Problems with the infamous $10 frags

[Mopar32985]

That is a funny one. At the start of this I was like this is not making sense. 1st how could someone lose that amount of corals when they come in the store and pick them out. Then how could someone lose that amount and not email me or call me. Why would this person not of take pics at least of all those DOA's just in case. It just did not make sense.

If your trying to call me a lier please like I said feel free to go to my YouTube page and watch my videos. You can get all the info there. You are a very childish person wow.

 

www.YouTube.com/mopar32985

[FearTheTerps]

There a few inconsistances here. First off, you stated not to want to start a flame war, but you put the title as problems with the infamous $10 frags? Thats pretty much calling him out, saying his business is bad, simply stating you had a problem would have made it come off a little better to me. I knew from the very start of this thread this was were it was going to end up. Yea Sonny takes it personal, and he should, this is his livelyhood not a hobby for him . It how he feeds his family.

 

Second, it seems you knew the reputation and the problems other people have had. That doesnt mean you dont have to shop there, I think its good that you decided to evalute them yourself, rather then just the words of others. But with that said, why didnt you do anything about the problems you had? Obviously if you knew about other peoples problems you should have had some clue on how to remedy the situation. Sonny has stated many times before he will try to make the situation right. So why not call him when you had the problems, thats part of what this community is all about, helping each other out. You stated you were in plumbing industry, if your customer had leaky pipes after you did a job wouldnt you expect them to call you back to fix whatever problems they had? or would you expect them to do nothing at all?

 

You never even gave the store the chance to make the situation better, as a consumer thats the very least you could have done. I hope that anyone else that has any problems would at least make a phone call and explain their problems before they start to point the blame.

 

 

Now, onto my thoughts of the store. I have bought some frags from Mr. Coral before, all have survived for a good period of time. I lost some before when I had my mini crash, but I still have some in my 55 today. I wish the store sold more colonies, it seems that the frags have taken over. But I understand that it can be much more profitable for them to sell numerous $10 frags then have a expensive colony sit and sit and sit until the right buyer comes along.

[Mopar32985]

There a few inconsistances here. First off, you stated not to want to start a flame war, but you put the title as problems with the infamous $10 frags? Thats pretty much calling him out, saying his business is bad, simply stating you had a problem would have made it come off a little better to me. I knew from the very start of this thread this was were it was going to end up. Yea Sonny takes it personal, and he should, this is his livelyhood not a hobby for him . It how he feeds his family.

 

Second, it seems you knew the reputation and the problems other people have had. That doesnt mean you dont have to shop there, I think its good that you decided to evalute them yourself, rather then just the words of others. But with that said, why didnt you do anything about the problems you had? Obviously if you knew about other peoples problems you should have had some clue on how to remedy the situation. Sonny has stated many times before he will try to make the situation right. So why not call him when you had the problems, thats part of what this community is all about, helping each other out. You stated you were in plumbing industry, if your customer had leaky pipes after you did a job wouldnt you expect them to call you back to fix whatever problems they had? or would you expect them to do nothing at all?

 

You never even gave the store the chance to make the situation better, as a consumer thats the very least you could have done. I hope that anyone else that has any problems would at least make a phone call and explain their problems before they start to point the blame.

 

 

Now, onto my thoughts of the store. I have bought some frags from Mr. Coral before, all have survived for a good period of time. I lost some before when I had my mini crash, but I still have some in my 55 today. I wish the store sold more colonies, it seems that the frags have taken over. But I understand that it can be much more profitable for them to sell numerous $10 frags then have a expensive colony sit and sit and sit until the right buyer comes along.

I will agree with you I should have used a different title. The thing that I don't feel ppl arnt getting is I never said that he doesn't have good customer service. This post was about I don't feel that the method of the way things are fragged is what I don't agree with. Also thank you for seeing that I don't listen to others and tried it out first hand. I'm glade that you and a few other had good experience. I would not say don't go there I would just say there Is alot higher risk of coral loss.

[mrcoral.com]

This is really getting funny. You agree on the title? Come on man. High Risk Corals? You don't like how we frag? You picked the corals out!!! It all make sense what this post was about. Bashing Mrcoral that is it. Then you say something about our customer service. You never tried to use it so how would you know. Now that I did a little research on what is really going on here you are trying to say you are not telling people to go there but you have to take your last jab saying a lot higher risk Coral and you are glad a FEW other had good Experience? FUNNY!!

