Pets At Home

[Assaye]

would love to hear the rest of the iceberg tbh

I can't talk about some of it unless I want to find myself in a court room.

 

[pjandnoo]

Hi,

I made the same post a few months ago, have a look My link and have a read. I think you will find that it really depends on the branch to be honest. I bought three panda corys last weds from my local LFS which I normally swear by but I had to take two back yesterday as one had died and the other was very weak indeed. They told me that I must have got some weak ones and that they have a lot of fish pass through their shop. Thats from a large fish supplier in Essex!!

 

[stubert]

would love to hear the rest of the iceberg tbh

I can't talk about some of it unless I want to find myself in a court room.

PM?

 

[zuulan]

Yes, I've only had bad experiences at my local one in Horwich, Bolton, UK.

The guy there netted 3 corys for me but then decided (for some unknown reason) to place the bag into the cold water where the plants where. I didn't realise this at first but when they promptly died I went back to check the water and indeed it was cold.

When I confronted the guy about it he simply said all fish can withstand cold water so he couldn't see the problem. Never shop there for any fish or fish related products now.

 

[zuulan]

I think what people should remember is that the staff at P@H are simply shop staff. They could just as easily have been selling clothes or whatever.

At your local independant your much more likely to deal with staff who are fish enthusiasts and hence much more knowledgable about all things fish & know how to look after them in their shop tanks.

Hence it's obvious to me whom fish lovers should shop at.

 

[Harlequins]

Yet another pets@home topic...

Good & bad in every store whether pets@home or lfs...

 

[ian]

did you work at several branch's of P@H, or just the one, assaye?

cos if you worked at more than one i could probably take you comments on board.

 

[KAISER]

People keep on blowing on about how P@H are a franchise and so some are amazing. I worked for them for several months and frankly, the whole thing is run from the top. Every store has the same policies, procedures, training, etc. Sure, some are run by particularly shoddy managers and some have poor staff but you get that with any shop or any service in the world. My bone with P@H is the awful training, the arrogance the area/district management exhibits, the lack of information on the various species that exist (most people I worked with thought that knowing that you shouldn't keep a red-tailed and rainbow shark together made them experts) . . . I have so many horror stories from working there and I had to compromise my morals so many times on instruction from the area managers and other higher authorities in the company that I had to leave.

And that's before I get annoyed at the number of dead fish in tanks and gobby sales staff.

Frankly, if a P@H store is truly amazing it will be breaking every rule in the P@H handbook. Most seem OK because people don't stick around long enough to find out the nasties.

I would "rise above them" and stop harping on about P@H but when animals are dying daily as a result of their profit-mongering, I find it hard to keep calm.

It's hard to be told that you need to sell goldfish into 10 litre tanks "or else" and that a totally un-cycled tank with a ton of new fish requires no additional water changes and that if you advise customers to do even tri-weekly water changes on a tank with ammonia problems you are stepping right out of line. I've had disciplinary proceedures brought against me for fabricated complaints that clearly never happened and yet they didn't mind that I had to essentially spell suffering and death for dozens of fish a week because store and company policy required me to sell fish into pretty dire situations. Sure, they tick all the right boxes and tell you to bring your water in for testing and don't let you make massive, obvious mistakes but I know what the supplier is like and the fact that if you refuse to sell fish out of a bay that had a sick or dead fish in (as the company says you should), you'd effectively have to close the entire aquatics section. Every shipment had dozens of sick and dying fish, every tank had sickly fish, every day dozens would die from the main bays or isolation tanks (which doubled as disease treatment and new-fish quarentine tanks). Only one treatment was permitted at my store and it seems this happens all over. A super-strength whitespot treatment was used as a cure all for everything. No fish recieved decent remedial care even when something as simple as some different food or a salt bath could cure them. Hell, I rescued some newts from there who were literally being abused. Not just "not treated very well". They were living in water that has at least 2ppm of ammonia and nitrites, they had missing limbs from being put into water that was 7-10 degrees C too warm and they had been bought into the store on a whim. This is NOT an insolated incident.

Yes, I know a lot of my bugs where with what happened at my store but from the reaction I got from upper management when I complained, this stuff happens up and down the country, even in the very best stores. I was literally told to shut up and stop moaning or leave and take my "new fangled" opinions elsewhere. I don't know how many times I heard "there are many different opinions in fishkeeping", even when I was providing scientific evidence for why I was right and all they could do was say "our experts have made our policies and they are correct". Even the training literature had a "learn this and forget everything else and please keep your opinions at home" clause.

Obviously some stores will be good, especially if the manager has the balls to ignore some of the training stuff and policies. Plus every so often you find a real fishkeeper working there who knows about all the fish (or will help you research if they don't know), who can talk to you about plants with competence, can help you set up a variety of different systems and take you step by step through any kind of cycle you want to try, who knows about the various temperature, pH and hardness needs of many species (beyond "soft water", "hard water", "tropical" and "coldwater") and generally knows their shizz. Didn't have one of those working at my store. I was the baby there and yet still knew more on fishkeeping than everyone else, possibly put together.

So, I hate P@H. I only shop there in an emergency. Pity, really, as I made some friends there and it's the closest pet shop to me.

