Is It The Fish Store Clerk's Responsibility?

[Siamese Fighting]

Most fish shops where I live sell very few fish, and most the store is made up of accessories and tanks.
I go in to buy food, as do most passers by. "Oh I need to get some more flakes, i forgot" "oh look here's a fish store".

When you buy a fish, just like buying a gun. It needs it's bullets..or in this case, pellets.

Oh and you were saying you would sell fish to anyone, once the fish dies the next day - they'll bring it back and ask for a refund. So you'll lose a fish and a profit.

 

[andywg]

all these are, manufactured or inanimate objects, and i fully agree with the comments on those. but Fish are live animals, therefore does the seller not have more responsibility's because of that?

Consider the damage a car can do when out of control. Surely that requires more thought and responsibility than some fish that might grow a bit large for a tank?

if a retailer sells you an item, assuming you have given all the information needed, lol and that info is correct, and this item is incorrect or incompatible, or worse still unsafe, with the equipment you outlined. is that not the responsibility of the seller? and why then should this rule not apply to sellers of live stock?

But we don't expect them to guide us by the hand on what we should or should not buy. That is my point. Almost everyone accepts that you have to research most products before going into the store to buy them, yet seem to want perfect fish store staff (who are paid the minimum wage) to be fully versed in all the fish they sell and able to offer critical advice on everything.

Another point is where do you draw the line. The example in the OP is obviously too much, but what about dwarf puffers. People on this forum say 1 per 5 gallons, most others say 1 per 3 gallons. This just brings a whole area of conflict into a scenario with no definites. Likewise, some people keep bala sharks in 4 foot tanks, I think they need 6 foot.

Finally, many people think they know a lot about fish when they don't. Consider how many people on here apply the 1" per gallon guide as a hard and fast rule for flaming tanks. In the real world there are thousands of different ways of keeping fish. How are you going to get all that knowledge and experience into a salesperson and prevent the wages bill sending prices through the roof?

 

[raptorrex]

andywg
Consider the damage a car can do when out of control. Surely that requires more thought and responsibility than some fish that might grow a bit large for a tank?

indeed so. but if you are miss sold an insurance policy, and those who had endowment mortgages in the ninety's were. it is the responsibility of the vendor, not the client. if you were sold a dvd unit to fit into your PS3, even if you didn't know it should be Blueray, but correctly identified the machine, by law, it is the retailers responsibility, they must refund or exchange. miss selling is still, though businesses would like us not to know it, illegal. also miss labelling, miss information and over selling, have built in protection via the trades description act and the sale of good act. though i realise that is only in the UK.

andywg
But we don't expect them to guide us by the hand on what we should or should not buy. That is my point. Almost everyone accepts that you have to research most products before going into the store to buy them, yet seem to want perfect fish store staff (who are paid the minimum wage) to be fully versed in all the fish they sell and able to offer critical advice on everything.

no, no hand holding. but if i correctly identify my tank, size and other occupants of it, and am still sold a fish that is incompatible, that must be the retailers responsibility. getting back to your car, i i buy a wheel for a ford escort, but am sold a wheel for a mini, and told that is fine, would you not consider the vendor to be at fault?

in the end i do not expect the retailer to do my work for me, but they surly must have at least some responsibility for the stock they sell. in the UK retailers of goods are not allowed to act in this way, as i said we have laws against it, why should the sellers of live animals not stick to the same rules?

a business run on the lines described by Dorkhedeos could be described as carpetbagging. effectively a conman in a shop. schister or charleton would also be correct descriptions, imo. in my experience selling the correct item with knowledge and understanding, leads to many more sales than if you box shift. and we took pride in knowing it.

 

[Davo86]

Half the time the customer will not even know what fish they have in their tank, and there are even those that don't care if their fish are compatible or not, (which is more common than some people think) Last weekend, I overheard a family arguing with one of my colleagues because he refused to sell them a male betta which they wanted to put in the same 6G tank as their other Male Betta and tetras and plec.

IME, Employees are more likely to get into trouble for selling highly incompatible fish than for refusing a sale and so it is in any LFS's employees best interest to take some responsibility, however IMO its down to the customer to not only know the fsh that they are buying but know how to keep them healthy for the whole of their natural lives.

I sometimes wonder why people don't have to get a license or something similar to keep fish, that would at least stop random sales etc and make people think more into what they are doing before they rush in and stick 20 fish in a 6G tank

 

[raptorrex]

I sometimes wonder why people don't have to get a license or something similar to keep fish, that would at least stop random sales etc and make people think more into what they are doing before they rush in and stick 20 fish in a 6G tank

should the same not be true of LFS?

 

[Davo86]

I sometimes wonder why people don't have to get a license or something similar to keep fish, that would at least stop random sales etc and make people think more into what they are doing before they rush in and stick 20 fish in a 6G tank

should the same not be true of LFS?

