I bought what was sold to me as a pure bred Maltese puppy on June 26.
Ad I answered
I named her Daphne. As Daphne got bigger, she looked less and less like the pure bred Maltese I already had. I kept trying to convince myself that she was a Maltese. When she was six months old and weighed 13.4 pounds, I knew she couldn't be pure bred. I love her and she is cute as can be, but she is not a Maltese. I decided to get a DNA blood test at my vet. Daphne had absolutely no Maltese in her, but was 1/2 Lhasa Apso (which would explain the corkscrew tail), 1/4 miniature poodle, and 1/2 miniature schnauzer (which would explain the muzzle). The link to the actual DNA test is below:
Daphne's DNA Report
When she first came home you could believe she was Maltese: Daphne's First Day Home
This is what Daphne looked like on October 22: Daphne Now Picture of Daphne now no. 2
This is my pure bred Maltese, Penelope. You can see the difference. She is almost a year older than Daphne and weighs 3 pounds less than she does. They probably shouldn't have tried to pass off a mixed breed to somebody who already had a pure bred Maltese for comparison.
Penelope (pure bred Maltese)
On October 19, I emailed with San Diego puppy and was told that he was very surprised that she was a mixed breed and they would contact the breeder.in the meanwhile, they offered me a $150 reimbursement. At the present time, I have received no such compensation.
The email from San Diego Puppy stated the following: "Julie, Thank you for your email - the value of the puppy that you have as a mixed breed to us is 300 which includes the shots and deworming. Giving additional deworming and next round of vaccinations is considered puppy maintenance and cost of ownership regardless of the breed.
We will refund you $150 dollars. I hope you find this as fair and reasonable. Would you kindly give me your address so i can mail you a check. Thank you Julie and again we apologize for the inconvenience.
If you'd like to remove the Yelp comment we'd be grateful as we know that this is not a common occurrence and should not reflect on our integrity and overall business model."
At the time I agreed to accept compensation, I was only suspicious of the breeder, however I was then able to find filtered reviews on Yelp that indicated that the dogs they were selling were also sick. Luckily, so far, Daphne has been healthy.
The filtered Yelp reviews are below.
Filtered Yelp Reviews
On a side note, he also has "Reputation Defender" as an advertiser on his site. I think this is why he is able to stay below the radar. He also does misleading things like offer prizes of Petco gift cards, and he uses their logo which gives the impression that they endorse him when, in fact, he is simply buying Petco gift cards and distributing them.
Lastly, no response has been made to my inquiry regarding my reimbursement, and when I called, his wife claimed to have no knowledge of anything and said she only "ran the website."
Do not do business with these people. They move a lot of dogs through here at very low prices. I take responsibility for part of this as I ignored the thoughts that the price he was offering was too good to be true and something was fishy.
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