Online MACAW selling website

[Mesum]

Dear All,
I need your help before I can put my self in any sort of SCAM.
WEBSITE NAME Home | Paradise Parrots Farm offering me a baby MACAW for R4500. They doesn't allowing me to visit there farm. I need your help should I buy from them or it's SCAM.
How can I pay for something with I never seen.

 

[Kiwibird]

When in doubt, AVOID. All signs here point to a scam IMO. That or the conditions at their bird farm are so abysmal they don't want prospective buyers to see. Either way, the fact you can't meet the bird before purchase would be a firm "NO" for me.

Even if the birds actually existed, I personally wouldn't buy any animal I couldn't see/interact with in person before purchase. A photo of an animal does not necessarily convey it's state of health, personality or other individual characteristics you may or may not like that would only become apparent when you actually get to observe the animal.

Unfortunately, while this doesn't sound like a legitimate place, I wish you luck in your search. Hopefully you can find a reputable breeder who can help match you with the right bird

 

[Terry57]

They also say that they sell fertile eggs, I would definitely say scam & would stay away from them.
Good luck in your search, I hope you can find a reputable breeder.

 

[SailBoat]

Also, a reputable Breeder, without asking, will provide a CITES class 1 Certificate of Birth and a purchase receipt with your baby, which is required by Law for all Macaws born after January 1, 2017 in North America. This is also true for all Amazons.

Once you find a reputable Breeder who is offering Macaws whom are fully on solid foods for several weeks and beginning fledging assure that you set-up a visit with your Certified Avian Vet or Avian Qualified Vet and provide a copy of your Macaw's CITES class 1 Certificate of Birth and purchase receipt for their file. Keep the originals in a safe place as it will be needed if you choose to travel with your Macaw.

Choose you Breeder with great care. The last thing you want is to purchase your baby from a corner cutting breeder (small b) that pushes a baby still on formula.

Consider an older Macaw and especially one that Chooses You! They are much better at matching then we are!

 

[wrench13]

Screams SCAM to me. Notice the one pic has Hy's in a cage with galvanized steel mesh enclosure. WHy does every e-mail scam always seem to originate in South Africa?

 

[ChristaNL]

Also, a reputable Breeder, without asking, will provide a CITES class 1 Certificate of Birth and a purchase receipt with your baby, which is required by Law for all Macaws born after January 1, 2017 in North America. This is also true for all Amazons.

Now all macaws are CITES 1 birds, for example the B&G "only" rates a CITES II-b status
That is why the whole system is such a chaos: the more threatened, the lower the number ...
Anyway they have the complete lists online.


=


Ugh- not being welcomed at the baby-factory is sometimes a given: not every breeder wants to run a petting zoo aka have people running all over their property (to stay under the criminal-radar if you have valuable birds and guarantee your birds their peace and quiet), BUT they will have a seperate place to interact with your future bird if you make an appointment (or just sell the babies to the birdflippers to avoid the hassle of dealing with wannabee-parrotowners/ I know a few hobby-breeders who do just that).


Afaik selling 'fertilized eggs' is never a good sign.
Unfortunately.

 

[EllenD]

Oh yeah, TOTAL SCAM!!!! Without a doubt....Please do not send these people any money! They are likely operating the website from Cameroon. Seriously.

If you're seriously looking to buy a baby or an adult, doesn't matter, Macaw (or any species of Cockatoo or African Grey), then you are going to have to be extremely cautious, as if you are looking on places like Craigslist, I'd venture to say that 95% of the hundreds, if not thousands of ads in the pet section all over the US for Macaws, Greys, and Cockatoos are complete and total scams, and they work so they keep doing them. It's horrible. And these people are making tens of thousands of dollars every single day in this country. They typically only get a person they are scamming to send them a "deposit" of some sort, usually a few hundred dollars, and then they disappear once they have it...and they make a killing. And since most of them are located outside of the US, there's little that can be done to stop them.

