Good on you. I hate pushy sales people. I have had first hand experience of the **** that pet stores will spin to get you to buy a bird from them. I was told my first budgie was a baby of 5 weeks and able to look after himself and eat seed, etc. He was my sons christmas present after much consideration and he died after 10 days. I soon found out from the vet, after a $60 bill, that he was way too young to look after himself and he had starved to death. The food was going, but he was playing and had not been really eating it because he did not know how.

 

There should be strict rules to do with the sale of any animals in pet stores. They are mongrels most of the time and even buying fish I am more than dubious when not buying form a specialist store.

 

But a great end to a horrible situation. Good on you and thank god you were there. Fancy banning you! I would have told them good because now I have a deffinate reason for never coming into the **** shop again. That does not stop you from standing outside however!

 

You go matey.

 

Kathym1977

Good on ya! Try calling that manager again, what a rip off store :devil:

Edited May 13, 200817 yr by KAZ

Wonderful job there! Should put in a written complaint to the head office about the store.

At the same chain at **** I had a young lass tell me that budgies a 6 months old were still babies, I just laughed at her.

The new ****** in Ipswich I had to catch my own bird as the girl was afraid of birds!

 

lol, the store I am talking about WAS that ***** store.

 

...and I applied for the job at the Ipswich one before it opened, and was told I was over qualified (now working as a domestic cleaner ). I have a bachelor of animal science, have worked for WIRES for years, have been handraising baby parrots and am a licensed horse trainer... as well as owning dogs, cats, birds, turtles and peacocks. They obviously wanted someone who has no idea which end of an animal to feed.

Edited May 13, 200817 yr by KAZ

Yeah! I hate that over qualified excuse too!! I applied for night fill in our local supermarket (convenient hours for a Stay at home mum ) - because I have a Diploma in Software engineering I am "OVER QUALIFIED"

Next time I will apply as a high school drop out hahaha!

 

Pet shops REALLLLLLY NEEEEEED to employ people like you! I get so frustrated with the hopeless staff who pretend to know what they are talking about :glare:

Don't tell them your qualifications next time hehehe

over qualified????

thats so annoying to be labelled that, you would think that they would want people to have experience rather then none.

I've only just seen this thread for the first time since it has been bumped up. BB I like to walk into pet shops that sell cross breeds and 'pure breds'(no papers of course) for such exhorbitant amounts of money and 'mutter' rather loudly about the high prices and how I could buy a health tested animal from a breeder for that price The sales assistants often don't like it but I have seen more than one interested customer walk away to rethink their plans after that.....Thankfully I have never had the 'overqualified' one given to me but I have only ever applied to privately owned shops rather than the franchise ones.

I always comment if there is something amiss, once I even called the manager when there was no food or water, another time when finches were killing babies.

There has to be somewhere that should be handling horrible stores like this. They should not be allowed to do this to people. This makes me really sad.

Good on you.

Your an angel^________^

I must say good on you. I am happy to step in if I hear a salesperson giving anyone a full of bull story to make a sale, I dont care if its an electrical, sports or pet store. Having been a sales person I hate being sold to.

I managed a Pet store for 10yrs I also studied Vet Science @ Uni many years ago. I did this degree to help me give my clients appropriate service. I have also worked in many other areas and industries. I must say I would rather lose the initial sale through honesty and gain a valuable long term client for the same reason. Even if you are only selling them a $2 item each time they come in sometimes you are the only person they have in their life and they enjoy the company. Sometimes you sell them nothing but they enjoyed the chat and a good look around.

Over the many many years I have worked as a manager in sales I have fired many staff for giving false information, it is NOT okay to LIE to make a sale. Not even a little white one.

We recently moved to Toowoomba and have found a couple of great stores here that really look after us. But there are a couple here that arent so great.

 

A note to you, not only should you keep calling the manager of that store, you should keep going there doing the same thing, and you should tell everyone you know about this situation. On top of this you should report them for what they did to the lady and to yourself, to the Dept of consumer affairs or fair trading whatever they are called now. But dont stop until you have got some justice for every unsuspecting person out there who they have probably ripped off in the past.

You may not be able to mention their name on here but there is nothing stopping you from telling the world verbally.

