Another case of buyer beware in big chain pet stores

[bekateen]

I've been checking my Petsmart here in Madison, but I'm not even getting hilstream loaches, which I really want, BTW!

I feel your pain. Every PetSMART in the my area has hillstream loaches, which I have no interest in (at the moment) because I don't have any tanks that are well-suited for them. But for the life of me, I can't find any stores with butterfly plecos. Good luck.

[bekateen]

UPDATE: Since May 19th, I waited for a reply from PetSMART's veterinary team, to no avail, for a couple of weeks:

Dear XXXX [the PetSMART representative's name],

Do you have any idea when I will hear back from PetSMART's corporate veterinary team?

Thank you,
Eric XXXX

Dear XXXX [the PetSMART representative's name],

Still nothing from the higher ups at PetSMART. Can you give me an idea as to how long this should take?

Thank you,
Eric XXXX

Today I received this response:

Dear Eric,

I apologize for the confusion here regarding further contact. Your concerns were provided to the vet team for them to review. They typically do not respond to customer inquiries, so I apologize if that was the perception.

In regards to this issue, we have decided to discontinue the sale of Butterfly Plecostomus. The issue lied with the vendor, who was not supplying us with the correct species of fish on a consistent basis. Our Buyers and Veterinary team feel it is in the best interest of the pets to no longer sell them at this time.

Sincerely,
XXXX
[The PetSMART representative]

I think that pretty much settles the matter. I did respond with one more email, again thanking them for the feedback and expressing my still-existent interest in buying their real butterfly plecos, but for now, I'm resolved that the matter is effectively closed.

Dear XXXX [the PetSMART representative's name],

Thank you for your reply. Okay, I can understand what you are saying about the veterinary team not typically responding to customer inquiries. In my opinion, though, I would encourage them to begin sending out at least some kind of response or follow-up letter because, as you can tell from the history of my interactions in this email chain, it gives the customer a very bad feeling if there is no response, no acknowledgement, etc... It makes the customer feel as if they are being ignored or dismissed.

As to your specific decision about discontinuing sales of butterfly plecos, that is a surprise to me (I didn't see anything wrong with selling either species of fish; I was concerned about their labeling/care).

By the way, do you mean that PetSMART will discontinue sales of the real butterfly pleco, or sales of the hillstream loach which is also nicknamed "butterfly pleco"? Or both? I ask because just two days ago, I received an email from my brother in Olympia Washington. He runs an aquarium maintenance service for businesses and as part of his job, he buys fish to stock the tanks in various stores. He told me that a couple of days ago he found and bought real butterfly plecos from his local PetSMART stores (in addition to hillstream loaches, both being sold in the same tank under the same name for the same price). From my perspective, that was very exciting because it gave me hope that my local PetSMART might be able to get the real plecos too. But if you will be discontinuing these, then I guess that won't happen.

Sincerely,
Eric XXXX

I'm not thrilled that they chose to discontinue the plecos, but my real hope is that in the future, they are more careful about their labeling and "care instructions."

Thank you all for following along. Happy fishing,
Eric

[racoll]

I guessed they would do something like this. Easier to sweep the problem under the carpet and blame someone else than try to teach their staff the difference between a pleco and a loach.

[CharlieM9]

I guessed they would do something like this. Easier to sweep the problem under the carpet and blame someone else than try to teach their staff the difference between a pleco and a loach.

Racoll, I whole heartedly agree with you. I also think part of their reaction may lie in the fact that the people who work those departments may not even care about fish. They may just be doing it for a paycheck and learn what's on the label because they have to and for no other reason. The evidence in that may lie in the fact that potentially the employees have not realized the difference in the fish themselves, or care to make the difference known even. It is sad in my opinion, but an issue that lies deeper than just mislabeling in such a large company.

[Birger]

Hmmm..what I have seen here is all this is over common names which can change like the weather...so let me ask a quick question, if you saw butterfly plecos that were actual Dekeyseria sp. being sold for the lesser price as the brother found in Olympia...would you then try to tell them they are not charging enough or just buy them all up???




Birger

[bekateen]

Hmmm..what I have seen here is all this is over common names which can change like the weather...so let me ask a quick question, if you saw butterfly plecos that were actual Dekeyseria sp. being sold for the lesser price as the brother found in Olympia...would you then try to tell them they are not charging enough or just buy them all up???

Birger, that is a very interesting challenge!

If it were me (and to be honest, I still hold out a minor hope that it will be), I would do both, sort of (not buy them ALL up). First of all, I've already had several conversations with the young woman who runs the fish dept at my neighborhood PetSMART. She was already aware of the advertising discrepancy before I brought it to her attention (i.e., she knew that the fish she was selling were hillstream loaches and not plecos, although I don't know if she knew that the plecos are more expensive than the loaches); during our several conversations about these fish, I have made it clear to her that the plecos are more expensive than the loaches.

That said, the price discrepancy is not as far off as I thought it was when I first started this thread. These fish are currently advertised at $6.99 USD at PetSMART. When I first looked up the price of Dekeyseria

L052

on Aquabid a couple of months ago, I was only seeing it advertised for $30 or more. If you go online to Aquabid right now, you can buy Dekeyseria

L052

for as low as $15 USD. Currently you can buy hillstream loaches as low as $10 USD (I'm not sure of the exact species of HS loach for sale at PetSMART, but based on color pattern I'm trying to match it to other HS loaches I've seen recently at Aquabid; honestly, none of the current HS loaches at Aquabid are an exact match; the HS loaches at my PetSMART had a reticulated pattern, not a few large spots; maybe a type of

Sewellia

?). Right now, at two of my LFS's, hillstream loaches are available for $10-$15 USD; none of my LFS's carry Dekeyseria.