 

 

Again, we ship 100 packages a week and have broke records for 3 straight months and most of my customers are repeat customer and many store you buy from order from me. If we were sending DOA"S in that amount this would not be the case.

 

On top of all that your items did not even go threw shipping which things can happen.

[gtipower]

Wow, I'm glad to see there are alot of smart people that can read between the lines. I always love it when I go to forums and people post "I'm not trying to start anything BUT...." Then why are you posting it??? The truth is, whenever someone posts a negative comment, it's because they are mad or upset about some bad experience and feels the need to encourage/entice others into either a)not going at all, thus hurting the business, or b)develop the same feelings as them so they feel vindicated when others chime in or PM's them to say yeh you're right.

 

Call it like it is because anyone with a brain can see through the words. If you weren't trying to start anything you would just tell your friends about it and that's it. I'm not saying people shouldn't post negative experiences, but they shouldn't try to hide/pretend that they are just doing other people favors and being altruistic. While these efforts may indirectly inform someone down the road, the direct reason is to damage the reputation of the business due to frustation from the experience. I have had bad experiences with various LFS in this region. However, I do not feel the need to post it because in the end, if my experiences were reoccurring, then the businesses will fail soon enough on their own without any interference from me, as we saw with some store closings in the last couple years.

 

Now that we established that, I don't even know how I can trust people's vendor experiences anymore. Without much proof (besides a picture of a favia), why should I even believe that so many corals died or that, heck, you even bought corals from them recently. But I'll play along and assume you're at least being honest about going to Mr.Coral and buying some frags. Then I repeat a question you didn't really answer from other posts on here...seems like you're a seasoned vet in this hobby...can you not tell the difference between a fresh cut frag and a healed one???? Why did you buy it?

People LOVE posting about how wrong it is to frag a coral and be a "chop shop", and how they got fooled by buying the frags when they are there physically LOOKING AT THE FRAG and assuming complete responsibility of it by buying it. I don't see how you can be fooled if the evidence is right there in front of you. You bought it and paid your hard earned money because it LOOKED GOOD IN THE STORE. You can see it was recently fragged. It's not like you pointed at something you liked, and they handed you a mystery box and you couldn't open it til you got home. That's like if you walked into a grocery store, bought some meat that looked bad to you, but you still did it anyways. Got sick, and say man that store tricked me. No one forced you to buy it. You went, you saw, and you chose what you wanted.

 

As Hypertech pointed out basically, would you (or anyone else that has complained in the past) have complained if all the frags survived?? I doubt it. And if you already knew their reputation and you are SOOOO against their policies, then why did you even go there to shop?? That's like if I go to a mechanic, KNOWING he's cheaper because he steals his parts, but then your car breaks down due to some unknown reason and you start saying how you think his methods are unethical, when you participated fully yourself. And all of a sudden you're trying to make a stand for morality. Right...

 

I think there's been enough discussion about Mr.Coral on this forum that everyone knows he frags corals and has ALOT of them. He has also single handedly brought the prices in this hobby down to something reasonable. I have seen wholesale invoices, and let me tell you, your local "trusted" fish store was sticking you...HARD. And maybe still is if you're still willing to pay ridiculous prices. It just seems like people like to rehash the SAME issues and threads even though we've gone through them.

 

But it's ok I say all this, because I'm not trying to start anything...BUT... LOL

Edited April 27, 2011 by Brian Ward
Removed personal attacks

[hypertech]

I will agree with you I should have used a different title. The thing that I don't feel ppl arnt getting is I never said that he doesn't have good customer service. This post was about I don't feel that the method of the way things are fragged is what I don't agree with. Also thank you for seeing that I don't listen to others and tried it out first hand. I'm glade that you and a few other had good experience. I would not say don't go there I would just say there Is alot higher risk of coral loss.

 

The thing I still don't get is why you bought them in the first place if you don't agree with his method.

 

Trying is fine, but that is not how you are presenting yourself. You did not start a thread to evaluate a product and offer a warning of higher risk with this type of method. This is a thread with no purpose but to bash a vendor and in this case it doesn't seem like it is deserved.

[Brian Ward]

This thread isn't going anywhere. Closing.