Fragalot = Scamalot
 

Me and two coworkers did an order last week..we ordered on jun 22 and asked for it to show up on the 29th

showed up alright, packaged OK, dry box, styrofoam lined box

no heat pack, nothing labled (i even asked for one particular zoa frag to be marked)

Two LPS were missing all together...4 of the 5 LPS i ordered were wrong (my teal candycane was a green, translucent hammer was a purple tipped frogspawn, purple octo was a green/purple tip frogspawn, and my torch was supost to be a yellow tip, and got a cream brown tip) the picture of the Bubble coral i ordered shows a possibly BLUE BUBBLE but gives no description of color, and i got a white bubble, that is slowly showing green and red colors under the attinics, so im happy about that..and BIG too

we ordered 10 zoa frags...8 of them went home with me to grow and frag...only 3 have opened so far and dont really look like anything we ordered but they;ll change over time...

i sent an email to Fragalot last Friday I believe and havent received a response...(i sent afew questions prior to the order and received responses within 24hrs)


this happen to anyone else? its our first online coral order and we're all sour about it now

Don't paint all online vendors with the same brush. Fragalot has a poor track record that is inconsistant at best but there are others who are good and a few who are outstanding. I try to support the Canreef vendors and do most of my online frag purchases through Coralmaster, great product, great after sale service and everything is always marked what it is on the bags and I always get what I ordered.

Sorry to hear about you bad experience.
However Yes, this did happen, many times before, i wish you have searched this site BEFORE ordering.

How many more pple will be pi**ed of before we all learn?
Time and time again news like that come up and yet still someone else orders from there and surprise! ...one more unhappy customer...

But let me tell you, it could have been Much worse, sound like you at least got something.

If you want corals on line "Snappy" & "CoralMaster" is way to go.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Xns3mMGw2f...0/scamalot.jpg
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me too.....did a google search for "fragalot" after we got the screwed up order, first or second result was from Canreef saying fragalot sucks donkey balls

we did a fragalot order cus i found their site 2 years ago. My foreman and I jusyt always wanted to do an order through them

ive been a member of site for a while now just started checking it out after afew people I've met at LFSs told me to check this place out

+1000

There was a reason why f@galot was banned from Canreef. Bblinks and I got burned on a $450 order last year.

Coralmaster is the ONLY way to go in my books!

Is good to know because i have seen group orders here to buy from them and i thought they were a good place to buy.
Good to know so it can b avoided

It sounds like you got the right corals, just not as vivid as your computer screen.

As for missing. I dont know.

Bad rep for sure. No question.

there are no online stores in Ontario right now I would recommend, which is a shame since we have a tremendous amount of wickedly nice livestock......

you always label the bags and always ship what people ordered....coralmaster is the only reputable true online place to shop in canada to my knowledge.

For SPS, what are the non SPS people like me to do. I have had some great success with Fragalot recently, mostly with larger colonies of euphyllias. If you deal with him with respect when issues come up he is more than than willing to fix the problem, trash him online and I wouldn't expect stellar service. Personally I don't think being out a shade or two of color warrants complaining online. I can go from home computer to work computer to my Black Berry and look at the same picture of a coral and get three different representations of the color...Oh FYI, I wasn't referring to wickedfrags about complaining. Just the fact there are very few online dealers for Canada

lol i posted a bad review about frag a lot a month ago and people bashed me and defended them.:lol:

I've ordered from him twice in the last 3 months, and not had any issues that would make me re-consider ordering from him again.

My first order was for 10 frags I think, and I lost one zoa, and an SPS frag cause I didn't acclimate it to the light properly. I put it into the tank and glued it straight into place at the top of a rock column.

The second order, I ordered 9 frags. I lost two of the zoa frags, and two of the other zoas were wrong, but I didn't mind, as they were still decent colors.

So all together, it cost me about 280, and I have 15 frags that made it and are growing, with 2 of them being not the color I had wanted. I still think thats an acceptable amount versus the cost.

That happens a lot around here doesn't it ?

See I've had a great experience ordering corals online, from every source I've tried; including fragle rock....

Most of the fragalot praise seems to go like this:

1. Send Burc money.
2. Receive corals that probably don't really match what you ordered very well.
3. Be excited that you received 8 corals for the price of 8, even if the order wasn't very accurate at all.

This is the same scenario that most of the LFS. are faced with when they order from their suppliers. They are never 100% percent certain what they will get until the boxes arrive and are unpacked. I don't know how they put up with it!! It would drive me nuts. :biggrin:

My frags have done well for me. I have some of the most colourful Acans in the last few GBs and communication has not been a problem. As someone mentioned before, keeping lines of communications open and polite will help resolve the issues far better than publicly bashing the supplier (ANY supplier). IME I find that giving them a chance to work things out to everyone's satisfaction works well.

