There is *absolutely* no reason why healthy animals should die during a 24 hour shipment. Just to make it clear...we're talking about NEXT DAY delivery here! I have shipped many thousands of shrimp and had ZERO deaths due to "unhealthy stock." The only deaths I have had were due to *one* ruptured bag and *one* malfunctioning heat pack. And let me stress that my shrimp were on the read on average 2-3 days! Once in a while the post office delayed and my shrimp were in transit for a week or so and they still made it! That should put the deaths that AAG is trying to write off as "normal" shipping casualties that should be "expected" into perspective. They are shipping NEXT day!!! There is absolutely nothing normal about dead shrimp, plants, fish arriving at your front door. You did not pay for dead animals or plants when you made your purchase. Nor did you pay for the hassle of trying to get a replacement (if you ever get one) or pay for any kind of "store credit." You also did not pay for unnecessary email or phone exchanges with the vendor. And lastly, you should NEVER have to pay for shipping if the vendor screws up and delivers dead livestock;
If a place like AAG cannot manage to ship healthy animals and offer a *real* live arrival guarantee (i.e. replace for free, inlcuding free shipping, UNTIL ALL ANIMALS YOU ORDERED ARRIVE ALIVE, or your money back), then they should have no business selling livestock. Of course if they DID offer a real live arrival guarantee, they would go out of business, as they can't possibly afford to replace all the dead arrivals for free, as they seem to occur quite frequently.
Now one word to people like miketoe and others who, after publicizing their complaint here and elsewhere, seem to be happy enough to praise AAG. Let me make one thing clear. If it takes public exposure for a company to do the "right" thing instead of doing it from the beginning, then there is something wrong with that company. Doing the right thing should never be exception, but the rule! Not everyone goes online and publicizes his/her experiences, so there is probably a huge dark number of very unsatisfied people out there, some of whome probably even think that it was their fault that the animals/plants died.
So, the moral of the story is: If you keep livestock under terrible conditions, sell imported livestock, that already arrives half-dead, as soon as possible before they die on you, and then claim that deaths during shipping are "normal", then this whole "tactic" will backfire when sites like mine DON'T delete the complaints as apparently some other forums do. With such public exposure companies like that will either have to adjust and clean up their act, which is unlikely, or get wiped out. The third option, of course, is that they still manage to do "business as usual" if people ignore the public warnings. After all, it's a free country and everyone is free to ignore all warnings...at their own risk. Finally, with 250+ million people in the US, it's not hard to find new customers who have no idea what they are getting into....that's the unfortunate truth. AAG is definitely *not* the only place that employs such business tactics...it actually seems to be more the rule than the exception in the livestock business...unfortunately.
