Extremely Negative Experience with Biota

[JoeinLA]

Certainly a bit of a rant, but I have ordered now 4 mandarin's from Biota (via AlgaeBarn), and only 1 of them was received "successfully". I will not be using them again.

First order: arrived 2 days later, even though I paid for priority overnight. One Mandarin, marked female, survived, the other (male) did not.
Second Order was a replacement for the male that died. Arrived fine, the next day.
Several months later, it turns out the original female was, in fact male (and, no, there was no mixup in the original pair). It was being picked on incessantly, and we had to re-home him. Not fun after raising it for a while and seeing it grow and becoming attached to it.
Third Order was a replacement for the mis-sexed (fe)male. It was to arrive on Thursday, and now it will not arrive until tomorrow (or Monday?). Again, priority overnight paid. I fully expect to receive a dead fish, and am not looking forward to it.

Of the 4 mandarins, one did not make it due to shipping and I'm now expecting that another one will also be DOA. You can blame FedEx all you want, but Biota insists on using this service that, for me, as had a 33% on-time delivery rate. I live in Los Angeles, so perhaps FedEx is better where you live. Another was wrongly sexed, which I understand is a risk, but it doesn't change the outcome. Ultimately, you can lay whatever blame where ever you like, but the simple fact is that my my experience with placing orders with Biota has been horrendously negative. I was more than happy to pay a serious and significant premium for what I thought would be a more friendly approach to fish keeping, but if all I'm doing is paying to receive dead or wrong fish, yeah, not gonna keep doing that. If you want to consider "livestock" as a roulette wheel gamble, go ahead; but it is not fun for me to see my pets die (or need to be rehomed).

If you are considering placing an order with Biota, well, there you go.

If anyone from Biota reads this, you should seriously (1) consider NOT USING FEDEX and (2) perhaps make a more concerted effort to correctly sex fish if you advertise selling them as male/female pairs. Otherwise, you will continue to have customers with significantly poor experiences. FWIW, i would pay more to have had you grow them out to a larger size where you were more certain of the sex. But, yeah, not if you're going to ship them via FedEx so I can receive them 2 or 3+ days later in a state of stress or DOA.

FWIW, AlgaeBarn has been A+++ in striving to correct these issues, but it's hard to keep justifying the gamble.

 

[jrill]

Sounds like your casting shade on Biota because of FedEx. I call foul.

 

[JoeinLA]

Sounds like you're not actually reading the post. I call foul. Maybe actually consider the post before defending whatever it is you think you need to defend.

 

[undermind]

Sounds like your casting shade on Biota because of FedEx. I call foul.

I thought that when I read the first couple sentences, but then I read the rest of the post before posting myself.

 

[mckinney0171]

FedEx is trash. Biota isn’t.

 

[BanjoBandito]

FEDEX is A+++ around me, it's UPS that stinks. BIOTA is a good group, but not immune to issues.

 

[jrill]

Sounds like you're not actually reading the post. I call foul. Maybe actually consider the post before defending whatever it is you think you need to defend.

What exactly did Biota do wrong here.

 

[JoeinLA]

FedEx is trash. Biota isn’t.

the problem here is that I, as the end customer, have no clue what's going on at Biota. I only know what I receive as a result of the money that I paid. Biota could be producing the highest quality fish in the most ecologically sustainable and "humane" way, but if all i get are dead/wrong fish, then, well, nothing Biota is doing is actually helping them in the end?

Perhaps the real solution, at least to the shipping issue, is to let customers choose which shipper they want? At least then I can't blame Biota for forcing me to use FedEx?

But, again, this is only part of the problem with my overall experience with Biota. Receiving the wrong sexed fish, raising it for several months, and then needing to rehome it doesn't help either. I assume it's simply not cost effective for Biota to raise these to a larger size to confirm sex, but then you, I, as the customer, get to pay for that gamble.

The simple fact is that I paid for a male/femaile pair. I have received 2 males and (presumably) 2 dead fish. Not the best buying experience.

In the end, the simple question for the customer is that you can place an order with Biota, knowing these are the risks, or you can use another vendor.

p.s., just as a counter comparison - consider Amazon's success. They do one thing amazingly well: distribution. That should show you the importance of the overall customer experience.

 

[Biota_Marine]

Certainly a bit of a rant, but I have ordered now 4 mandarin's from Biota, and only 1 of them was received "successfully". I will not be using them again.

First order: arrived 2 days later, even though I paid for priority overnight. One Mandarin, marked female, survived, the other (male) did not.
Second Order was a replacement for the male that died. Arrived fine, the next day.
Several months later, it turns out the original female was, in fact male (and, no, there was no mixup in the original pair). It was being picked on incessantly, and we had to re-home him. Not fun after raising it for a while and seeing it grow and becoming attached to it.
Third Order was a replacement for the mis-sexed (fe)male. It was to arrive on a Thursday, and now it will not arrive until tomorrow (or Monday?). Again, priority overnight paid.

Of the 4 mandarins, two did not make it due to shipping. You can blame FedEx all you want, but Biota insists on using this service that, for me, as had a 50% success rate. I live in Los Angeles, so perhaps FedEx is better where you live. Another was wrongly sexed, which I understand is a risk, but it doesn't change the outcome. Ultimately, you can lay whatever blame where ever you like, but the simple fact is that my my experience with placing orders with Biota has been horrendously negative and I will not be doing so again. I was more than happy to pay a serious and significant premium for what I thought would be a more friendly approach to fish keeping, but if all I'm doing is paying to receive dead or wrong fish, yeah, not gonna keep doing that. If you want to consider "livestock" as a roulette wheel gamble, go ahead; but it is not fun for me to see my pets die (or need to be rehomed).