This is not me defending burc in anyway, but personally I haven't had any bad experience that would warrant a complaint, just recently ordered 2 sps frags from him, asked for 1" he sent me 2 frags with multiple 2-3" branches if you emailed him and told him your concerns with out hostility I guarantee he'd make it right for you at no cost

ive had very bad and very good experiences with FAL.....i order all the time for the most part im always happy.

ordering from another province has its risks no matter what and i order from all over the country:)

This is not the droid your looking for....
http://www.adinnerguest.com/wp-conte...mind-trick.jpg

We all can agree that f*agalot does have some nice Acans and other LPS for cheap, but that's not the point here. It's the way how he conduct business and the way how he treats his customer that crowned him the title of scamalot. So you put an order through, and lets say out of 10 items that you ordered 8 showed up and 2 out of the 8 is doa, so you contact him and ask to see whats going on and he tells you indirectly that he is aware of the missing items. Why would you send an incomplete order out to the customer on purpose knowing damn well items are missing. It just bad business practice! btw this is personal experience.

Burc doesn't ever label anything, why you ask?! cause I don't even think he knows what paly or zoa he is giving to his customers. How many times have you heard people complaint about stuff not matching the picture, Burc would be rich if he got a dollar every time some one said that. I think the only reason he gets away with this is because the price he charges, most of us would just shrug it off since it was "cheap anyways", but it's not. $10 bucks for nothing is a huge rip-off. I don't care who you are, money is money, 10 bucks can buy you a nice lunch not to mention if its a 20 or 30 dollar piece.

Shipping doesnt seem to be his strong point either. My package showed up leaky, part of the cardboard box was wet. It had 4 pieces of thin foam surrounding the single bagged corals and of course no heat pack.

All this just shows how poorly Burc treats his customer. Once the money is in the bank then who gives a damn. if he can get away with it he will, and if the customer does complaint, not until he or she threaten to either call visa or paypal to start a formal process of charge back you will be ignored for as long as he can and hoping it will just fade away.

I will NEVER order from him ever!

lol Jedi Mind Tricks, I like it.:biggrin:

If he isn't responding to you now, he won't. He either fixes things for people, or completely ignores him. I have no idea why. You have already made it known on this board that he won't fix your problem, now make it even worse for him. Put in a complaint through the Better Business Bureau, https://www.bbb.org/consumer-complai...nt/get-started. It's very quick and simple to fill in the questions. He still won't correct your problem, but when he doesn't, his BBB's rating goes down. People need to know what they are getting into when dealing with Fragalot.

^^^^^^:lol: BBB... that's really giving it to him....Trashing him here will do ten times the damage.....BBB still laughing about that one...What a toothless attack that would be..

Contact paypal or visa or whatever you paid with; let the, know the difference of what was missing; you'll most likely get a refund for the difference....

It's an option.

Mastercard wouldn't do anything for me. Paypal has been just as worthless in the past for me as well. Still, I'd give it a try.

This isn't always true. I asked on this site before about recommended livestock dealers and a number of people highly recommended Fragalot. Then I also mentioned in another thread I made that I was planning on buying from them and another person recommended them and said they purchased from them in the past and the ONLY thing anyone ever mentioned to me about them was that some of their stuff has Copepods and other critters and to be sure to dip the coral before going into your tank.
Even with research and seeking out info it doesn't always help. In fact I just purchased an order of $300 from Fragalot June 29th and i still havent heard from them about whether it's shipped yet or not... And ive emailed them twice about my order and no response.
Live and learn cant blame yourself for trying out what looks to be a good professional site. Sometimes these online vendors don't give a s*** about lifelong customers they just want that one initial buy and they know new people will always fall for their cr@p.

Sorry to hear this and I'm quite worried now, hope my order shows up half decent...

No one is going to do anything unless you can prove that what you got isn't exactly what you paid for.

Hence the reason I don't buy livestock online (fish or coral). I buy from reputable LFS's, and then WISIWYG (what you see is what you get)

Just my 2 cents.

I am lucky though, Snappy (Coral Master) is in Calgary, and I have been there a few times, so I have never needed to ship. Greg has good reviews, so I would say give him a try.

Sure nice and convenient for you to be able to see what you're buying in person before making the purchase... For some of us who live in say northern Ontario or even southern Ontario no where near big towns like Toronto we don't have that luxury. The only fish store in my town sells tropical fish only. The next closest is in the states and guess who gets in s*** when we try to bring this stuff over the border?...

