After a recent purchase from a small fish shop wiped out the guppy population in my 40-gal tropical freshwater tank and took out my only female platy as well (turns out his fish were infected with ich - every one of my little guys got sick and luckily only six were lost), I decided to replace them with fish from this Pet Smart location as the fish I had originally purchased from the Foothill Ranch location had proven to be happy, healthy and hardy. I purchased a total of five guppies, three male and two female, two female platys, and a snail.
My first complaint is that the woman who caught my fish (her name is Jess and she is apparently a manager, based on her uniform) was so incompetent that it took her about three minutes to catch one of the platys that I had asked for. I can understand it maybe taking a little longer to catch a specific fish out of a tank of similar-looking fish, but all I asked for was a female sunburst wag out of a tank of all sunburst wags, mostly female. She had an extremely difficult time of it and thoroughly stressed out all of the fish in that tank. It also took her an unusual amount of time to catch all the other fish and she even seemed to have a hard time with the snail!
The next day the sunburst wag was dead.
I brought her back and explained the situation (leaving the employee's name out of it) and was told I could pick out a replacement fish. Once I got back to the fish section and picked out a platy the employee who came to assist me was...Jess. I was not about to let her potentially endanger another fish of mine and politely asked that someone else catch my fish. A younger girl came out then (her name was Jen) and asked me what I wanted, and this time I had picked a certain fish because all of the others in that tank were looking unhealthy (this is the tank that Jess wreaked havoc on the day before and it really took a toll on those poor platys). I pointed her out and the girl didn't seem to care much, so I verified that I wanted the largest female and she stuck the net in, fished around, and came out with a small male. She then asked, "This is the one, right?" And I said immediately, "No, I wanted a female. The big one."
It took her two more tries to get it right, and she made it pretty clear that she thought I was wasting her time.
At this point I was feeling pretty irritated with the staff and I just wanted to get my fish and leave, so I brought the replacement up to the counter with my receipt and made the exchange, problem free except that the cashier talked to me like I was an idiot. She also didn't give back my receipt, saying that if there was a problem with any of my other fish they would take care of it.
I went back in the other day just to look around (my 3-year-old and I go to all our local pet stores for fun) and was dismayed to see that the tank that my platys came out of and one other were full of ich-encrusted fish. One tank had about a dozen fish in it out of which I counted seven dead and two so totally covered in ich that they couldn't unclamp their fins to swim and were floating helplessly through the water, gills working furiously. It was horribly sad! I notified an employee, a young man this time, who looked genuinely surprised and had no idea what to do. Like, really. I suggested he remove the dead and he acted like he hadn't even thought of that! I also asked if there was any way of euthanizing the fish that were obviously not going to make it so that they didn't have to suffer and he went to find a manager (Jess) who told him no, that they would be fine. After looking around a bit more I saw at least one dead fish in every two out of three tanks. Not all of the tanks had ich in them that I could see, but about half did. Half!
This was two days ago, and today when I went in (one of the guppies I had purchased there died this afternoon after an unfortunate run-in with the filter) the two platy tanks were empty but for one fish, again so encrusted in ich that she could only move one fin and was struggling to stay balanced. There were ich-afflicted fish in EVERY SINGLE TANK...even the cichlids...even the goldfish. There were more dead fish just kind of hanging out in just under half of the tanks. The employee in this section tonight was Jen, who seemed either oblivious of or apathetic to the situation.
When I took my dead guppy to the register (to the same cashier I had dealt with for the previous exchange) she told me sorry, no, they couldn't switch him out without the receipt...not that I would have accepted any of the other fish in their current condition anyway.
I am outraged to see such horrendous treatment of these animals. You would think that they would exhibit better disease management if only for the purpose of maintaining a sell-able product. These employees are sloppy, rude, lazy and bad at their jobs. I will never EVER shop here again, and I sincerely hope this branch either goes under or completely replaces the staff. read more