BUYER BEWARE – Noah’s Ark Couriers/Jonnyboy/Craig Ford

[boromale2008]

Originally Posted by retic keeper

I have had dealings with jonnyboy and he is an arse. He threateee to smash my windows and kick my door down just over a disagreement with snakes. I have had snakes off him that were burnt badly and covered with mites. The snakes are fine now and doing well.

your back door?? lol. its amazing how some people get all hard and mighty behind a keyboard, you should have just said the same to him and i bet he would have st himself.

[Darbz]

This is very good work guys, good of you to go through all the effort.

I have read this thread, although due to the length of the first 2 posts my eyes did glaze a little..lol, my question though:

I see you have put in a complaint to paypal..have you also reported this matter to the police and/or DEFRA? I'm sure you have since you seem pretty switched on but I'd just like to know to put my mind at rest as what he is doing is illegal almost in it's entirety.

[retic keeper]

I wouldnt buy ne thing off this guy. Some of the reptiles i got were apaling. He doesnt have a licence for what he is doing. He sell thing that he clains are het for this and so on. I got a 12ft burm which he claimed at frozen. It ate live pray infact. I told him to come and put my windows out. Told him id b waiting but he neva came. Sum ppl talk a load of bull these days.

[Onissarle]

Originally Posted by Darbz

This is very good work guys, good of you to go through all the effort.

I have read this thread, although due to the length of the first 2 posts my eyes did glaze a little..lol, my question though:

I see you have put in a complaint to paypal..have you also reported this matter to the police and/or DEFRA? I'm sure you have since you seem pretty switched on but I'd just like to know to put my mind at rest as what he is doing is illegal almost in it's entirety.

We are pursuing appropriate channels but we're not willing to publicly discuss the details at this point.

[Darbz]

Originally Posted by Onissarle

We are pursuing appropriate channels but we're not willing to publicly discuss the details at this point.

Fair one, probably for the best anyway. I'm just happy that this has been uncovered and that something is being done, whatever that may be.

[vickylolage]

We've had a few dealings with Jonnyboy
We got 2 female royals off him they were just over 1000g each, we met him near by where my OH lives. We met him at a garage fore court and it appeared that the snakes had a few scars. When we got them home and inspected them one of the girls had quite a few rotten scales and scale rot was setting in (glad to say she made a great recovery). I know now we should have taken more care to check them over before buying but being in a public place it was difficult and a bit chilly.

Jonnyboy also offered my OH (LiamG) to come in on one of his "deals" with Bob Clark knowing hes into his royals quite a bit. He claimed him and Bob Clark were doing deals and he could possibly make a deal if the 2 of them placed a decent order - Liam had asked Jonny what he was purchasing but Jonny refused to say as he thought he was going to create a new morph - so Liam chose just to give the deal a miss.

A friend of ours got some supposed het albino royals off Jonny but this is somewhat questionable as it took quite a while for any paperwork to be handed over. To be quite honest its doubtful as to whether or not they are het albinos so he probably paid over the odds for some normals.

Reading this thread we have now realised that Jonnyboy and Craig Ford are the same person which explains why when Liam contacted Craig Ford he never got much of a response as we laready knew who Jonny was.


Reading about that poor beardie made me tear up.

[Ssthisto]

Originally Posted by vickylolage

A friend of ours got some supposed het albino royals off Jonny but this is somewhat questionable as it took quite a while for any paperwork to be handed over. To be quite honest its doubtful as to whether or not they are het albinos so he probably paid over the odds for some normals.

To be fair, as far as it goes, I didn't get any paperwork directly from Bob Clark himself about our het Pied female. Since Jonnyboy's snakes *are* Bob Clark snakes, it's probable that he just didn't get any paperwork on the het albinos.

Which makes me wonder if it's worth selling any hets AS hets at all, far as our royal breeding plans go... can you imagine the surprise if someone bought a pair of baby royals from us and four or five years down the line sees a little yellow and white nose sticking out of an egg?

