My experience with these folks has been simply terrible. I purchased two of the fancy rats from Pet Planet on May 27th. These rats were going to be our new family pets, and my kids were excited to welcome them to our family. For the most part, the initial purchase went ok. The person who was working that day helped answer questions, and generally seemed friendly. The one thing that struck me odd about our conversation was a last minute comment as I was leaving the store. He said "Let me know if you run into any health issues." I thought this a bit odd, and wondered what potential health issues the rats had for such a comment to be made.
Fast forward 10 days - my family went on vacation out of state and had our neighbors checking in daily on our rats. Three days into our vacation, and 13 days since our initial purchase, one of the rats dies in the middle of the night. Our neighbors checked on them bright and early and found her in her cage dead. They sent us a picture of the dead rat, and disposed of her.
Fast forward a few days, and I return to the store to see if they would give me a new rat. Considering that I had the rat for less than two weeks before it died, I hoped they wouldn't hassle me about getting a new rat, free of charge. I was wrong. The person on duty that day expected me to bring the dead rat in as proof, and generally harassed me about the legitimacy of my claim. I spent a solid 5 minutes discussing what happened before he committed to getting me a new rat, but even then he was hesitant to do the right thing.
Skip forward to a week. My wife checks in on the rats and finds that the second of the original pair is dead. She died during the night, and rigor mortis set in by morning. We ended up putting the rat in a bag in the freezer, so that I could provide proof that my second rat died.
I call Pet Planet around 10:52am, and was verbally abused by the person on duty for a good 5 minutes. He wouldn't listen to my concerns, and immediately dived into defensive mode placing the blame on me. He berated me on the phone, consistently spoke over me, raised his voice on multiple occasions, and when I asked for the manager, he told me he was the manager! Ultimately, he said he'd refund my money and then promptly hung up on me.
When I went in to get a refund, I was interrogated for a solid 10 minutes. What food had I been feeding them (the food I bought from you), what bedding did they use (the bedding I bought from you), how did they die (I must look like a vet or something)? After being verbally abused for the second time that day, the "manager" only refunded a portion of my original purchase, despite me returning everything I originally purchased. He told me "I was lucky he let me return anything at all".
Overall, my experience with these amateurs was simply terrible. If you need some verbal abuse and terrible customer service in your life, I'd recommend this pet shop. If you're looking for quality pets and customer service, avoid them at all costs. read more