This was in one of my other rooms and I thought I'd post it here.
Ok soo in my looking for a suitable home for Irony I had also listed her on Petfinder.org in the classifieds that she needed a good home, etc., and definetley got an overwhelming response...I mean I had people offering to fly her to calfornia, florida, everywhere...b
ut I also got a really presistent letter that gave me a bad vibe so I googled the people in it (with the help of my ever charming and suspicious man), and we found out this is a giant scam directed towards pet owners. These people change their names in their letters...in our it was the Monsaw and dammy family and they talked about their house and sent a pretty poem and how sad they were their pet died recently. One thing that gave me the creeps is they never say "dog" "cat", nothing...alwa
ys pet...and not even A pet, THE pet, OUR pet, YOUR pet...its really creepy. The only time they referred to it as "our" pet was when they (without asking or trying to have a phone conference) had thei shipping company contact me. And juding from what the other people say it could have been alot worse if I got suckered in....just thought y'all should know...
http://www.terrificpets.com/forum/23812.asp Go here if you want more into and read all the posts...one girl wound up owing $2000 to her local grocery store bc of their acitivites and all she was trying to do was find a dog a home....
Kelso
Mom of Heidi and Wyatt
--------------
Reply
Recommend
From: DozeRs_mom Sent: 1/2/2006 9:56 AM
Kelso,
I know exactly what you are refering to! A woman I know in town here asked for my help when she was looking to re-home one of her dogs. She had posted him on petfinder and didn't know WHAT to do with all the responces she got... just like you describe! She forwarded them to me so I got to read them too.
She got SO many from "people" in far away states (and the ad said specifically that he would not be shipped and would only go to a home where she could meet the new owners). The bad grammar and spelling in some of these ads was horrible. There were SO many who had "just lost their dear dog on the way to the vet/store/park/etc". There was the "how much is her (it's a him) fee and what's your banking information and I'll wire the money right away" (yeah right... do people these days actually fall for that?!) And the "consider him to have found his new home". And "know that he will have the very best home. My 18yr old daughter will pick him up at the airport". And lots of them had website links to the shipping company they either "owned" or contacted and arranged it all. Most of them were so unbelievably stupid (no information just i want your dog... send it here) that I couldn't imagine ever responding though it's scary to think that people very likely would if they were desperate or didn't really care about the dog. It was really ridiculous.
Luckily, there were TWO responces out of the hundred or so she got that were from real people who told her about themselves and asked questions about the dog. To one of those homes he went and is doing GREAT according to the updates and pictures she's gotten of him.
The scariest part is that though it was painfully obvious to ME that these were at worst, total scams, and at best (the few that may have been genuine) that they would NOT be getting the dog with an ad responce so dumb... it was not so obvious to her with her limited internet-smarts and with the overwhelming number of these she got before ANY real people emailed her. She didn't even send me all of them... only the ones she thought COULD be real. People DO need to be aware of this if they are looking to rehome a pet on petfinder.