I'm pretty sure they do? one for selling livestock and one for selling specific species

 

[raptorrex]

I sometimes wonder why people don't have to get a license or something similar to keep fish, that would at least stop random sales etc and make people think more into what they are doing before they rush in and stick 20 fish in a 6G tank

should the same not be true of LFS?

I'm pretty sure they do? one for selling livestock and one for selling specific species

yep, that's to buy sell and keep live animals. it has nothing to do with species knowledge, or anything more than basic care.

if you start suggesting licensing should be introduced for fish keepers, would it not follow that a more stringent license would be required to sell the fish?

honestly would you buy a computer from someone who can be bothered to check if any extra gear he is selling will even work with it, or worse still from someone who knows that this gear does not? NO! why should fish be any different?

 

[Siamese Fighting]

I think the answer here is just find a local breeder. Unless your lucky to have a first rate LFS. My guys sleep eat and breathe fish. So to say!

 

[gyillmard]

Its the buyers responsibility but a good store should offer advice on large/challenging fish without being asked if the customer obviously doesnt know what they are doing. well done that clerk who wouldnt sell the little girl a nemo fish! gyillmard

 

[moll]

I had gold fish as a child and when my children were small my husband decided to get my daughter a fish, we went to the store bought a tank asked how many fish it would fit went away set the tank up and a few days later we went back to buy the fish. Now when I was a child it was a plastic bowl with a coloured rim and feed it once a day so when we were told to use filters and such like we were shocked but duly did so. No one explained goldfish would soon out grow the little tank needing larger and larger ones, we trusted the store. We started to look on the internet and we realised that we needed to put them into a huge tank or a pond we duly did so.

When I started looking at tropical fish I visited many sites and there was a lot of conflicting information, it is through a lot of reading and research I have discovered that almost everything all the different stores I have visited have told me is wrong and each store says some thing different I was told in one I could fit 20 guppies in a 60l tank with 3 platys and 6 neons oh and a common pleco.

Each on line calculator give out different information, each website differs, fish are not recognised or protected, we know that people who have 16 cats or 8 dogs are slightly in need of help but no one thinks about fish in the same way, think back to childhood tanks, the staff in fish shops should know their product but then the staff in Asda don't know where the cleaning stuff is never mind if it is suitable for sensitive skin but we can read that on the packet, it may need to be made law that tanks are labelled such as Platy, tropical, live breeder, needs x amount of space (or needs x litters of water per fish) male to female ratio, then warnings, each fish could be given a colour or 3 so green fish can only go together or red fish and you must not mix colours. If each tank was labelled correctly then the customer could be held responsible, each store would have to abide by the code to sell fish. Sadly this will never happen.

 

[wolfwolf]

Buyer Beware. It is definetly the customer's responsibility to research the fish. Why is it always the other guys fault? "Why didn't XXXX fish store tell me not to buy the fish." "Why didn't XXXXXX tell me smoking would kill me." Take some responsibilty.

LFS are in business to make money. They just happen to sell fish instead of widgets.

 

[andywg]

indeed so. but if you are miss sold an insurance policy, and those who had endowment mortgages in the ninety's were.

You are muddying the waters. That was for intentional mis-selling of policies and a filaure to take advice on board.

it is the responsibility of the vendor, not the client. if you were sold a dvd unit to fit into your PS3, even if you didn't know it should be Blueray, but correctly identified the machine, by law, it is the retailers responsibility, they must refund or exchange.

This applies more to requesting a cory and getting a stingray, the supplying of something different to that which you requested.

miss selling is still, though businesses would like us not to know it, illegal. also miss labelling, miss information and over selling, have built in protection via the trades description act and the sale of good act. though i realise that is only in the UK.

Though this is nothing to do with what we are discussing, this is not about people knowingly selling inappropriate stuff, but the buyer not having the sense to research it.

If you buy a house and haven't had a survey done, it is not my fault if you have paid too much for a wreck that falls down in the first wind. Caveat emptor.

no, no hand holding. but if i correctly identify my tank, size and other occupants of it, and am still sold a fish that is incompatible, that must be the retailers responsibility.

If. What if you don't. What if the fish ship makes an honest mistake. At best they give advice. To make them fully responsible would push the price of advice and fish through the roof.

getting back to your car, i i buy a wheel for a ford escort, but am sold a wheel for a mini, and told that is fine, would you not consider the vendor to be at fault?

If you say "I want a wheel, I would like that one" and point out the one you want, that is your fault. I am not talking about mis-selling where people are actively saying it is fine, I am talking about people not asking and leaving it to you.

in the end i do not expect the retailer to do my work for me, but they surly must have at least some responsibility for the stock they sell. in the UK retailers of goods are not allowed to act in this way, as i said we have laws against it, why should the sellers of live animals not stick to the same rules?

