New Petco

Adrya · #1 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 02:47 AM

A brand new Petco store opened on Sunday, so I went and checked it out today for the first time.

I was relatively pleased with most things, though I'm not too fond of the prices of everything. They're actually more expensive than the petstore in town, and I thought THEIR prices were expensive. I'm still better off buying all of my reptile supplies from reptiledirect.com.

I especially went and checked out the reptiles because I was concerned of their health and how everything was set up, even for a new store.

Everything but the redtail boas I was fairly happy about. But $170 for the little baby boas..?!?! Now tell me why are they so expensive? For baby colombians???? I paid $88 for my male on LLLReptile.com, and that included shipping, plus I got him when they had a sale on their baby colombians, but even for a baby a couple months old when I recieved him, he was a lot bigger than the ones in Petco. The ones in Petco were really small little babies, too, not much thicker than my ring finger. I can understand paying that much for a sub-adult to an adult -- $170 and up, but what the heck? And plus I could tell they were rather dehydrated, too, despite humidity being 58%. They were rather wrinkly and a couple weren't having the best of time shedding. Plus I also wonder how much they were being fed... They had humidity and temp gauges on both ends of their cage, but the temps were too hot -- 95 degrees on both gauges. There was about 5 in the cage, and a waterbowl big enough for all five of them to fit in, plus 3 more.

Something else I wasn't too thrilled about was the tags for the animals being sold -- some of the tags had the proper temps and everything else given, but not all of the reptile tags had that important info, just a bunch of jibberish.

I hope to get a job there and maybe I can do something more for the reptiles, especially the snakes, and educate the other employees better... but we'll see.

Anyway, just thought I'd... vent a bit I guess.

Bartman · #2 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 06:23 AM

Everytime I walk into a store, such as the 3 I visited today, I always think about saying something but I know its never worth it.

I would also love to work at a bunch of petstores as the guy who comes in here and there to make sure everythings being done right.

Today was one of the worst ive seen to date. They had a leopard gecko with a collard and you could see the leopard wasnt doing well and had bites on the tail. Open wounds here and there...it really disgusted me. Oh well..just another #$%^&#$%^&#$%^&#$%^& petstore with crappy animals.

Surprisingly enough I was at Super pet, which took really great care of there reptiles as far as I saw. I was quite happy to see that, so they're deffinetly not all bad.

herp_chick · #3 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 06:50 AM

I would bet those baby boas are newborns, and haven't even had their first shed or their first meal. I would also bet they were bought wholesale, which was at most $35 each. Markup on most things in a petstore are astronomical. Adult female boas go for $150, and not much more. I hate petstores.

Ranger · #4 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 11:28 AM

There's a local pet store around here with baby RTB's for $199! Nothing special. Just normal, unsexed, pet store boas for $199. I talkde to the sales person and told her that I had just bought a pos double het female from a top breeder for $125 and that her prices were a bit steep. She said, "Well, that's what they go for."

Not to me they don't!

K

lisagordier · #5 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 01:47 PM

boy, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that the petstores have prices that are WAY TO HIGH! I got my lovely little female boa mix for $75 from a breeder. And that was only because of two reasons. 1) he hadn't had any of his newborns (well she was a bit bigger) sexed yet. 2) he'd just bred his RTB and Salmon boa to see what he might get. Zephyr was a beautiful bargain. After a few sheds you could really see what the Salmon Boa added to her.

Adrya · #6 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 04:12 PM

I paid $275 for my sub-adult female colombian, Sahira, from Reptilebasics.com, but I think she was absolutely worth it. I still think she's a mix with something, and I hope she grows huge, too. 5 feet in 2 years? I think that's a great growth rate.

But if I get a job at Petco, I'm gonna help those buggers. There was actually one or two of the baby colombians that I really liked their coloration/pattern and appearance, but I'm not gonna pay $170 each. I even thought the normal cornsnakes were expensive-- $50 each? and they were SO tiny! They were almost the thickness of a pencil!

herp_chick · #7 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 04:18 PM

If you bought a boa from Reptile Basics, you got a nice one. I am friends with the owner and he is a great person to deal with.

hisba · #8 (**permalink**) 08-11-2005, 04:52 PM

all reptiles at any petstore (corporate or mom and pop) are going to be higher than from a private breeder or any online reptile breeder.. the stores have huge overheads. I'm not saying it's right, but there are economics involved. Majority of pet stores (co and smart) I've been to here in Vegas and in the Bay Area sold their common boas for $189. They would be on sale sometimes for $149 or $99. The local closest real mom&pop type reptile store near me charges $159-199 for the common boas. There is one at an indoor flea market, I think they were about $100 there (no high overhead).