 

A quick note to the person who made the comment about the Beta Splendins. (Siamese Fighters) They are actually meant to live in small bowls without anything in them, the plant shreds their fins and they can actually drown if they cant get to the surface. In the wild they live in Bullock footprints in the mud, thats what makes them so territorial, they only see others of the species in the wet season when the fields flood and they fill with water. When the water subsides if 2 males are in the same print they fight to the death, if its a male and female, they breed, often he does the deed to her til she is nearly dead and often will kill her defending the nest as he is the one who takes care of the babies until they are big enough to free swim.

 

Well I hope everyone enjoyed my little bit of useless info there....

:nest:

It was a valiant effort to step in and prevent the elderly lady from being bullied into making a purchase that was not in her best interests and not what she really wanted. Congratulations.

 

Regardless of the age of the budgie, better the lady has food for herself, than a starving elderly lady and a starving budgie.

 

It is not legal to sell a bird until it is fully fledged and weaned - because it will likely not be able to feed and water itself and will die.

 

For budgies the minimum age is generally six weeks from the date of hatching, though some can take a bit longer to develop, especially the larger exhibition budgerigars.

 

A budgie is still considered a baby or nest feather until it has broken out of nest feather condition:

- cere is turning brown or blue,

- pin feathers on it's cap,

- iris ring is visible (in varieties that get iris rings).

 

Budgies usually start "breaking" out of nestfeather condition when they are about 12 weeks (3 months) old, but they can break earlier, however, mine usually take much longer (most of my budgies start breaking about 4 - 5 months old especially if they hatch in april/may (the ones hatching now), they won't moult until september/october. (Must like having their baby down through winter I suppose.) The ones that hatch in november/december usually moult earlier (at the same time as the mature birds have their summer moult) and appear as young birds by march/april the following year - although this year, everyone moulted very late and some are still moulting - must be the erratic climate.

 

While it is breaking it is, if you like, an adolescent bird. 3 - 6 months.

 

When it has gone completely through it's first moult it is a young bird. 6 - 18 months. (Can be earlier).

 

Mature budgies are birds over 18 months of age.

 

So a budgie that is under 6 months of age is plausible for someone wanting a baby or adolescent budgie, but more often between 6 - 12 weeks is best for training them.

Young and mature budgies can also be wonderful pets if they have been handled as babies, and some budgies have better temperaments than others. It depends on case selection. A mature budgie with good temperament and previous training is a better pet than a baby budgie with a nasty temper and no training.

 

Remember elderly budgies have value and they need care and attention too.

 

But pet shops should make the distinction and sell them as such, not claiming them to be something they are not, as this is unlawful also.

I have re read this post and I thought I would let you know something.

 

I was in my local pet store today talking to the guys that know me cause I had to buy a new net. This little girl about 5 or 6 comes in with a LARGE show type green (sorry mutations are not my strong point) male budgie. She got it from another pet store and was told that it was a baby

 

Her parents said she had to get rid of it cause it bites her (and she had the bandaids to prove it) and gets out of its cage and flies around the house and she can't catch it. She took it back to the original pet store and they would not take it back and said if it was biting then she must have scared it or something. He was a really nice Bird think MB's Ozzie without the yellow and more markings on the wing and no hat of hair.

 

Anyway Ivan who is my local breeder and runs the pet store started talking to her, she has had the bird 3 weeks but it has a ring on it that says he is nearer 3 years of age. the poor kid had so been taken for a ride and she had spent 6 months saving for this bird. She was in tears.

 

Anyway Ivan then took her out the back (the back back not the front back, the back back has the better birds hidden away and you have to know Ivan to know about these ones!) and said that he would swap over the Cock for another bird. She ended up getting an hand tamed pied one that looks like my Blue (white all over with wing marking and a Cobolt blue back) He is a young one and Ivan says that she has to come back with her parents and pick him up in a weeks time as Ivan says he is to young to go yet.

 

Sometimes pet shopes get it so wrong and sometimes they get it so right!

awww...poor girl.

that was very nice for the owner to do that.

Wow, Ian sound like a honest bloke ....

 

I am tired of seeing birds either at he markets, breeders or pet stores that have scaley face that bad that it is covered in in 1 look and youcan tell the worst is that they are in with Healtheir ( looking) birds GRRRR

*makes me wanna grab them by their ears drag them to the cage and say " LOOK it's not hard to treat, you lazy such and such" ...... Yes i can be rather fiesty heheheh

Great story ! great behaviour !!!! I was getting very excited when i was getting close to the end. But finished just as what i was expecting .