Who's Fault Is It?

[oddball_lover]

I'm slightly puzzled as to why anyone that thick would want to spend £65 on a single fish...

More money than sense - look at Paris Hilton

It's just unfortunate that there are silly people who see fish as a room decoration, rather than a living animal with specific needs. Perhaps the £65 fish matched their living room decor...and was cheaper than the vase they saw Debenhams

 

[xingumike]

And I'm slightly puzzled as to why anyone that thick would want to spend £65 on a single fish...

plenty of idiots with lots of cash, could have been a footballer for example!

 

[MHunt]

While i voted that the customer was in the wrong here. I do believe that all pet shops in the UK, including our favourite LFS's have a duty of care to the livestock they are selling. They can and should refuse sale of fish if they believe they are going to be mistreated or not cared for properly. While coming out with "You do know this is a salt water fish don't you" is a bit patronising, they could have asked what the specific gravity of the customers water was. They would have been instantly confused, possibly giving an answer like 50 ppm, betraying the fact they only had a fresh water tank. That said, retail in general is a nightmare from the retailers point of view. Having worked in a Jewellers and seen some of the fast ones that customers try to catch you off guard with, I wouldn't be surprised at anything, including people buying the wrong fish for their tank. That said, how many LFS's blatently lie to get customers to buy their fish, like selling a small pleco to someone with a 20 gallon tank?!

I put off keeping tropicals for ages as i believed they were really hard to keep. Before i got my first fish, even the tank, i did loads of research! Books, talking to various LFS's, TFF, Pracktical Fishkeeping etc... I did consider keeping marines too but the cost of the initial setup put me off. It's not hard to find out about a fish before you buy it, just put regal tank (i think that's what the fish was) in Google and you've got more information than you need to let you know what water the fish prefers.

Ok, after a rambling post, I agree with the majority, the customer was to blame.

 

[cheesy feet]

I think that you two are discussing something that no body really knows what happend.The people buying the fish could be anyone.Not worth trying to blame them or defend them completely because as i said i don't think anyone knows what exactly happend.

At which point you have taken out this thread's entire raison d'etre... to discuss who has the responsibility in a situation such as this.

I am fairly confident I can speak for MW when I say that we are not so much discussing the indivdual case as the responsibilities of the lfs compared to the fishkeeper in general.

I wish i were as good as you at debating...

 

[mlawson]

Customers fault completely. I would never dream of buying a fish that I hadn't researched before and especially for £65, they must be some kind of idiots.

 

[K.J.]

It was the customers fault - can't see any else why, they should have looked it up and in normal pet shops, when getting a fish, I don't get asked, "you do know this is freshwater, right?" It's simply assuming they've done enough research to spend so much money on a fish, which is a right assumption.

 

[dwarfgourami]

At any other time, I would have divided the blame equally between the shop and the customer, but I did read the original PFK article, and it seemed clear that the customers had deliberately gone out of their way to present themselves as more experienced than they were and that the shop had been misled by this approach. So for this once I blame the customers.

If someone is a total novice, it is really their responsibility to let the shop know that. Instead, they tried to present themselves as experts- well obviously there are things you wouldn't feel you needed to tell an expert. If I had a shop and Neale Monks walked in, do you think I would have the nerve to ask him "do you realise you need to put salt in a brackish tank"?

Besides, there are some things that you would simply expect most people to know. If they wanted to buy a rabbit, would you have blamed the shop for not advising them that you can't feed rabbits meat? Or keep them in fish tanks? Or let them drink coffee instead of water?

My anger is reserved for shops that deliberately mislead people they know to be novices- and there is certainly enough of those. The shop who lost their regal tank have my sympathy.

 

[Nevergone815]

Very well said dwarfgourami ^^

 

[kewskills]

hearhear dwarfgourami.

 

[Teelie]

Sounds like the customers fault though the shop is partially at fault, I tend to blame people for not thinking and researching what they buy before they get it. Just like anything else, if you buy something that's not right for you, it's your fault unless the seller mislead or lied to you which I doubt the shop would do.

 

[poopsydrew]

Both of their faults, customers should have researched, lfs should have told them imo. (nulled vote)

 

[mcdanielnc89]

hmm. i put stored fault. I believe the store should have told them whether or not it was salt or freshwater. For one.. I brought home a brackish water fish and put it in a tank without knowing it needed some salt. (and i DID research..) and it said nothing about needing salt.. so nevertheless to say I put it in freshwater and it died. So, therefore the store should have told me that ti needed some salt added to it.

 

[andywg]

Are the posters above really indicating that the lfs should tell you whether every single fish is FW or SW?

"You do know that neons don't go in reef tanks, don't you?"

"This porcupinefish is a SW fish, did you know?"

I really hope we never end up in a society where we take so little responsibility for our own actions that the above takes place. What next?

"You know these pictus can't live in your deep fat fryer, yeah?"

For one.. I brought home a brackish water fish and put it in a tank without knowing it needed some salt.

Brackish fish are entirely different as they are a type of fish that many lfs simply do not understand, and as such cannot give accurate advice on. We are very fortunate to have the few experts on brackish fish we have on this forum. Were it not for those like nmonks and CFC then many of us would have a very poor understanding on the needs and requirements of BW fish indeed.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Customers fault certainly.

When I worked at a LFS I don't expect to check with every single customer that they have the right set up. Obviously I advice..."this fish gets big" or "this fish is agresive" If the customer sounds confident on what they want to buy I let them buy it. Dont ask dont get!

If I got questioned in every fish shop i went in before buying a fish I would end up not bothering. Half the time staff ask what I have they dont acutally know what fish I'm talking about!

 

[Nevergone815]

Half the time staff ask what I have they dont acutally know what fish I'm talking about!

I've come across this so manytimes. Another thing they say is a half ass "oh, that's nice", where you can clearly tell you were speaking a foreign language to them