Have you ever been scammed or felt cheated?

[road_runner]

I was looking at some places to get discount frag packs online, but after reading this I think I'll just wait for the next WWC live sale. lol

Well on the flip side wwc are so overpriced its borderline cheating lol

 

[Medical_Reef]

Well on the flip side wwc are so overpriced its borderline cheating lol

I think all coral is over priced, some more than others. Probably the best way is to travel to a frag swap and only buy what you see, but everything has risks.

 

[bobyboy]

The coral dude...

 

[HB AL]

I've bought most of my corals from my lfs's, but I've only bought corals online 3 times, all 3 are vendors here, 2 of those were from the live sales and 1 I just bought from there website. I felt scammed by 1 just because of what the pics looked like compared to what I received. I didn't complain I just told myself I would not buy from them ever again.

 

[siggy]

The coral dude...

YUP! i bought a frag That was supposed to be a Blood red/black Enchinada and received a orange and grey everyday. One and only from that clown.

 

[RajV]

Posting Mother colony and saying cut to order - What I recd was not a fresh cut , and because of discoloration due to shipping I couldn't figure if they even the same as the mother colony in name . Just sucked it up , after a day in the tank none ever looked close to what the mother was in the ad.

Avoid this..even if frags are shown as sample . perhaps the forum rule can be amended to wysiwyg only ?

 

[Clarinuto]

@Battlecorals put together a post that made me really question buying corals online. It was based on how you can use camera settings to be able to honestly say that a picture was taken with no post-processing.

You can see his entire post here....
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/e...ics-with-your-dslr-or-you-are-exposed.213126/
This post got me looking hard at the color of the coralline and frag plugs to see how "true" the pictures are.

But for the quick and dirty. Here are two pictures of the exact same coral, no post photo editing. The first is what the coral actually looks like, the 2nd photo is with crazy custom white balance settings. How much would you pay for the second coral? How upset would you be if you got looked like the top coral instead?

This exact issue happened to me. I bought an expensive torch thinking it was going to be amazing. Had it delivered only to realize it looked nothing like the photo (which I saved thankfully). Finally looked back at the photo after days of thinking it looked nothing alike and realized that the photo had not been taken with the same lighting the vendor uses for most of their other corals as the frag rack which is generally white in other photos was not even close to white in this one. Debated for days about whether to email about it and finally just decided to do nothing and have a torch that is nice but not even close to what I thought it would be like.

 

[miyags]

Almost everything in this hobby is overpriced.$700 here $700 there, and up. When you ordered a Jaebo wave maker they were $27 buck's now about $80. DB-100 band saw for stained glass was $179, Now they are $379 to $479 What? And for the price of a protein skimmer, plastic and a hobby pump. I bought a Riding Lawnmower instead.But the protein skimmers are made with good plastic. And for the price of corals,well remember back around 10 years ago.World World Corals ad was 6 guys looking down at frags in a 4x4 frag tank.Look at them now.

 

[shrimped]

When I first started this hobby in middle school a few years ago a LFS slapped the WWC logo on a GSP and asked for $40 for a little tiny half inch frag. It had the freaking WWC logo like what?!?! That’s cool as heck. Of course I bought it. I even thanked them lol.

 

[reeferKen]

. A few pointers for those that have.......
4. Deal with locals when possible, at least you can see what you are getting prior to purchase.
5. Stop being cheap on every purchase. You are asking to be scammed.
......

Good point, makes me rethink the high prices at the annual reef events might not be so bad after all.

 

[mitch91175]

For those mentioning about purchasing coral online and it not looking the same as the picture, this is the only video that you will ever need to explain why and proceed with caution:

 

[Hal3134]

Well, this is probably redundant with several posts, but I get very annoyed anytime I see a pic of a coral and the eggcrate is a deep purple, or frankly any color other than white. The fact that I know it's a scam doesn't make it any less of a scam.

I wish it were a forum rule that you had to take a pic with your camera phone using the default settings in order to list it for sale. And you had to say what type of phone and what type of lighting the coral is under. Yes, perhaps the pic isn't "true to life", but at least everyone knows what filters, or lack thereof, were applied. If the seller wants to add a second pic that they color balance to make it more "true to life" then I'm fine with that, as long as they still include the first pic.

 

[shred5]

I have been a few times.
Once by a vendor who no longer on R2R and people defended.
Bought some WYSIWYG corals and didn't get even close to the ones ordered. They were not even on the same type of frag plugs shown in the pictures.
Ended up with a bunch of the same corals to.. I should have known because after I bought them they showed back up on the site. I emailed him and asked if their was a issue because the corals I ordered were back on the site.
Though well maybe something happened and he could not get a hold of me. Well after the email they disappeared pretty fast but over the next year they were up there several times. he was recycling pictures for WYSIWYG.

