This is a call to anyone who has been scammed during your purchase of a puppy. Either you didn’t receive a puppy, just lost your money or you were taken for a ride by a so-called breeder and ended up purchasing a sick puppy.

I don’t care if you found the breeder online, in your local paper or through a basic internet search. I want to hear your stories.

Here is the information that I want you to provide:

1. Give your first name and the State that you reside in.
2. Give the kennel name that you purchased from.
3. Give a brief synopsis of the problem you had. (was the dog sick, lack of promised paperwork, etc.)
4. Did you contact the breeder and what was their response?
5. Did you have a contract prior to purchase?
6. At what point during the period of initial contact to transaction completion did you a) see the contract, b) sign the contract, c) received the copy of the contract?
7. Did the breeder offer to abide by their contract but you wanted a different resolution?

I look forward to hearing from you.

I have listed Puppyfind.com as a possible resource in finding your puppy on the internet. I have been asked if Puppyfind is the safest of the dot com sites to find your puppy?

I can tell you that scams and puppy mills do exist on the Puppyfind.com website. Unfortunately, scammers like to find the most popular sites to target and then flood them with their scams.

I sent in a question to the Puppyfind site to see what they had to say about what they do to prevent scammers as well as puppy mills on their site.

Here is their emailed response:

Thank you for your interest in the Puppyfind.com website.

It is unfortunate that scammers have attempted to invade our site. When they first struck our site a couple of years ago, they hit us hard and fast. We were not expecting the flooding of scam accounts that occurred.

Since that time, Puppyfind has undergone many changes to respond to the scammers who have attempted to utilize our website in their attempt to defraud the public. We created a specific Fraud Department and hired staff to man that department 24/7. They are constantly performing scam searches and removing scam accounts as they locate them or as they are reported to us by our valued customers.

We are blocking IP addresses from known scam locations preventing many scammers from accessing the site.

We also do routine quality checks on the sellers using our website. These quality checks are triggered either by our staff just coming across a suspicious account or through complaints received to our site by our members. We have investigated sellers on our site and removed those we discovered were running puppy mills.

We also feel education is important so we created a feature called Buyers Tips which provides tips to assist someone looking to find a puppy using our site.

We understand that people have a choice when they are looking for a puppy to bring into their family and we want to be the site they put their trust in. However, it is important that people understand that although we are currently doing all we can, and we are constantly evaluating and adding to our arsenal, people still need to perform their due diligence. Those whose intent it is to defraud the public constantly change their tactics to get by our staff. We may not always catch everyone prior to them getting their information out on the internet so it is important that our users understand that we do not offer guarantees and they need to take the responsibility of confirming what they are told by the breeders on the site.

Thank you for your questions and if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Jessica
Quality Manager

It is important that you perform your due diligence, but many people do not know what to look for, what to ask or where to find additional information. For those people, I recommend purchasing the Puppy Buying Guide. This guide will walk you through those questions and help you to be led by your head, not your heart.

To read more about the Puppy Buying Guide, visit How To Safely Purchase a Puppy On The Internet.