As far as their condition... the store is new, they were probably just shipped in to that store. Shipping (esp if they were WC or farmed and shipped in from another country) causes dehydration etc. HOWEVER if their temps are at 95 I don't suspect those little ones will last too long.

Good luck if you try for the job!

-=krissi=- · #9 (**permalink**) 08-12-2005, 02:00 AM

good luck with that job at Petco.
a corporate guy whose name i will withold once told me "usually we do not hire people that are already knowledgable because they normally demand more money and when we don't or can't give in to their demands, they quit. it's typically better to just train as we go".
does that make ANY sense?! heck no!!!
i lucked out with my job because a high school friend was management at my old store.

our "colombians" were $170 and "central americans" were $210 at one point that i can remember... for the smallest little baby boas you've ever seen in yer life!
my favorite Petco price was $100 for red knee tarantula spiderlings haha. I watched them grow surprisingly well in the 2 years that we had them while i was there. I even talked my manager into letting me adopt the 2 surviving ones because i said they were sick. they were a little underweight and dehydrated because everyone but myself was afraid of them but they weren't terminal or anything haha. one is in my collection and one in my friend's ... but both still alive and healthy as can be to this day

speaking from 2 years experience...they won't let you really do much in the way of helping them in the store.
you will get write-ups and suspensions if you bring "improper husbandry" to the attention of corporate.
every time you fix something (wrong temps, ridiculous diets or ANYTHING)...corporate will make you or someone else change it back to THEIR planograms.
you will get so frustrated and you will cry almost every day at work after working there for any amount of time over a year.

educating the employees and customers is the only thing you CAN do while these animals are suffering under your limited care in the store because management or corporate won't let you do what you know is right for them.

every herp lover i know that has worked for Petco (and Petsmart) was forced to think of ways to get these herps out of the store and into your care of the care of others you know that will actually provide for them RIGHT.
whether one can talk their manager into adopting them out to them or not...herp lovers will make sure these critters find their way out of the store.

at one point this one kid i worked with made a habit of telling our general manager that the shipments were always dead or dying and took all or most of the shipments home. he would end up giving them to a guy that ran a herp rescue haha.

Adrya · #10 (**permalink**) 08-12-2005, 02:22 AM

Well, I don't care if they pay me more or not, I'd just be happy to at least do what I can to educate the other employees and customers, TRY and help the critters that come in there, and just get paid in general. If they eventually would want to pay me more, that's fine with me. In many ways I wish I'd taken business classes and other courses so that maybe I could've been assistant manager or just manager, even, at Petco.

I had actually gone to Petco earlier that morning at 10:00am, and the temps for the boas was 89, then when I was back there again with my mom at 8:30pm, that's when the temps were 95.

They were also on some kind of dirt substrate and it was SO dry looking it even made me thirsty, and I wanted to mist water in there so bad and just do something to cool them off.

thanks for the luck on me getting a job there. I hope something turns out.

-=krissi=- · #11 (**permalink**) 08-12-2005, 03:15 AM

well, the corporate guy wasn't implying that they wanted money from the start but they usually demanded more than the regular raises as time went on lol.
i never did because i was tattooing whenever i wasn't at Petco so i didn't need the money.

Petco typically uses that bedding (Eco Earth) for whatever reptiles they can and rarely keep it hydrated or even mist the animals themselves. i spent half of my weeks doing just that and cleaning water bowls & giving herps fresh water.

if you get the job, be prepared to work with fish too! haha
a lot of stores make you work both the reptile AND fish department.
you'll have to let me know if that store is like that, one of the newer stores have different people for the diff animals departments. As a whole they'd rather have one person cover reptiles/fish and one to cover small animals/aviary per shift.
another thing i've noticed about Petco is that they'll have a chasier or stock guy cover if an animal person doesn't make it to work!
even Petsmart has a "knowledgable" manager cover their animal depts haha.

like i said....GOOD LUCK AND MAKE AS MANY CHANGES AND INFORM AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSILE!!!

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