...realistically, nothing much happened to the chin business, we just switched gears a bit.
Rather than setting out orders for pickup, we started hoofing them to the post office. No one can see boxes set out for pickup if they're not set out for pickup!
Rather than having people come to the house for chinchillas, we started meeting people at the local grocery store. It was about 5-10 mins away depending on traffic, so I started giving customers that address, and asking customers to text me when they were about 5-10 minutes away, so I knew when to leave. While of course this was more effort than meeting people at the house, this worked well enough.
We had one major learning curve, right at the beginning of doing all of this. At the very beginning, I was packing the chinchilla up in the carrier at my house, then simply handing the adopter the chinchilla (in carrier) and their take home bag at the pickup spot. In case you haven't seen our carriers, they are cardboard pet carriers with round pre-punched dime-sized airholes, similar to what you might get when buying a small animal from a pet store. You cannot see the chinchilla through the carrier,.
So for the one appointment, the appointment was set at 3 pm. At 2:15, I get a text that says "I'm here!" I wasn't even *home* as I expected to have still quite a bit of time before that appointment, so I rush home, put the chin in a carrier, rush back. Now I normally would give the chinchilla a quick once-over before putting it in the box, but I didn't want to make her wait any longer than she already was going to, so I hurried and grabbed him out of his cage and put him in the carrier. Later, I would learn what a mistake this was going to be.
So I get to the meeting place and hand off the carrier and take home bag. Immediately the new owner says she's going to open the box. Knowing this chin tends to be one of the bouncier ones, and not wanting the chin to get away from the new owner, I tell the owner that she should get in the car, close the doors, and then open the box. So she does. I sit there for a minute or two and I see them peering in the box and then I drive away.
Maybe 20 minutes later I get a text asking about some fur loss on the chinchilla's nose. From the picture, one of two things are possible. Either (1) the chinchilla repeatedly stuck its nose in and out one of the circular "air holes" in the box, irritating / rubbing the fur or (2) the chinchilla developed fungus on the nose. I told her these were the possibilities, and hold her that I would suggest she treat for fungus, because even if it wasn't fungus, it wouldn't hurt anything. Tell her how to do so, she seems fine with it, and I thought that was the end of it,
Stupid me.
Couple days later, I get a phone call. Owner of the fungus chin -- she is absolutely bawling, thinks the chin is going to die, and tells me she is rushing him to the vet. For what? Oh, well, some breeder-hating-chin-group on facebook (that already told them they hate me, by the way), told her that fungus KILLS (ah-hahahahahahaahhaha no) and they can't believe how I made no big deal out of it and yadda yadda yadda. She goes to the vet, calls me up.... Then tells me, that I need to (1) refund her for the chin, (2) let her keep the chin, and (3) pay her vet bills, or she's going to sue me. I told her, I am happy to refund her for the chin if she returns it, and she's like, "oh, well, yeah, AFTER I paid to treat it." No, honey, I could have treated it myself at home, but by all means, pat yourself on the back for spending $$$ to treat it at the vet.
I told her, it's in the health guarantee that if she thought the chin was sick she could return. She claims I didn't tell her about that. My health guarantee and sales policy are on my website -- unfortunately, I cannot make people read them, but they are there for those that want to.
So she goes and posts on this chin group about how horrible I am. She writes a negative review on my facebook page. She mentions that I tried to hide that the chin was sick by telling her to not open the carrier until she was in her car, and then I immediately sped away. Not what happened, but ok.
Let's fast forward a week... she's now posting that she, her cat, and her dog all have fungus. Hold on...let's back up for a second. I've had times where there's a major fungal outbreak and I've had 20 chins that have had fungus... and I have NOT, and neither have any other animals in my care. How does one chin with fungus infect every human and every animal in the house? Oh yeah, due to poor hygiene. But yes, by all means, blame me.
Oh, let's not forget, she called code enforcement and she called animal control. So I got a nice visit from animal control, who found nothing wrong with ANY of the animals in my care (not even another one with fungus!). They told me that she informed them that I was selling "decaying" animals (in their own words, "it's ringworm, so what? super common") and they said my animals looked so clean! Not even the cages, the animals themselves. I ended up writing a Freedom of Information Act letter to get their report, so if she ever did decide to sue me, I would have that to back up that I am not breeding animals in bad conditions and whatever else she was accusing me of. She basically was saying that that animal I sold her was one of *many* sick ones and I was scamming everyone with pics of healthy ones and then actually doling out sick animals...not quite.
This all ended well enough... (1) animal control found no issue with my animals, simply said "you know this is a zoning issue? (yes) ok, well, we have no problem with you, the animals are cared for well", (2) zoning honestly wasn't sure what to do with the whole thing because chinchillas aren't mentioned in the county ordinances so they weren't messing further with it, and (3) the girl never did sue me.
So here's what we learned ---> all future chinchillas / animals that we brought to that grocery store parking lot were brought in an all-wire carrier, so the new owner could physically see them prior to them going into their take-home carrier. Also, all future animals were eyeballed to death to be sure they didn't have so much as one hair out of place that someone could later complain about.
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