Bad Luck with a Vendor from your State

We are a small wholesaler in Florida and supply a few LFS  in Utah. We received an order from one of them at the beginning of August. We packed the order and tried to charge his credit card, but it declined. I called the customer and he assured me that it was going to be fine the next morning, so we shipped 7 cartons of fish, inverts and some very nice Australian Corals to him on August 2.

His Credit Card continued to decline and we had no return calls, emails or any other form of communication with him. On August 6, he finally called and told me that the airline lost the shipment in Chicago and when he got it, a lot of the stuff was dead. So I offered to file a claim with the airline. For some reason, our driver marked the value of the shipment at $ 500.00 instead of the $ 1200.00 that it was worth and the customer got very upset over this. So, I offered to replace all the DOA stuff in a new shipment and the customer agreed. Meanwhile I had not received a payment for anything.

After that, I might have had 2 more conversations with this customer trying to get paid, which he promised to do, and trying to schedule the replacement shipment. After that, he stopped returning my calls and emails.

I filed a claim with the airline, just to find out that the customer had done the same. The airlines policy is to pay claims to whoever pays the shipping and the customer got a check for $ 631.45. For a shipment that he never paid for in the first place!

In addition to that, he was advertising the corals I sent him on his website! I have screenshots of it. 

I am very disappointed over the business practices this individual displayed. I have tried to contact him frequently but have not received any communication back.

Sorry for the rant but you guys need to know what’s going on in your State, if he rips off vendors, he might do it with customers too?

Wow, I didn't know. It's always very sad to hear about situation like that. And it REALLY sucks to be the victim.....