Thank you for sharing that with us Assaye, that was very informative and exactly the kind of information Stubert, and others including myself, were looking for. Its such a shame businesses focus on their top line rather than quality.

I dont think people should get put off from buying from P@H by these type of threads, but its another aspect of the hobby that we should all be aware of. I would still shop there for hardware, just not livestock personally.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

Cool I have never seen a thread about Pets at Home on here before.

Pets at home rock.

I think what people should remember is that the staff at P@H are simply shop staff. They could just as easily have been selling clothes or whatever.

At your local independant your much more likely to deal with staff who are fish enthusiasts and hence much more knowledgable about all things fish & know how to look after them in their shop tanks.

Hence it's obvious to me whom fish lovers should shop at.

I've come across more bad LFS then I have Pet Chains, neither care, they're just there to make money.

 

[JoshuaA]

Assaye, I really considered applying for a job at P@H but Im glad to have read your experiences with working with them. Every time I go in to the ones in Chester all they seem to do is annoy me. And not just with the fish, the reptile knowledge is shocking too. Today, I went to one in Brombrough and one in Northwich and they were both as bad as each other. Severely overstocked, dead fish, the usual, but what really got me is the fact that we stumbled upon another fish place around the corner from the one in Northwich, which was amazing. From the outside it looked a bit suspect but when we went through to the tanks at the back I was pleasantly surprised. The water was the clearest I have ever seen and the selection was much better than the usual mollys, guppys etc. So for a little business, with no way near the money to spend on the welfare and sourcing of the fish that P@H do, to be better than a big business such as them, is a bit odd!!

Hey you must of driven some distance to get from chester to Bromborough, AFAIK the reptile section in Brom had only just came out in the last few months previously they just stacked some more tanks there. However yes the fish are usually suffering from white spot, of course I don't buy fish from them but I do buy food/equipment from them if I don't order it online in an emergency.

Assaye, I don't think you'll be in a court room unless you have given them a trace back to your real name/address on the forum if not there is no way and you may as well spill out .

The thing is P@H disregard for training goes further than the fish and it goes to animals. Animals are a little bit more covered when it comes to law but the law doesn't seem to help these little buggers who are underaged when on sale and malnourished.

Whether or not this is "Just another P@H topic" I quite enjoy reading it, I often see "My fish-less cycle" that is just "another fish-less cycle" thread but it is still happily read why not this sort of thread?

If you don't like the thread don't read it, the same instructions you say about not going to P@H if you don't like it. Though like nearly everyone who has said they don't like P@H they will purchase food/equipment if necessary.

 

[stubert]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

 

[Ace Of Spades]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

It's the fact that the same topic is posted almost every week and it always comes to the same conclusion. Pets At Home are getting a bad rep because they're a chain so they're easier to pin point and group against, when I know for fact that their are many many bad LFS's out there and they will not get bad reps as they are not all under the same name. So I see this topics as very unfair.

 

[Twinklecaz]

I haven't read all these posts and have always prided myself on the fact I don't form opinions on things I don't truly know about. But I will say this *in relation to something I read in this thread*..........the wages you are paid is 100% a complete irrelevance to how well you can/should take care of the fish in ANY pet store and it disgusts me that anyone would imply differently. That goes for all animals. If you are a true animal lover you can and will find a way to be kind, responsible and decent. Training, wages and the particular store has NOTHING to do with it!

 

[stubert]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

It's the fact that the same topic is posted almost every week and it always comes to the same conclusion. Pets At Home are getting a bad rep because they're a chain so they're easier to pin point and group against, when I know for fact that their are many many bad LFS's out there and they will not get bad reps as they are not all under the same name. So I see this topics as very unfair.

Well, not all of us have seen this conclusion, so, don't read the topic.

And hows it not fair? if Pets at home didn't want bad rep they wouldn't give people a reason to do so. Like saying its not fair to shun mcdonalds for selling bad food when kebab shops do the same. They want the name to be big, if they don't provide a good service then of course people will moan, and because theres so many of them collective people will moan resulting in this sort of topic.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

find it funny how the people with 1-2k posts are moaning about seeing this sort of topic before, well, go figure welcome to a forum

It's the fact that the same topic is posted almost every week and it always comes to the same conclusion. Pets At Home are getting a bad rep because they're a chain so they're easier to pin point and group against, when I know for fact that their are many many bad LFS's out there and they will not get bad reps as they are not all under the same name. So I see this topics as very unfair.

Well, not all of us have seen this conclusion, so, don't read the topic.

And hows it not fair? if Pets at home didn't want bad rep they wouldn't give people a reason to do so. Like saying its not fair to shun mcdonalds for selling bad food when kebab shops do the same. They want the name to be big, if they don't provide a good service then of course people will moan, and because theres so many of them collective people will moan resulting in this sort of topic.

My point wasn't that they didn't have bad stores, but because they're a collective store rather then independent, they are the only ones who ever get bad press. Where as there are countless LFS's that are a lot worse then P@H will ever be.

And the solution to your first comment, use the search feature it doesn't use that much initiative maybe something you are lacking.