Options for shipment timing resolution

Unfortunately, shipping live animals isnt like shipping with amazon where everything can be delivered in two days or less. Wish it was! But its not. Sometimes circumstances out of our control pose a risk to our shared goal of you receiving your snake healthy and safe. If we encounter them, we will ask you to postpone delivery until those circumstances pass. 

I assure you a seller gains absolutely nothing from postponing delivery of a sold animal. The opposite in fact, a seller that postpones shipment is incurring additional costs to do so. they are still providing food and labor to the animal with no additional pay from the buyer. So the only logical reason a seller is going to postpone is because they deem it is not safe to do so. 

We do recognize reading the fine print is often overlooked in the excitement of purchasing a new snake, but we feel we do what we can to stress its importance. As part of the terms of sale, we do our best to ensure that customers have every opportunity to read and understand the shipping policies prior to purchase. Links to the shipping page are provided at the bottom of every page on the website, on the home page, explicitly highlighted at the top and bottom of the availability page, and there is a checkbox requiring folks to check to confirm that they have read the policies during checkout. Links to the shipping page are provided on the store front on morphmarket, and are included inside the ads listed for other ad sources. So if you feel you were not adequately informed of this aspect of the live animal purchasing process, please feel free to let us know how we can better inform our patrons in the future.

We welcome any feedback on how to more effectively increase access to, or stress the importance of reading, the shipping policies prior to purchase.

Truth is live animal shipping does pose some risk to the animal, there is no special live animal carrier that will deliver your animal directly from me to you. The boxes they arrive in will travel the same routes as non perishable goods and carriers do not hold themselves liable for loss of life should the worst occur. So sellers have to assess the risk and be selective about when it is and is not safe to do.

Other sellers may make risk assessments that are different than ours. They may not have the same standards, experience, or circumstances, as we do. So we don't base our risk assessments on what others are doing. 

At the time of writing, we have been in the industry 30 years. We have successfully shipped hundreds of animals across the country and abroad including places many other breeders are not as comfortable shipping to such as Alaska during winter. 

Customer feedback available via reviews on morphmarket and social media confirm our success rate which speaks to our ability to properly assess when it is, and is not, safe to ship. 

So what do we do if we disagree that its safe, or you simply can not wait?

There's two options:

1) You can cancel the order, and you will be refunded minus the applicable restocking fee.

Or

2) You waive all guarantees, and we deliver to you on your requested date, entirely at your risk. 

Once an animal is purchased it is the property of the buyer.  We can not withhold your "property" from you should you insist upon us sending them to you despite our, and/or our shipping company's, assessment that it would be safer to postpone. 

Having that said, our terms of sale include that we reserve the right to not send the animal until we deem it is safe to do so, Should you chose to break the terms, you wont be held to them- but neither will we. As such we will be under no obligation to honor any guarantees of any kind to you. 

To put it bluntly, if you insist upon taking the risk, you also take responsibility for your decision to do so. 

This means: 
No live arrival guarantee- If the animal arrives dead- no refunds will be given
No health guarantee- if the animal has upon arrival, or develops after, any sort of ailment, illness, etc, to include passing away some period of time later etc, - no refunds will be given. 

We are a seller that has earned morphmarket buyer protection, but you should know that our shipping policies are based upon, and not necessarily any more stringent than theirs, so if we do not guarantee the order over shipment safety concerns, they aren't going to reimburse you for it either.  You can read about this directly off their website by *clicking here*.

Given the consequences of the decision, we want you to have every tool available to make your own personal risk assessment. We will: 

1) Provide you with an explanation for why we do not feel it is safe to ship your order 

• You will be asked if you understand these risks and the consequences, before the animal is shipped.
• We are happy to provide clarification and should you have questions, feel free to ask.

2) Pack the animal in accordance with our usual shipping procedures, to ensure they have the best chance of a successful delivery under the circumstances. 

• Our standard packing procedures can be viewed on the shipping page. 

3) Record a packing video which demonstrates the condition the animal was in at the time it entered the box. 

• This is done to provide evidence to you, and any other interested party, that we made every attempt to provide you with the animal you ordered in good faith.

4) Still answer your care questions post delivery. Just because we cant guarantee an order doesn't mean we stop caring about the snake. We wouldn't fuss if we didn't care. 

Ultimately it is your snake and we will respect your decision should you decide to take the risk and request us to ship outside of the original terms. We just want to make sure you have everything you need to make the decision and are clear on the potential consequences before we proceed. 

If there are any questions, do feel free to ask.