I have had some bad transactions from eBay and Amazon sellers lately. So much so I wont buy from many places anymore for hobby stuff.

Seriously bought something off Amazon and it was shipped in a plastic bag with fragile on it. Of coarse it was bent bad.
They then wanted a restocking fee to return a time they shipped poorly.

 

[hart24601]

I have not been directly scammed buying livestock, only good experiences even buying from ebay. Now buying equipment that isn't very good is another story. It's not scammed exactly, but cheated a little. It's been a while since I felt that way, but I just tossed my icecap salinity pen, which wasn't cheap, because it didn't hold proper calibration and drifted like crazy. Coralvue was cool and sent me another but still had those issues. I just couldn't trust it so in the garbage it went. And I did work with support and watched all the videos and it would work for a while, but if you need to do an elaborate calibration every time and even then only trust it 70% it's not worth it to me.

 

[Hemmdog]

A LFS in the bay, very well known, slapping designer names on their corals when they are all wilds. They also are infested with bad hitchhikers, velvet & brook in their systems. Yet they tell customers all their corals&fish are perfect. My first year in reefing was a disaster because I took their advice, their horrible greedy advice. I went through 3 different setups for my silly biocube I started with because they kept saying “this brand is great” I’d buy it, it wouldn’t work well for long. I’d go back to the shop, they would say, “that’s horrible, who ever recommended that is a fool”, try a new product, same thing, garbage and money wasted. This shop also implements a 10% unannounced price increase if they feel you are being “difficult”. It’s ridiculous.
I know better now, but the rare times I have to go to that store for roti feast, I over hear them blatantly lying to customers who are new into the hobby to turn a quick profit. These same customers also ask why their corals keep dying. This shop is quick to let them buy new coral, but not quick enough to tell these reefers their systems have every bad hitchhiker in the book. It’s so frustrating. Especially when I see people on here say they go to that shop then aren’t having success.

I have a new LFS now, pest free, fair prices, nice people, can text them with questions 24/7,
a real LFS.

 

[TheBackAndForth]

Just went to Mcdonald's for two fillet-o-fish and asked for the tarter sauce on the side. They charged me .59 cent for each tartar sauce side.

Next time I'm just gonna get dinner at my LFS

 

[road_runner]

LFS in the bay, very well known, slapping designer names on their corals when they are all wilds. They also are infested with bad hitchhikers, velvet & brook in their systems. Yet they tell customers all their corals&fish are perfect. My first year in reefing was a disaster because I took their advice, their horrible greedy advice. I went through 3 different setups for my silly biocube I started with because they kept saying “this brand is great” I’d buy it, it wouldn’t work well for long. I’d go back to the shop, they would say, “that’s horrible, who ever recommended that is a fool”, try a new product, same thing, garbage and money wasted. This shop also implements a 10% unannounced price increase if they feel you are being “difficult”. It’s ridiculous.
I know better now, but the rare times I have to go to that store for roti feast, I over hear them blatantly lying to customers who are new into the hobby to turn a quick profit. These same customers also ask why their corals keep dying. This shop is quick to let them buy new coral, but not quick enough to tell these reefers their systems have every bad hitchhiker in the book. It’s so frustrating. Especially when I see people on here say they go to that shop then aren’t having success.

I have a new LFS now, pest free, fair prices, nice people, can text them with questions 24/7,
a real LFS.

While I understand and agree with you that some arenlole that. I just think a blanket statment that all bay area lfs are bad is not fair.
I deal with couple that I absolutely respect and satisfied with.
Its important I'm this hobby to do your homework and try to set a mental price target on everything. At the end of the day coral worth ad much as we reefers are willing to pay for it...

 

[Hemmdog]

While I understand and agree with you that some arenlole that. I just think a blanket statment that all bay area lfs are bad is not fair.
I deal with couple that I absolutely respect and satisfied with.
Its important I'm this hobby to do your homework and try to set a mental price target on everything. At the end of the day coral worth ad much as we reefers are willing to pay for it...

Oh sorry, I meant to say “a local fish store in the bay” I’ll correct it. I don’t want to point fingers at a single store so I left it general. There are several great shops in the bay.

 

[road_runner]

Oh sorry, I meant to say “a local fish store in the bay” I’ll correct it. I don’t want to point fingers at a single store so I left it general. There are several great shops in the bay.

now I got what u mean ha ha

 

[Hemmdog]

now I got what u mean ha ha

I know, I was referring to 1.