bit of cash.

 

[Gill]

Hey no Biggy. I do that in Pets At Home. Sometimes they Get Pygmy Cories and label them at Tetra Prices so you end up getting 5 for 4Quid.

 

[PRW1988]

LOL I work at petsmart and I'd of even done the same thing you did and about the crayfish, we can't sell em cuz we don't breed em, they come in with the comet goldfish every once and a while, not too often.

Plus, the guy that you think is new and knows nothing about fish probably did know more than you think, he just didn't care as quiet a few assosiates I know would have given you the male at the same price because it was in the same tank. If you see that again and the assosiate refuses to sell you the male at the same price, ask for a manager and they should give it to you anyways as we have a price garuntee. Lucky find with the male though