If you are considering placing an order with Biota, well, there you go.

If anyone from Biota reads this, you should seriously (1) consider NOT USING FEDEX and (2) perhaps make a more concerted effort to correctly sex fish if you advertise selling them as male/female pairs. Otherwise, you will continue to have customers with significantly poor experiences. Frankly, i would pay more to have had you grow them out to a larger size where you were more certain of the sex. But, yeah, not if you're going to ship them via FedEx so I can receive them 2 o4 3+ days later in a state of stress or DOA.

Hey Joe,

I sincerely apologize for the issues you had with our company and we're usually incredibly accommodating so it's odd to hear a complaint like this. The first question I do have is if you were purchasing directly from our store or from another company that sells our products? We only ship using UPS next day air because many vendors (including us) have had issues with FedEx mishandling our packages or having delays. We made the change from FedEx to UPS about 2.5 years ago because of this.

When checking out on our website we also have a delivery date calendar to ensure customers are home to receive their orders or we can ship around their schedule. We never want fish sitting around in the sun or left unattended so we are typically very flexible shipping Monday-Thursday. This scheduling does have a 24 hour delay built in so if an order is placed if doesn't go out that same day but the shipping is still UPS next day air so it is just a 24 hour shipments regardless of the day chosen.

We do have a team of experienced marine biologists at our distribution facility and we do make mistakes like everyone else regarding sexing this species. I would say 9 out of 10 times I receive an email about the sex of a mandarin being incorrect it usually is the correct sex but in larger populations like ours only the dominant males typically have the large spike fin while the remainder have the trapezoidal shape as opposed to the female rounded fin shape. In any case where we make the error we ask the customer rehome the fish to a local fish store or reefer friend and cover the cost of both the animal and shipping to make sure both the current and new inhabitants are happy with their environment.

I'm always happy to help and Felicia has been amazing helping out all of our customers with any issues. It sounds like you purchased our livestock through a third party rather than going directly through us where we are able to help out entirely throughout the process.

 

[Biota_Marine]

the problem here is that I, as the end customer, have no clue what's going on at Biota. I only know what I receive as a result of the money that I paid. Biota could be producing the highest quality fish in the most ecologically sustainable and "humane" way, but if all i get are dead/wrong fish, then, well, nothing Biota is doing is actually helping them in the end?

Perhaps the real solution, at least to the shipping issue, is to let customers choose which shipper they want? At least then I can't blame Biota for forcing me to use FedEx?

But, again, this is only part of the problem with my overall experience with Biota. Receiving the wrong sexed fish, raising it for several months, and then needing to rehome it doesn't help either. I assume it's simply not cost effective for Biota to raise these to a larger size to confirm sex, but then you, I, as the customer, get to pay for that gamble.

The simple fact is that I paid for a male/femaile pair. I have received 2 males and (presumably) 2 dead fish. Not the best buying experience.

In the end, the simple question for the customer is that you can place an order with Biota, knowing these are the risks, or you can use another vendor.

p.s., just as a counter comparison - consider Amazon's success. They do one thing amazingly well: distribution. That should show you the importance of the overall customer experience.

If customers prefer FedEx they can order our products through AlgaeBarn or Live Aquaria and if they want our products through UPS (like I personally recommend) you're welcome to order directly through our site. In cases of delays with our customers on our site we call the UPS distribution centers and expedite packages as fast as possible but we don't have that luxury when our products are orders from other vendors.

Amazon does an amazing job shipping products but they also do not allow live animals on their platform for the reason that the logistics of shipping live products is even too difficult for their billion dollar logistics team and company to take the risk on.

 

[JoeinLA]

Hello Jake, its interesting that you only use UPS. I ordered through AlgaeBarn and even asked to use UPS but they said I could only use FedEx. And, while they've been more than generous is covering the cost of the replacement orders, I have had to pay for priority overnight shipping each time.

 

[JoeinLA]

Just as an update, FedEX now tells me package will come on Monday. I'm going to assume that the mandarin will die a lonely, dark, and confused death from asphyxiation. Wonderful. So glad I paid for the privilege.

Also, AlgaeBarn is telling us that Biota can't ship via UPS with orders placed through AlgaeBarn. Not sure where the issue lies, but certainly not one that I care to continue to experience.

 

[Biota_Marine]

Hello Jake, its interesting that you only use UPS. I ordered through AlgaeBarn and even asked to use UPS but they said I could only use FedEx. And, while they've been more than generous is covering the cost of the replacement orders, I have had to pay for priority overnight shipping each time.

Hey Joe, Again I sincerely apologize for any confusion. When you purchase through AlgaeBarn they do need to go through FedEx because that is the only service they provide. As mentioned above if ordered through our direct site (https://shop.thebiotagroup.com/) it gets shipped through UPS. I was not aware of any issue with your AlgaeBarn orders previously as we don't normally receive any details from those orders and have different customer support teams.

We're just as upset about fish being lost in transit as you because we've taken the time and effort to raise each and every one of our animals from egg to juvenile or adult only to be treated poorly by a transportation company.