Chain Store Letters

As mentioned, I think this is a great idea! I am going to google the corporate addresses for pet stores in Canada. I think this needs to be 'North America' wide, not just in the US. Really, it's a global problem and really does need some legislation or law behind it. Thanks for initiating this Deca!

About half way through with the letter! I didn't think this would take so long, but I want this to have some impact! Sorry its taking longer than expected!

Supported!

Let me know if you have any suggestions .

To whom it may concern,
I am compelled to write this letter hoping to inspire the eventual change in presentation of chameleons in your pet stores. I do understand the constraints that are present in showing and selling these and other animals, and I am not unrealistic, but I do believe that certain, if not most animals need to be sold only with proper education and husbandry techniques so there is a greater chance for success. I also believe that these conditions would be easy to show, and could even drive sales for your stores if the enclosures showed some of the possible products to use. It would be like showing a big TV with a surround sound system that customers could experience prior to purchase. Chameleons have very specific requirements that make them much more difficult to care for and will lead to their unfortunate demise in most instances without good information about their care.
Far too often I have seen these animals housed in a small glass box, with a water dish for drinking, and no room for them to roam and feel secure. This causes undue stress on the animal. Most, if not all chameleons will not drink from water bowls, and too often they will get sick from contaminated water in their enclosures from feeders containing bacteria. Many of the products sold in your stores are not sufficient for the proper keeping of chameleons, and the ones that are correct are not usually suggested at the time of purchase. Most of the keepers that I know house their animals in screen enclosures with UVB lighting and a basking spot. Too often I hear of people using the red heat lamps at night with their chameleons because of the advice of the pet store employees. These animals need to be in darkness at night, and most will not need a heat source at night. If one is needed, a ceramic heat emitter should be used. Some chameleons will become impacted due to eating substrate in their enclosures such as sphagnum moss or eco-earth. Also, the humidity levels that are required to maintain healthy conditions for the animal are conducive to mold and mildew which can cause respiratory conditions. The substrate can make it more difficult to control these issues. For those new to keeping chameleons the use of substrate should not be suggested.
I have seen too many new chameleon owners ask the same health related questions, and many do not have happy endings. The major cause of these health issues is bad advice from pet store employees and wrong information given at the time of purchasing. I would suggest a training manual for chameleons (both for your employees and customers) with the basic needs and husbandry techniques as well as a proper display to showcase the care and difficulty that ownership can involve. This would undoubtedly lead to better results for the owners as well as added long term sales for your business!

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Great idea, maybe you could attach care sheets?

Good idea Deca!
I have a couple of thought.
I think you need to stress even more that displaying animals correctly and giving good advice would make customers come back, thus improving their sales. They are not interested in keeping animal properly, their goal is sales.. so make it sound like it's in their best interest.
You may also add that any person who knows anything about reptiles would never buy from a chain store, and its a lot of people they could be selling to. I personally won't even buy a bulb from a store which sold me an animal with coccidia and pinworms. Devoted reptile keepers are usually prepared to spend quite a lot of money on their pets.. and all those dollars are flowing away from the chain stores due to their reputation.

I totally agree with "Stalincat" , I personally work for Petco as a sales associate. (I know terrible its a temporary job and I thought I would help with giving people good info instead of bad about reptiles). Anyways I have been personally trying to help this problem but one of the things is that all of the training is online and through tests, and after that its up to the managers in he store to stress the after training which in my case didnt happen so I learned it on my own and through reading books, and luckily I know a fair good amount about herps. All my managers talk about is how bad of a corporation Petco is because they dont listen to the in store employees and only care about numbers. If you can stress enough about how it would increase sales and get people to go to their store because of the specific pet products they carry for chameleons that may get their interest. I put out a personal note to the corporate office using a tool for employees to share their ideas about how to improve the store and it is in 4 categories, profits, going green, employee understanding I think and consumer , basically all sales though, and my suggestion was to make an entire display case for each type of animal enclosure, chameleon, tropical, desert, etc...so people know what to get and employees can use it as a physical guide. not sure if petco corporate will actually look at it but I thought it was a good shot. This idea is great hopefully they all catch on because I almost bought my chameleon at petsmart because I felt bad they weren't taking care of him properly and their manager suggested to get a glass cage because its hard to keep humidity up and I promptly told him he was wrong. What was funny was he actually said "well im sure you know more about them than I do" which was a scary thought because he was the HEAD MANAGER and was really disappointed that if I had no idea what I was doing I might have listened to him, just like his employees would have. Educating people on chameleons is a hard thing to do , but like all animals takes training and experience so its hard to expect sales associates to know everything about everything but at the same time its not fair to the animals so the more people can catch on to your idea and tell the corp. what they are doing wrong I'm sure it will eventually trickle down , not to mention once they notice their returns on dead chameleons and unhappy customers skyrocket because of the few that pass on good information .

