Kat
I'm talkin' to YOU.
Well, here it is... the post I never wanted to have to write. It's difficult to believe that somebody who'd been an active and enthusiastic member of the cornsnake community could do something like this, but I guess it goes to show that even the "good guys" can go bad. Anyway, you can read this and judge for yourself...
Some of you know that I did a breeding loan with Joe Pierce this year. I loaned him Deathy, my Ultramel Motley het Golddust, with Joe planning to pair Deathy with as many of his females as possible in order to produce ultramels het for lots of fun morphs. The breeding loan was to be a straight 50-50 split. Joe had full control over which females he did or did not breed Deathy to, though he did accept my input.
Things went alright with the first clutches. We worked out a fairly even split and took into account who had customers waiting for what morphs. Deathy and the first group of corns shipped to me just fine. There were a few problems (1 ultramel motley was kinked, 2 amel mots het butter never fed for me, and 1 golddust motley was mis-sexed... Joe had a golddust mot that died on him), but nothing that couldn't be resolved with the results from the second clutches.
Unfortunately, when we went to split up the second clutches, that's where things went bad. First, when Joe finally gave me the tally of second clutch corns to split, he'd already marked some as sold and shipped to Europe. Now... I don't know about everybody else out there, but most people I know consider it a big no-no to sell snakes from a breeding loan before the clutches have even split. I called him on it in my responses, and suggested what I thought would be fair compensation -- splitting the monies from the sale of those corns and then splitting the remaining corns from the breeding loan evenly. The response I received from Joe Pierce was rather angry and accusatory, suggesting that I had no place in questioning his selling those snakes, given the "loss of production" he suffered from this breeding loan.
That response, on Sept. 27th of 2006, was the last I heard from Joe. I have sent him several private messages to try and resolve this deal, even to the point of agreeing with whatever split he liked, just to get it all over and done with. He has not read any of them, despite having been logged on and active in the forums since they were sent. I have attempted emailing him, and have received no response. I have attempted to call him with what I believe to be his phone number, and have left a message on his answering machine. No response. It has been a full 2 weeks since I last heard any communication from Joe.
Given the above, I'm left with the distinct impression that Joe no longer has any intention of sending me my share of the second clutches. Just to put a value to the snakes, based on some calculations using earlier numbers I'd been quoted by Joe, my remaining share of snakes from the breeding loan would total somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000.
I'd sure like somebody to prove me wrong on all this, because the whole situation sucks. But from what I can see on my side of the table, Joe Pierce is really looking like one of the Bad Guys.
-Kat Hall
Some of you know that I did a breeding loan with Joe Pierce this year. I loaned him Deathy, my Ultramel Motley het Golddust, with Joe planning to pair Deathy with as many of his females as possible in order to produce ultramels het for lots of fun morphs. The breeding loan was to be a straight 50-50 split. Joe had full control over which females he did or did not breed Deathy to, though he did accept my input.
Things went alright with the first clutches. We worked out a fairly even split and took into account who had customers waiting for what morphs. Deathy and the first group of corns shipped to me just fine. There were a few problems (1 ultramel motley was kinked, 2 amel mots het butter never fed for me, and 1 golddust motley was mis-sexed... Joe had a golddust mot that died on him), but nothing that couldn't be resolved with the results from the second clutches.
Unfortunately, when we went to split up the second clutches, that's where things went bad. First, when Joe finally gave me the tally of second clutch corns to split, he'd already marked some as sold and shipped to Europe. Now... I don't know about everybody else out there, but most people I know consider it a big no-no to sell snakes from a breeding loan before the clutches have even split. I called him on it in my responses, and suggested what I thought would be fair compensation -- splitting the monies from the sale of those corns and then splitting the remaining corns from the breeding loan evenly. The response I received from Joe Pierce was rather angry and accusatory, suggesting that I had no place in questioning his selling those snakes, given the "loss of production" he suffered from this breeding loan.
That response, on Sept. 27th of 2006, was the last I heard from Joe. I have sent him several private messages to try and resolve this deal, even to the point of agreeing with whatever split he liked, just to get it all over and done with. He has not read any of them, despite having been logged on and active in the forums since they were sent. I have attempted emailing him, and have received no response. I have attempted to call him with what I believe to be his phone number, and have left a message on his answering machine. No response. It has been a full 2 weeks since I last heard any communication from Joe.
Given the above, I'm left with the distinct impression that Joe no longer has any intention of sending me my share of the second clutches. Just to put a value to the snakes, based on some calculations using earlier numbers I'd been quoted by Joe, my remaining share of snakes from the breeding loan would total somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000.
I'd sure like somebody to prove me wrong on all this, because the whole situation sucks. But from what I can see on my side of the table, Joe Pierce is really looking like one of the Bad Guys.
-Kat Hall
