Shipping Livestock Via Air Canada
 

Well, Thursday I placed my first order for a pair of clowns, a Cleaner shrimp and some hermits. I was supposed to receive my order Saturday at 5:30. Well it was bumped up to midnight, then at midnight it was bumped until later Sunday. I spoke with numerous AC employees, but no one seemed to give a S*** , and basically told me that even though they were live animals, luggage room was more important.
Then I recieve a call from the Airport Cargo guy Sunday that said my fish had finally arrived but they were all dead. He told me to take my time and come get them later that day. Well I got up and went there anyways right away. I had to wait about 45 minutes for the only Cargo guy to finish passing out luggage and come to the Cargo bldg and give me my fish. So I took the dead animals home and flushed them...
HOW HORRIBLE..! The little clowns were on thier sides and so was everything else!
Does this normally happen?

It does happen from time to time. It is always horrid when it does. I ship reptiles with air canada cargo from time to time. You never know when they will make it on the plane or if they will make it. Even when it does it can be hours before it makes it to the pick up place. Its the safest crap shoot in canada tho.

Sorry your little buddies passed away :(

:cry:

We're really luck on this coast to have so many LFS to pick up our stuff locally instead of having to ship in stuff.

Sorry for your horrible experience.

Anthony

how do you get reimbursed for that or do you eat it?

Sorry for your losses, the part I do not understand is how paid cargo does not get any priority. The airline shlould give better service to its cargo customers. Another airline shipped my Dalmatian to another city because they had filled the heated cargo area with lugage as animals are the last to be loaded. Would not have been so bad but I still flew without being notified until I landed that she did not make the flight and that she was in a different airport.

Can you ship livestock with westjet? I am not going to even get started on air canada! Did you order from the lower mainland? Are there any other air carriers that fly to your location?

Thanks all for your thoughts :)

I had called Air Canada 3 times during this whole fiasco, and they said that luggage takes priority over cargo as it is a "passenger" airline. I was concerned in the first place letting them travel for the first 12-16 hrs booked.. let alone any longer delays.
The thing is, on my tracking page(Air canada) it stated it had been put on the second Toronto flight it was supposed to on time, but was "Unloaded"....because of luggage thats rediculos.

FYI I had shipped from J&L Aquatics. I called them and they were more than helpful in offering to re-ship my order or give me credit. They seem like a great company to deal with. Very nice people.
They were out of clownfish, so I accepted the original order with a Yellow Tang added instead. It's due in tomorrow so hopefully it will make it this time.

Good of them & great for you. Better luck this time. My sis-in-law works for AC & I still won't fly with em. Singapore Airlines, Malaysia & Cathay Pacific have it right when it comes to keeping their customers happy & coming back.

Anthony

Any way you can get Singapore airlines to take a stop in Saint John New Brunswick?.. lol :) Yeah my mother worked for AC as well... got laid off last time with the lot of them. She still gets benefits for now though. But they definately don't care about thier customers... It's a wonder why they didn't go bankrupt the last time they had troubles....

As a side note, over the last few days another airline went belly up. Jetgo? Passengers were scrambling to find other flights. I have a feeling your shipment got lost in the madness of all those extra passengers AC had to deal with.

One thing I would try not to do when shipping is ship near the weekend, if possible, when there may be more people travelling.

Sorry for your loss, though :cry:

Yes, you are right Beverly, that probably had alot to do with it. But still, I had paid good money to ship live animals for same day receipt. If I worked for an airline I would not even hesitate to put live animals in priority rather than someone's unexpected luggage, as I'm sure they can wait a few hours. :neutral:

Use FedEx overnight next time.

My girlfriend just had a parrot shipped via WestJet from New Brunswick to here (BC) and everything went just fine. The breeder in NB said she has shipped via Air Canada 3 times and had problems 2 of those times and she has never had a problem with WestJet.

As another side note it is also spring break in the west (at least Alberta) so there are probably more people on the flights.
Sorry for your loss I hope my order next week goes better.

Brad

Im sorry for the loss. But you have to look at the other side if it were you waiting for your lugage you would be screaming too. But for live animals i mean the box cant be that big i am sure they could have squeezed it in.

Sorry for your loss! Glad J&L(great people!) sent a replacement!

I dont like AC either. They screw up passengers and stuff, they screw up luggage, they screw up live animals. ARHG, lol.

My experience with AC:
-Lost my mom's luggage once
-Everytime I take a flight with AC, Someone is having a problem with them
-I have had some reptiles shipped with them before, two snakes, both times it went well(but the first time the shipper was dumb), the second time it was a $1200 snake, so luckily that worked.
-I also just got a cleanup crew shipped to me yesterday or the day before? That went well.
-I still here lots of complaints about them

My experience with WestJet:
-Always great people/luggage wise
-Ofcourse sometimes something happens sometimes, but thats expected anywhere
-Had several reptiles shipped with them, all went well
-good comments about them all around

UPS+FedEx
-I have heard good and bad about them both, but once with both companies, my dry goods were a week late.

Chris