I think the letter and your principles are very good...I would like to offer suggestion for improvements.....but, seriously.....If I lived in America and I saw in real life the things I read about on this forum........
Well...... Long story short....I am not allowed to tell you what I would be saying and doing
Good luck with that.....

OK--forewarning: I am a certified "English as a Second Language" grammar instructor, so I sometimes considered a little (tongue-in-cheek) nuts about grammar. On the other hand, I do not yet own a chameleon, so I am a complete novice in that regard. That being said, I have some suggestions.

First, keep in mind that you want the higher-ups to read the letter, so short is always better--use the KISS principle.

Second, you've done two things really well:

1) You've made a great effort not to come across as "blaming and accusing," which is really important in helping your letter get read
2) You've offered a well-reasoned and informative argument not only based on the health of the chams but also referring to their profit-based motives. You might strengthen the latter even more--you want to convey to them strongly that spending $$ on better training and better cham habitats in-store will result in them making $$$$. In short, the bottom line for the pet store owner is to make a profit. So you engage them the best by appealing to that bottom line.

As for grammar and structure issues:

Here: "surround sound system"
--hyphenate "surround-sound" in front of system

Here: "Most, if not all chameleons will not drink"
--the two uses of the word "not" can be confusing to a reader. Suggest saying "Few chameleons will drink" or simply "Most chameleons will not drink" (the latter might reinforce the fact that they are unlikely to use water bowls better than the first suggestion)

Here: "contaminated water in their enclosures from feeders containing bacteria" just say "contaminated water containing bacteria" or "water in their enclosures that becomes contaminated with bacteria." (KISS)

Here: "Some chameleons will become impacted due to eating substrate in their enclosures such as sphagnum moss or eco-earth. Also, the humidity levels that are required to maintain healthy conditions for the animal are conducive to mold and mildew which can cause respiratory conditions. The substrate can make it more difficult to control these issues. For those new to keeping chameleons the use of substrate should not be suggested."
--Is the mold issue related to the substrate? or simply to the humidity and inadequate ventilation in a glass enclosure? If mold is related to the substrate, you might want to clarify by saying mold and mildew can develop in the substrate; if the mold issue is related to glass enclosures, move that sentence up to follow the statement about keeping them in glass. If both are true, you may want to put the info about glass and substrate together and explicitly say that both can contribute to the development of mold and mildew.

Here: "I have seen too many new chameleon owners ask the same health related questions, and many do not have happy endings. The major cause of these health issues is bad advice from pet store employees and wrong information given at the time of purchasing."
--hyphenate "health-related" in front of questions
--delete "ing" from purchasing and just use the form "purchase"

Here: "bad advice from pet store employees and wrong information given at the time of purchasing"
--Again, KISS--just "incorrect information given at the time of purchase" will cover the whole thing without directly blaming inadequately trained pet store employee. However, you may want to point out that the pet store employees lack adequate training. Perhaps: "incorrect information given at the time of purchase due to inadequately (or poorly) trained pet store employees" ??? However, that's getting long again . . .

Good luck with this--I really, really hope it is successful!

I wonder if it would help to get lots of signatures on the finished letter, including veterinarians and breeders? Just a thought, maybe not workable . . .

Sandy

Nice work, Sandy! (Oh, should I have used a comma after work? He He) Now I will be proof-reading all my posts before submitting! (Wait, should that be proofreading or proof reading, or proof-reading?) Anyway, great advice! I was definitely going for the angle that I wanted them to keep reading and not just throw the letter away.

Thanks for the info... Here is their corporate info.

[email protected]

1-866-477-7748

Pet Supplies Plus® Corporate
17197 N. Laurel Park Drive,
Suite 402
Livonia, MI 48152

Decadancin;bt1788 said:

Nice work, Sandy! (Oh, should I have used a comma after work? He He) Now I will be proof-reading all my posts before submitting! (Wait, should that be proofreading or proof reading, or proof-reading?) Anyway, great advice! I was definitely going for the angle that I wanted them to keep reading and not just throw the letter away.

Click to expand...

ROFLMAO!!! Nah, don't worry so much; posting is like casual conversation! Your letter is much more a formal kind of thing, so being formal is good there, but not on the forum posts--we'd all get intimidated!

A lot of big chain stores use water bowls with chameleons solely for show even though it's not needed. Uninformed customers see a cage without a water bowl and they complain that the animal is suffering and animal control is brought in. Sure, water bowls are not proper but I doubt you will get rid of them in a retail setting.

This is true, but if a proper misting system was installed in a chameleon enclosure showing the way it works and how chameleons actually live, those people who get upset could actually learn that not all animals require a bowl. I actually had the guy who sold Zaphod to me tell me that's exactly why the bowl was there. He stated that it was actually just collecting water from the dripper that was hitting the leaf above it and without it people complained. One can dream, right?