The same rules apply, but as you can see form the above, your analogies do not quite sit right.

a business run on the lines described by Dorkhedeos could be described as carpetbagging. effectively a conman in a shop. schister or charleton would also be correct descriptions, imo. in my experience selling the correct item with knowledge and understanding, leads to many more sales than if you box shift. and we took pride in knowing it.

Not really, a conman is someone who sets out to deceive, not one who lets people who think they know better gt themselves into trouble.

 

[rabbut]

Some people just don't think about it like that. I went in and bought some fish for my son's first 10-gallon (mine first too). The clerk seemed very knowledgable and helped us pick fish for a community tank. My only gripe was that he also sold us a common pleco for it - which can get up to 24". I am glad I found this forum and another one or I would have never known and stunted his growth.

Bottom line, yes - the customer should research before coming in, but at the same time the clerks there should be able to best direct the customer and correct them too when it comes to stocking their tanks. If they don't have the experience, are new, whatever - they should direct them to someone who does know.

Now, this raises a question I was going to post, but since you work in a stores - I'd like to ask you.

I found a nice little aquarium store while going to a birthday party. The store had some really nice specimens that I haven't seen at other stores. But, in a few tanks there were some dead floating fish - it was late in the evening right before they closed. My husband says that any store will have some fish that die and since it was late - they just hadn't gotten to them yet. What is an acceptable amount of floating fish before you will think that the store is not one you should be buying fish at?

I will offer a little input here. I also work in a lfs. Acceptable number of bodies to me realy depends on many things. If it were the day after a delivery, 20-30 fish in our 140 tanks wouldn't be unusual. If it were the day before delivery, I wouldn't be worried if you told me there were 10 dead fish in the whole shop, just so long as there were no more than three in a tank. Also, the number of tanks that are under treatment have a bearing, as does the number of staff on that day. The busyness of the shop is another obvious one.

Being a fish salesman is in no way the same as being a car salesman or anything of the sort. It's hardly commission based.
Fish shops make more money from tanks/food/accessories than fish.
I have been "refused" a sale of a fish, but they happily direct me towards one that would be more suitable.

As already outlined, profit is greater on fish, than on dryed goods. Take a Record 60 for example. My boss pays £40 each, and sells them at £50. Thats £10 profit, or 20% profit.

Now take a neon. We buy them at 1p. We sell them at £1-25, 0r 5 for £5, so thats between 99p and £1-24 profit a neon. Thats between 990and1240% profit. Also, volume has to be taken into consideration. Both the tank and the fish make up roughly equil amounts of or sales of their respective category of good, persent wise.
We could sell mebe 6 of those tanks on a good day, where we could sell 100 neons. so £60 for the tanks, NET profit, or £99-£124 profit on neons. Thats more profit on the fish. We also sell link 100 fish for every tank on a day-by-day basis.

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Madam Macaw]

I had gold fish as a child and when my children were small my husband decided to get my daughter a fish, we went to the store bought a tank asked how many fish it would fit went away set the tank up and a few days later we went back to buy the fish. Now when I was a child it was a plastic bowl with a coloured rim and feed it once a day so when we were told to use filters and such like we were shocked but duly did so. No one explained goldfish would soon out grow the little tank needing larger and larger ones, we trusted the store. We started to look on the internet and we realised that we needed to put them into a huge tank or a pond we duly did so.

When I started looking at tropical fish I visited many sites and there was a lot of conflicting information, it is through a lot of reading and research I have discovered that almost everything all the different stores I have visited have told me is wrong and each store says some thing different I was told in one I could fit 20 guppies in a 60l tank with 3 platys and 6 neons oh and a common pleco.

Each on line calculator give out different information, each website differs, fish are not recognised or protected, we know that people who have 16 cats or 8 dogs are slightly in need of help but no one thinks about fish in the same way, think back to childhood tanks, the staff in fish shops should know their product but then the staff in Asda don't know where the cleaning stuff is never mind if it is suitable for sensitive skin but we can read that on the packet, it may need to be made law that tanks are labelled such as Platy, tropical, live breeder, needs x amount of space (or needs x litters of water per fish) male to female ratio, then warnings, each fish could be given a colour or 3 so green fish can only go together or red fish and you must not mix colours. If each tank was labelled correctly then the customer could be held responsible, each store would have to abide by the code to sell fish. Sadly this will never happen.

One of the local fish stores actually does do that. They have color coding labels on the tanks (yellow for community - green for semi-aggressive - red for aggressive, etc.)

 

[Siamese Fighting]

I think if you were to base me as your average customer, my recent trips include:

2 weeks ago:
80 quid on tank
30 quid accessories
10 quid fish

today:
109 quid on tank
22 quid on plants and decorations
Nothing at all on fish.

At the weekend I may spend another 10 quid on a few more leopard cories.

If all the shops customers were like me..