Addressing Complaints about our Kittens
In over 25 years, Ragalong and Briar Glen have been fortunate not to encounter many issues from the hundreds of pet owners with whom we have worked.
Occasionally, I will get an email saying that they have encountered a website that says that our cats are in poor health and our standard of care is inferior. The website is likely associated with one lady who filed a complaint on the Facebook Complaints board. Please bare in mind that this is "one" lady often using aliass and who certainly has a better mastery of the internet than me who is a tech dinosaur.
This one lady bought a pet kitten from us and I met her at our vet in Cloverdale. She was with her two daughters and took possession of the kitten. Some time later she contacted us for another kitten as apparently the first kitten had eaten one of her daughter's scrunchies and it did not end well. As we will often do, we offered to give her another kitten to help get over the loss of the first one.
Strangely enough the second kitten also ate her daughter's scrunchie and required some expensive surgery to rectify the situation. The lady who obviously is used to getting what she wants, wanted to buy a show quality blue bicolor kitten we had. Under the circumstances, we refused to sell her the kitten. She was outraged and the Complaint Board saga began. We tried to find out how to have this issue removed, but apparently you can post whatever you want on the internet and it's basically tough bananas, which I guess the lady was aware of. All we could find out was that the password for the site was "fuckyoumarilyn." We were advised not to engage with her, as apparently it only boosts the number of hits the site will get.
Another recent incident comes to mind of a large lady from Chilliwack, who had ordered a show quality kitten. When we had a suitable kitten, we sent the pictures and the lady was coming over from Chilliwack. It was a very bad snow day with bad roads and I advised her that it might be better to wait, but she advised she was already at the ferry. When she arrived, she spent some time showing us videos of her dog on the internet with the comments that she had thousands of likes for her dog pictures. I mentioned that I do not do apps, being the dinosaur that I am and she was quite shocked that there are actually people out there who do not spend all their time on social media.
She liked the kitten and when the time came to pay, she advised that with her "new" phone, she had not got the app for her banking on it, so would have to pay us when she got back to Chilliwack. This is not our usual way of doing business, but she did find her rental account that had some money in it and said she would transfer it to us and send the balance when she got home. Of course, as she had come all the way from Chilliwack in a snow storm, we agreed. Long story short, when she got home she said the kitten had a kink in its tail and would not pay. We advised that she could return the kitten for a full refund. She said she would bring it back, but we had to pay all the expenses. We had a trucker who was going to Abbotsford, so advised her to meet him in Chilliwack and he would bring the kitten back here. Well, there was no way she was going to part with the kitten and as I knew nothing about apps, she would make me the laughing stock.
I did post this little story on my Ragalong Facebook page and it was very gratifying to see over 75 of our buyers come forward with very positive and reassuring comments about it being perfectly fine to live offline and they were madly in love with the little fur babies they had gotten from us over the years.
So, it's unfortunate to have to add this "Complaints" segment to our website, but it is tiring and discouraging to have to explain to the few people who have encountered the negative website, just what the realy story is, so decided to just put it up here and people can refer to it without me having to go through the whole saga again.
We have numerous "Cattery of Excellence" awards from TICA, and I always advise questioning minds to check with many TICA judges who have known us and our cats for years for references as well as our current Regional Director for the Northwest Elaine Hawksworth Weitz.
We have DNA tested all our foundation cats now for years with Wisdom Health for over 42 different diseases and conditions including HCM and PKD and only breed Traditional Ragdolls who have not been outcrossed to other breeds.
Hopefully this shines some light on the "Complaints" issues and saves me the occasional task of having to explain how this stuff comes about.
Yours truly,
Marilyn McCorkindale