My husband and I came upon Diamond Acres web site while searching for a French Bulldog puppy, after our six year old dog died suddenly of a stoke. We are usually very savvy consumers and watch for scams but we were taken in by Evonne Denny and Diamond Acres Kennels.
We found a particular puppy we really liked on her website. The picture was very cute as is her whole website (she takes you in with her homey "christian" website). We called and talked to her a few times about the puppy and her operation. She told us the puppy was coming from Europe and it would be there in a few days. She never said anything about the puppy coming from "Eastern" Europe. We assumed the puppy was coming from France or England. She told us she needed a $500. Deposit to hold the dog, which we wired to her.
The day she received the wire we tried contacting her to make arrangements to pick-up the puppy (we live 5 hours away). She didn't respond until evening.in her e-mail she told us the whole batch of puppies had diarrhea and that they wouldn't be coming to the the US for at least a week. She assured us it wasn't parvo but she didn't know what it was.
When we received this e-mail from her we immediately saw what she was about. We called her and asked her where the dogs were coming from and she said the Ukraine. At this point we knew something was wrong. I said why didn't she disclose that the puppies were coming from Russia and Russian puppy breeders had a terrible reputation. She said they weren't coming from Russia, puppies from Russia were not good but puppies from the Ukraine were high class and that anyone would tell me that. Not True!
We told her that telling us a puppy is from Europe and not disclosing it's from Russia/Ukraine is like telling us a puppy is from America and not telling us it's from Mexico. The purhaser deserves the whole truth — full disclosure.
However, the number one thing that concerned us was that the puppy was sick and sitting in the Ukraine with no diagnosis (along with the whole batch of sick puppies). All we had was Evonne's reasurance that it was just puppy diarrhea. We had just had our six year old dog die of a stroke and have a 11 year old dachshund and the last thing we wanted was a sick dog that could possibly make our dachshund sick. We told her we didn't want the dog and wanted our money back (which she had just received). We told her she had been dishonest by not giving full disclosure and she couldn't guarantee we would receive the puppy we had given her the deposit on.
She told us she would not refund our money. It was a non-refundable deposit and we were just trying to get out of the deal. She was wrong. We were heartbroken. We had already purchased several items to welcome the puppy and had made arrangements to pick-up the puppy, including hotel reservations.
We feel strongly that Evonne Denney misled us intentionally because she knew if she had been forthright we would never have purchased a puppy from her. She only held our money for a matter of hours and could have easily given it back. She told us we would never get our money back.
We've learned a lot from this incident and hope that others read this story and other stories about Evonne Denney and Diamond Acres Kennels so they are not ripped-off too. We learned that you must go to very reputable breeder who is backed by a larger organization and has solid references; you will pay more but you will be dealing with a professional person with integrity.
I understand from other stories we've read that there may be a lawsuit filed against Evonne Denney. If so, we would be interested in possibly joining the lawsuit.
0 comments