So I'm trying to make two points specific to my city and the pricing of these fish: (1) Both fish are less expensive at PetSMART than they are at either my LFS or at Aquabid. (2) Neither fish is THAT MUCH MORE expensive at these other sources than the price at PetSMART; only about 50%-100% more in cost (but NOT the 400-500% more I expected two months ago). And frankly, that's not out of the ordinary for PetSMART fish prices for other species: When my LFS sells albino BNs, they charge about $10-12 USD each for a 1.5 inch fish. PetSMART sells the exact same size ABNs for $8 USD. For about 6 months, a couple of years back, I was on a hunt for

Apistogramma agassizii

. PetSMART was selling them $10 USD each for females and $13 USD each for males. My LFS was selling both sexes for $14 USD, and another LFS was selling females for $19 USD.

So to summarize my answer, yes, I would buy them. I would set out to buy 4 or 5 of them, since that's what I try to do with every fish I buy, hoping to get at least one of each sex. If they had only 4 or 5 in stock, then I would probably buy them all; but if they had 6, I would probably buy only 4 and leave behind two for somebody else who hopefully will buy them as a pair (I hate it when people buy a bunch of one species of fish, and leave one solitary individual behind... that makes me feel very sad for that one fish). And while I'm buying them, I would talk to the store clerk about the fish, their price at other sources, etc.

Thanks for making me ponder this. It is a good exercise in introspection.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I guessed they would do something like this. Easier to sweep the problem under the carpet and blame someone else than try to teach their staff the difference between a pleco and a loach.

I understand what you're saying, and I agree that the "pass the blame" behavior is probably being exercised; and it is also a despicable character. But I'm not sure that the response of PetSMART is so simplistically malevolent. And I don't think that the bad behavior at corporate level necessarily translates to what you state about staff training.

I suspect that at the corporate level, there was a purposeful effort to acquire and sell hillstream loaches, and use their ambiguous common name (which also refers to the more valuable Dekeyseria) in order to attract unaware hobbyists and sell more fish to them. And I also believe that the employees at most local stores are inadequately trained. But whether or not the corporate office had taught their employees the difference between a HS loach and a real pleco is beside the point: In other words, even if the staff knew the difference, it wouldn't change the fact that the store printed labels with the word "Dekeyseria sp." on it and showed a picture of

Dekeyseria brachyura

, and then turned around and sold HS loaches.

I think that inadequate staff training and purposeful mislabeling are separate issues. And the decision to stop selling "butterfly plecos" (whatever PetSMART intended by that) definitely sweeps the mislabeling issue under the rug, but in my mind it doesn't tie back into the issue of staff training.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

One more thought on the notion that PetSMART's reaction constitutes a failure to address the real issue: The more I think about it, the more I suspect that there is some truth in the email they sent me. I can believe that the following is true and to the point:

The issue lied with the vendor, who was not supplying us with the correct species of fish on a consistent basis.

But I think where the "sweeping under the rug" comes in is here: Their complaint about the vendor is probably exactly the opposite of what we might hope: I suspect they WANTED the vendor to send HS loaches, which PetSMART then advertised as butterfly plecos, but the vendor may have inconsistently shipped real Dekeyseria

L052

. And maybe the vendor charged PetSMART more per fish for the Dekeyseria at the wholesale level, and PetSMART didn't appreciate that. So rather than fix the problem, PetSMART just ditched the whole thing.

Just a thought. Cheers, Eric

[Dave Rinaldo]

This is all silly....and they get their fish from Segrest. Bug them.

[bekateen]

This is all silly....and they get their fish from Segrest.

Thanks, Dave, for the info. By the way, this makes sense, since my brother told me the exact same thing (that the fish were from Segrest) the night he bought the plecos from his PetSMART. In fact it was the photo on the Segrest website that my brother used to confirm the ID of the PetSMART plecos he bought.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

UPDATE: Today I received one more email from the PetSMART representative:

Eric,

Both of these fish will be discontinued at this time. We have found that when we order Butterfly Plecostomus, the vendor does not consistently ship the correct species, and vice versa for Hillstream Loaches, we do not always receive Hillstream Loaches. To your point, to ensure the pets are cared for appropriately, we will no longer carry either species.

Thank you again for contacting us about this issue. We appreciate your time.

Sincerely,
XXXX
[The PetSMART representative]

I sent the following closing reply, to complete and terminate our conversation:

Dear XXXX [The PetSMART representative],

Thank you for this explanation. If you ever do decide again to carry the butterfly plecostomus, I will likely be one of the first people to buy them. But until then, have a nice day.

Sincerely, Eric XXXX

So I guess that's it.

[bekateen]

Here are photos of one of the plecos my brother bought at the Olympia Washington PetSMART labeled as butterfly plecos... Definitely, I never found these at my PetSMART!

[bekateen]

Wow. Never thought I'd resurrect this thread. But it's started again, this time with my local Petco. Like PetSMART before them, my local Petco is advertising butterfly plecos. In this case, Petco is charging about $15 (more realistic than the PetSMART price before, esp if these are

L052

).

But what they received from the wholesaler, and what they're selling as "butterfly plecos" is ... drumroll please...

Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps

.

Yeah. I couldn't believe it. :'-(

The poop icing on this cake is that in my area, gibby's aren't worth $15 at that particular size (about 45-50mm SL I'd estimate at my Petco). So they've got the ID wrong and they're charging too much for what they're selling.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

It would be really helpful for these stores if they'd be able to get a person or two to identify shipments more accurately. My local pet shop is great, but they had "Assorted Synodontis" for $6.50, and the last one left was definitely a 3" S. eupterus. I let a nearby store employee know, since an eupterus is worth more than $6.50!