Problem is if someone didn't want those horrible defective unable-to-produce-melanin mutants in their gene pool... would they WANT to have surprise albinos / ghosts / pieds?

[vickylolage]

Originally Posted by Ssthisto

To be fair, as far as it goes, I didn't get any paperwork directly from Bob Clark himself about our het Pied female. Since Jonnyboy's snakes *are* Bob Clark snakes, it's probable that he just didn't get any paperwork on the het albinos.

Which makes me wonder if it's worth selling any hets AS hets at all, far as our royal breeding plans go... can you imagine the surprise if someone bought a pair of baby royals from us and four or five years down the line sees a little yellow and white nose sticking out of an egg?

Problem is if someone didn't want those horrible defective unable-to-produce-melanin mutants in their gene pool... would they WANT to have surprise albinos / ghosts / pieds?

As far as we're aware these arent Bob Clark's het albinos - theyre just snakes a friend of his bred - or thats the information I was told. Im pretty certain they arent Bob Clarks though.

I wish I got little mutants out of my normals that suddenly appeared to albinos or something lol!

[Onissarle]

Originally Posted by vickylolage

We've had a few dealings with Jonnyboy
We got 2 female royals off him they were just over 1000g each, we met him near by where my OH lives. We met him at a garage fore court and it appeared that the snakes had a few scars. When we got them home and inspected them one of the girls had quite a few rotten scales and scale rot was setting in (glad to say she made a great recovery). I know now we should have taken more care to check them over before buying but being in a public place it was difficult and a bit chilly.

This seems to be a recurring theme regarding him selling animals. If they are what he says, they have undisclosed medical problems caused by poor husbandry. He's either not taking proper care of the animals or getting them cheap because they're in bad shape then reselling them at a profit by pretending they're healthy. Unfortunately, people have been blaming themselves for not being more observing or checking the animals over better at collection. John has been exploiting the fact that other keepers care that much about their animals.

I'm glad to hear she's doing better now!

Jonnyboy also offered my OH (LiamG) to come in on one of his "deals" with Bob Clark knowing hes into his royals quite a bit. He claimed him and Bob Clark were doing deals and he could possibly make a deal if the 2 of them placed a decent order

Bob Clark is a business man, he'll do deals with anyone that has the money. I know what prices Bob was charging him and the markup he was putting on them and I'm sure I could work out a similar deal if I wanted. I got very good prices (and a free snake for ordering so much at once) from Bob last year when I ended up spending over £6,000 with him.

It's all small potatoes though, Bob sells huge quantities in the US and at European shows. He drops deliveries into the UK worth tens of thousands. Someone like John who has a grand or two here or there won't have all that much buying power.

Liam had asked Jonny what he was purchasing but Jonny refused to say as he thought he was going to create a new morph - so Liam chose just to give the deal a miss.

Sorry, that just made me laugh. Unless John suddenly has at least 20k to throw around, he's not going to be able to buy snakes of high enough calibre to be the first to produce a new combination.

A friend of ours got some supposed het albino royals off Jonny but this is somewhat questionable as it took quite a while for any paperwork to be handed over. To be quite honest its doubtful as to whether or not they are het albinos so he probably paid over the odds for some normals.

Het paperwork always makes me chuckle. It's only worth as much as the word of the person handing it to you or the reputation of the breeder who will verify it as genuine and applying to that specific animal. I own hets that have no paperwork at all because I got them from Bob and he doesn't do het paperwork.

Reading this thread we have now realised that Jonnyboy and Craig Ford are the same person which explains why when Liam contacted Craig Ford he never got much of a response as we laready knew who Jonny was.

Yeah, that makes sense, you could have blown his cover before he finished shifting the snakes.

[Blackecho]

Congrats SSthisto and Onissarle for the work, sorry you had the problems in the first place.