Urgent question about dealing with breeder

I joined this forum in order to ask individuals here whether or not I should buy kittens from this one so called breeder. I feel unsure I can trust thiד individual or not since I found his kittens on Craigslist for $350.

I am feeling very worried right now due to my negligence because I sent half of my payment already and he seemed rushed for me to send additional fees for the shipping because of the crate size. However I understand there are new regulations about shipping now after I read many information after I paid half of my payment and been waiting for responses back. So I was wondering if you know what I should do at this point because he said if I don't pay for the shipping now and decide not to get the kittens anymore he already wasted a lot of money for veterinary check up, microchips, and etc

Welcome to TCS @Pancakey  ! Sorry it's under such stressful circumstances.

Since you sent me the link to the cattery in private, I will comment on it here. If anyone else wants to take a look, I suggest you PM them with the link instead of posting it here.

To me, the cattery reads as a backyard breeder for the following reasons - 

1. There's no indication that the cats are registered with any association. (You can read more on what that means here:  [article="30055"]Cat Registries​[/article]  )

2. They are selling the kittens at 10 weeks of age. That's too young for an ethical breeder to be separating the kittens from the mother.

3. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure $350 is way underpriced for a purebred registered Bengal.

As for their claims about having already spent the money, they would be ridiculous coming from an ethical registered breeder. Any kitten would have been given a check-up, often with first shots included and microchipped too. A breeder would do that anyway, for the kittens, at their own expense. And yes, later on the kitten would be sold for a much higher price but that's not the point. The point is, having a buyer isn't why a breeder takes care of these issues.

As for what you can do, since the "cat aspects" are not - as far as I know - regulated by any actual laws, I think it comes down to the legal implications of the contract you have with this person. Did you discuss refunds at all? Has he mentioned the additional costs of the crate before you paid? I'm not a legal expert but if there are associated fees I think they should have been stated upfront. If you paid using Paypal I think you can dispute the payment and have six months to do so. I'm pretty sure the same is true for paying with a credit card. Again, the fact that this appears to be a backyard breeder won't be the issue but the fact that he's now asking you for further fees which had not been agreed upon could be.

Honestly, there are so many craigslist scams I'd be surprised if there really are kittens. Anyway, if you want to go ahead with this guy (and I wouldn't recommend it based on what Anne said), tell him you want to talk to his vet directly. Don't let him give you the number for his vet---ask for his vet's name and google the number for the clinic. Tell him to give the vet permission to release info to kitten buyers. Then (if he hasn't disappeared already), ask the vet if this guy is legit and what treatment the kittens have gotten. If he is even sort of legit he will not have a problem with this.

But I'm pretty sure it's a scam, and no kittens even exist. Especially if you wired the money. . .there are very few legitimate reasons for wiring money in the US now that Paypal and credit card apps are things.

Pancakey said:

 
I joined this forum in order to ask individuals here whether or not I should buy kittens from this one so called breeder. I feel unsure I can trust thiד individual or not since I found his kittens on Craigslist for $350.

I am feeling very worried right now due to my negligence because I sent half of my payment already and he seemed rushed for me to send additional fees for the shipping because of the crate size. However I understand there are new regulations about shipping now after I read many information after I paid half of my payment and been waiting for responses back. So I was wondering if you know what I should do at this point because he said if I don't pay for the shipping now and decide not to get the kittens anymore he already wasted a lot of money for veterinary check up, microchips, and etc

Click to expand...

Agreeing he is surely at best a BYB breeder, but not impossible even a scam.

But some comments.  If he is sending the kitten, its very reasonable he gets the cost covered.  Esp as the starting price is very low (pet quality one??).. And if they need extra big crate, of course its you whom will pay, by the same reason.

Because the price is usually a fetching price, even if most breeders agree to help with sending or at least,  part way transport.

Microchipping, deworming, vaccinations etc shall always be done.  But the vet check shall be done at most a week before the delivery.  If no delivery, he must do the vet check again to the new buyer later on   And thus,  not unreasonable he wants the vet check money back.

I dont think serious breeders bother about being SO fair and meticulous, they shrug and take the cost.

But its not unreasonable to wish.

As his margins are very low here.  A decent bengal cost at least twice, even if of no real show quality.

I'm not in the cat breeding business myself, but my boss is a Bengal Breeder and we have discussed scams before.
First off she sells her bengal kittens for more then double that price. In addition she always talks about how you can't trust the ones that seems to rush you for payments, or just seems to want to get your money, don't let you see pictures of the kittens, don't let you ask about them. A big one that she always says is if the Breeder is in your area ask if you can come and see the kittens, if they say no, it's a red flag. Like I said I don't know all the details of cat breeding but that sounds like a scam. First off the price, and it being on Craigslist would turn me off.

Craigslist scams can be anything---whatever is popular at the time is what they target. In my area, it's Husky puppies (I don't think I've seen a legitimate Husky puppy ad yet!), various high-price reptiles, and Bengal or Sphinx kittens. Some collectibles and cars are also common scams but I always stay in the pet section . You can tell a lot of scams because they use poor English, but some aren't so obvious.

Here's craigslist's anti-fraud page: https://www.craigslist.org/about/scams another thing I'd add to their advice is to do a Google image search on the pictures. A lot of times the pictures are stolen from a legitimate breeder's site or from Facebook.