Saturday 7th June 2003
It never ends. Ever. At all.
UPDATE 9th June 2003: UPDATE 10th June 2003 UPDATE 10th June 2003 2.30PM
This time, it involves a rat.
Last night, Hunter wandered into Petco to 'look at the animals'. Which is usually a lie, of course; she never just looks; she always buys something. And, this time, it was a rat.
Interestingly, the rat actually came with adoption papers, along with the fine print of this contract on the back:
So that's good news. In the event that a Rattus norvegicus should need vetrinary treatment in the first fifteen days after buying it, treatment will be provided through a PETCO contracted vet.
I was supposed to call in at 13:30 Mountain time [or anytime thereafter, but earlier is better, because that's when the small-animals guy would be in, and the rat would be back on display, according to him]. So I called. And I ended up talking to some guy whose name I couldn't understand. Because, like most people working in the service industry, they've got a permanent mumbling problem when pronouncing their own names. Apparently, "The rat was just taken into the vet this morning, and will be staying overnight, so we won't know anything until tomorrow. So you should call back then." So: tomorrow it is, then....
~Hunter
So it turns out the rat is on medication. Wow; what a shock. Looks like I WAS RIGHT. But: "I don't know if it's safe for release yet; you'll have to wait...." So: More waiting.
~Hunter
"Well, it had worms, so it's going to be on medication for 21 days, seven days on, seven days off, seven days on, so in 21 days he'll be back on the floor...." 21 days, and I *might* be permitted to purchase my rat back. PetCo Sucks.
~Hunter I suppose this begs the question: why would you attempt to fix a nine-dollar rat instead of just buying a new one. I don't personally know. But then, I'm not emotional. So my largest concern when we discovered that the R.norvegicus Hunter had bought had intestinal parasites was that it could have been fed to a lizard and transferred the damned things. Fortunately, this wasn't the case--this time--because Hunter had bought the thing as a pet and instantly become emotionally attached to it.
Hence the need, now, to fix a nine-dollar rat.
Now...looking at the contract, above, getting the rat repaired is reasonably simple. And we made it even simpler. Hunter called Petco to determine that a rat purchased last night was covered in the event that it had intestinal parasites. The best thing to do would be to bring it in so they could have it repaired.
Fine. Just realise that, now, in addition to Hunter's emotional attachment to the rodent, you've got my attention as the guy who has to drive back to Petco to repair a nine-dollar rat. After I'd already noted that Petco rats are not something you'd want to feed to lizards.
So here's the pitch.
We have a rat in disrepair. We can, A) take it to a vet, pay the vet to repair the rat, and, as per the contract, above, be out whatever the cost of repairing a nine-dollar rodent might be, or B) we can sell the rat back to Petco, so they can take the rat in to be tested, so they can have the rat repaired, so they can put it out on display for the next customer to buy it either as a diseased pet or as a trojan for whatever eats it.
There's no Option C. As much as Option C should be something like C) give the rat back, have the rat repaired, get the repaired rat back, as per the fucking contract, above. This wasn't an option.
The best option was B. Sell the rat back, hope they take the thing to a vet instead of just writing it off as fucked and drowning it for far less money, hope the rat gets repaired, and hope we somehow show up at the right time to buy the rat again, once it returns to the inventory.
This, lemmings and germs, is called CONTRACTURAL FRAUD. Because the contract, above, severely implies that, while Petco will have an animal repaired, at no cost to the customer, the animal will remain the property of the customer. Instead, Petco are viewing the contract, above, in such a way as to infer that they can sell the customer a defective animal, wait for the customer to develop an emotional attachment, offer to purchase the defective animal back, and give us nothing more than their word [which has been so fucking useful to date, as you can see] that the defective animal will, indeed, be taken off to a vet, cured, and resold to the next customer to develop an emotional attachment. It doesn't take a genius to assume that they could simply sell the same diseased animal over and over until someone's emotional attachment is too great to allow them to buy the thing back again.
So. There it is. Petco appear very much to be guilty of contractural fraud. In the unlikely event that they could beat the potential charge, they'd at least be wilfilly causing mental anguish and emotional distress.
Legally, I'm not yet sure whether they could be charged over this. I'm waiting for a reply from the CEO of Petco before deciding that either way.
Ethically...I guess you have the necessary information. Don't buy anything from Petco. They're known to sell food containing trojans; they're known to sell diseased pets; they're known to back out of the contract by offering a solution which causes emotional distress.
More later....
--Gremlin