For us the only economical option is buying online and in this sense it's always a gamble, the value of your purchase is always in the sellers hands, "I have your money now, let's see what you can do about it when I send you JUNK!" most vendors simply just don't care, and it is a SAD truth.

most venders?? i would kind of argue this is an overstatement.
not true, not my experience anyway.

received my fragalot order today, best one yet!
thanks Burc:thumb:

Funny, I've never had an issue with CapitalOne when I needed help; every single time they have come though for me.

I would really have pressed the issue harder with them mate; and I totally agree PayPal is just as much of a scam, I truly despise PayPal and refuse to use them after I got screwed for a $1400 DSLR Canon camera I purchased though ebay...

Mine last week was probably the best yet too. Got me addicted to Acan.

I really envy that, here there's one shop and well lets say less than impressive to say the least. I have purchased 99 percent of fish and corals from out of town dealers and shops and building a relationship with them is the most important advise I could give to anyone that is in the same boat as me... Luckily Burc is one that I can trust. I have had him ship me colonies sight un-seen and rarely have been disappointed.

same here for the most part i find its opposite theres usually lots of conversaton and back and forth untill the order is shipped....most vendors will help you all they can to get your repeat business.....which is everything in this business.....just ask burc, hence the "free frag" lol :P

Yup he's definitely not perfect, but I have no complaints, he has screwed up orders for me in the past as well and forgot to ship things, but always makes good by sending more then originally ordered IME.
Like said its always a risk ordering online, but that's the method many of us choose, seems like my frags get bigger each time I order, can't help but feel this is from my repeat business and being polite never hurt.

I did order a few zoanthids from them that I thought were wrong but turned out they were the right thing after a few months as they took their rightfull colors.

I bought a eye or rae which was brown on receipt and remained brown until I put it in my 75 gallons under Phoenix MH lamp then they turned out really blue. Give the zoanthids time and the right light to see what they will become.

I often received the wrong things from fragalot anb often corals were brown.

this is one exemple that I did not order and received. I had ordered a blue digitata, received this wierdo piece of I don't know what...but at the end it turned out pretty cute, so I kept it and now it's got a spot of choice in my setup...here is when I received it:

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../fragalot1.jpg

Ugly isn't? :)

here is what it evolved into...much better and today it's quite beautiful, this is a few months ago:

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y...03_1846s-1.jpg

Just to say that some corals may look ugly but have the potential to become very beautiful if given the chance and the right conditions.

Here is another one...received it brown like that from fragalot. It was labeled "multicolor millepora" but was rather brown.

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../fragalot2.jpg

Now after a few months under the Pheonix...and it's getting more and more of that powder aqua blue color.

http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/y.../103_1814s.jpg

So sometime we got to give those corals a little time to shine, but it is a very hight risk not to receive what you order when you order from Fragalot, as they like to replace pieces without even asking you if you want them.

my orders from the last Vancouver Group buy turned out pretty good.

I got a bunch of mini maxi anemones today and I agree with don.ald, they are really nice, and since no one here gets any in.. Im very happy we had a place we could get them from. if my tank wasnt full i wouldnt hesitate to order more.
I also saw a plate coral that came in today, and it was the brightest green I have even seen, and looked very happy in the bag. It glowed without lights!

I think if you do a small group order or a one on one order it works out much better. I think I exchanged 50 emails and a bunch of pictures with him over the last 2 weeks, so nothing was left to chance. I was happy and we each were given a free coral.

just remember when you buy his 10$ frags you are basically getting a fresh cut frag that in a lot of cases is from a newly collected, newly shipped colony.. Talk about a stressed frag. I think that's why he can do $10 frags.. No tank time involved in growing them out, as basically they arrive, are chopped, and shipped. This I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming.

All in all I'm happy with my last three reorders.

I have said the same thing before and this makes the success rate much higher. These 10-15 people group orders are ridiculous both for the person organizing and for Burc. Serious if you had three people do a group order and never made free shipping it would still only cost $15.00 per person for freight, no one in this hobby should even blink an eye at that!!

Makes sense and you are correct there, 15$ is chump change in this hobby...

And you guys are all right I shouldn't say "most vendors". I think I'm just cursed. And also probably worried because I just dropped $300 and don't want it to be put towards hassle and frustration...

I do feel a lot better after reading daniella3D's post she's absolutely right you have to give these animals a chance, theyre put through A LOT and with time and patience they'll make the $ worth it! Yours looked nothing like the original photos. Probably why people freak out when initially getting these orders.

I'll have to take some before and after pics when my order comes in too.