Puppy scams are real and you can easily be a victim!

In today’s fast pace world we rely heavily on the internet to buy most of our products these days. Buying puppies is no different. Most people search out Puppy breeders through search engines in order to find and purchase a puppy. We have become more and more trusting with doing business with absolute strangers over the internet. When buying a puppy you are way more likely to be scammed out of your money than from buying any thing else on the internet. According to BBB scam tracker More than 4000 people reported being scammed out of their money trying to buy a new puppy online in 2020 and the losses are projected to be over 3 million. The pandemic has really created a large demand for puppies and the scammers take full advantage of it.  The average sum lost was 750.00! Wow that is a lot of money to lose to a scam. It use to be 50 to 100 bucks. Not any more they are going for the big bucks.

So how can you spot a puppy scam?

It used to be very easy if you just glanced at the page or the sellers offer. Today they build nice looking sites and buy ads on Google and other advertising platforms. Most people believe because they are paying for advertising they are legit. This could not be further from the truth. Google doesn’t validate a customer to being legit or not. They are selling advertising and that’s all. It’s up to you to know and decide who you’re willing to do business with. Lets break down some of the easiest ways to spot scams and avoid questionable sellers to avoid losing our hard earned cash.

1. Scammers with have puppies ready to go right now at 8 weeks with no waiting time and they will usually already be named. Some will also claim potty trained with all their shots and maybe even already fixed. As a breeder we never name each puppy before it goes home. That will be up to each customer to pick a name. You won’t have a fully house broke puppy at 8 weeks. You can’t get a puppy fixed before it’s around 6 months old. It would only be old enough at 8 weeks to have no more than 2 booster shots. It will need them every 2-3 weeks until it reaches 16 weeks old. No vet will give a rabies shot until the puppy reaches 16 weeks. If a breeder claims any of these you can stop communicating with them and walk away because it’s a scam.

2. They are unwilling to allow you to visit the kennels to see the puppy in person and the parents before you put down a deposit or buy the puppy. They stress some reason and then want you to pay through a cash app or money-gram type payment. Some even want gift cards. This is a scam. I know some breeders want to meet in a parking lot some where and won’t allow visitors to their kennels. They could be legit in that case but lack any kind of knowledge about bio-security. We have been in business for over 23 years and host families from all over the county including other countries and this has never been an issue. Knowledge makes a difference so I may question if I should buy a puppy from someone who lacks that knowledge. What else do they not know about a good breeding program? In this case if I was still going to buy a puppy from them I would wait until I seen the puppy in person before I paid them. If they wont agree then it’s a scam.

3. Communication is lacking. They won’t talk over the phone. They can only text or email with you. Try to get them to make a time where they can talk over the phone. If they keep coming up with excuses then move on it’s a scam. They are most likely going to be from another county. They can spoof the number and make it look like a number coming from any state they like. There are services they buy to make this possible.

4. Puppy pics are all over the place with each puppy looking like it was taking in a different setting altogether. The reason for this is they steal puppy breeders photo’s from the web to use in their scam so yes they look like it because they are. Can they produce that puppies 2,3,4,5, or even 6 week old pics? Scammer can’t. All they have is that 1 or 2 photo’s of the 8 week old puppy.

5. Prices are too good to be true. Can you buy a husky puppy for 300 dollars or even 500 dollars? I am sure you can go to a back yard breeder and get a puppy for those prices. You will still be more likely to be scammed. If it sounds too good to be true you know it probably is. Even if you get one for that price what did you get? There is no way a breeding pair of puppy parents or litter of puppies was well cared for and got the best possible care and nutrition when you are selling them for almost nothing. They can’t afford to.

6. Will only take your money and ship the puppy. As stated no visits even though you are in the same town they claim to be in because they have just moved across country. Insist on sending them that money by third party type payments as mentioned already because shipping is free just pay for the puppy. I have seen a puppy for 400 dollars be advertised to ship for free to anywhere in the USA. This is not even possible.

7. Fake reviews. You can’t sell anything nowadays without reviews. They usually just go out and find reviews to copy and paste to their site from legit sites. You can pick a few reviews from their site and copy and paste into google and see if they show up on a lot of other sites. They usually work with other scammers or they set up other websites for other breeds and use the same reviews because they are so lazy. We have had a lot of ours stolen and they will even use our whole text on our web pages to make their sites. It’s funny to see a site selling poodles with text talking and mentioning Bama Huskies or huskies in general from our sites text. You can see this all over the place if you take time to look through and read the site text which you should be doing if you are going to check them out thoroughly before deciding to do business with them.

Things a Reputable breeder will do.

Bottom line is a reputable breeder will talk to you on the phone. They will allow you to come to the kennel if that is your wish to meet the parents, puppies, and see their operation. They will usually have a long waiting list. Some times they have a puppy come available but it’s more rare. They won’t have a whole litter available or lots of different puppies available. They will have weekly pics available of the whole litter so you can see how they have grown. They will take full payment minus deposit when you pick up your puppy by cash or card. We won’t even take a money gram or western union as a form of payment. If you will take a little more time and use this list you will not get scammed and will pay and get that new fury-baby to enjoy a lifetime.

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