***The best way to avoid being scammed when looking to buy a large parrot is to USE COMMON SENSE AND SET RULES! If you set rules that will automatically rule-out pursuing a seller then you're going to keep yourself safe, but you have to stick to the rules...Such as:

-If the seller has multiple ads on Craigslist, all over Craigslist
-If the seller rambles in their description of the bird, or the description makes no sense at all, says something about one species and then is selling another
-If you right-click the photo they have on their ad and do a "reverse-Google search", you'll be able to tell immediately that they are a scam because the photo has been used millions of places on millions of ads for years and years.
-ANY PLACE THAT CLAIMS THEY SELL "FERTILE EGGS" is a scam. Period.

Now for the common sense:
-Never buy a bird or send money to anyone who will not allow you to come and see the bird you are buying. Period. Whatever excuses they give you (which are usually ridiculous anyway) need to be ignored and simply tell them "I'm not giving you money if I can't FIRST see the bird". STICK TO THIS RULE!
-Never buy a bird from someone who does not accept any form of payment besides Western Union/Moneygram. If they will not take a personal check, a credit/debit card, or cash (because they won't allow you to come meet them in-person), then it's a scam.
-IF IT SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS. If someone tells you they will sell you a 10 week old English Bulldog puppy for $300, but you cannot go to the person's house to meet the puppy or even pick the puppy up, the puppy has to be shipped to you, even if you live 10 minutes away, then obviously something isn't quite right...Same rules apply to the sale of large or expensive parrots. If someone is selling a Macaw for $200 then something is wrong...there will be exceptions, but they are rare...

***Basically, the best "rule" that you can follow is to ALWAYS tell the breeder/owner that you will not purchase a bird without first meeting the bird and interacting with the bird, obviously this is a very reasonable and wise request. Any respectable, reputable, and above-board breeder will have no issue with this at all, in fact, they should encourage it...The same goes with a person who is supposedly "re-homing" their adult parrot for whatever reason...Think about this for a minute..You're horribly upset, I mean just devastated because you have to re-home your 4 year-old Macaw that you've had since he was a baby and who you love more than anything in the world (for whatever reason, doesn't matter)...But you refuse to let the person who is going to be your bird's new care-giver/parront, hopefully for decades forward, come meet the bird to see if they get along? And you don't want to meet this person either? You are fine with them just wiring you the money and then you putting your bird on a plane? I don't think so. So if they won't let you go and see the bird before you give them any money, just walk away.

***Stay away from online-retailers like the one you already found. Unless it's the website to an actual pet shop or bird shop that you can verify exists and that you can go and see any time you want to visit the birds, then you want to stay away from any of these "bird wholesale" websites that make it seem like you can just order a parrot, as they are all scams.

If you want a baby Macaw then you need to find a private breeder of Macaws that is within driving distance to you, contact them, and then go and visit them and the baby you're interested in...Or do the same thing with a bird-shop or pet-shop that you can go visit. That's it. Places like www.birdbreeders.com and www.birdsnext.com are safe places to search for both private breeders and bird shops who breed their babies in-house. If you find a bird you're interested in then you always want to call them and speak to the breeder or the owner of the shop, ask them as many questions as you can about the bird, and then set-up a time when you can come to meet the bird, and get their address, etc. Do not EVER send money to ANYONE that refuses to allow you to come and meet/see the bird before you pay them.

 

[brighterdaysaviary]

I don't let anyone come into the place I have my babies or parents. However I do let them meet the babies in my living room away from everyone else. I bring the babies out one by one and they make their pick or if they already have picked I bring that specific baby out.

It's understandable if they don't let you in the baby bird room or do tour their home/facility but they should at least let you interact with the baby before buying him. If they say no then I would say stay away from this place.

 

[EllenD]

I don't let anyone come into the place I have my babies or parents. However I do let them meet the babies in my living room away from everyone else. I bring the babies out one by one and they make their pick or if they already have picked I bring that specific baby out.

It's understandable if they don't let you in the baby bird room or do tour their home/facility but they should at least let you interact with the baby before buying him. If they say no then I would say stay away from this place.

I should have stated this, as no, you should not be allowed into the breeder's room/aviary, as it's a health-risk to the birds...However, any breeder that tells you that you are not allowed to first see the baby bird you are buying from them before you give them money, or at all in this case where they want to strictly ship you the bird and have no personal contact with you, well, run away...fast.

I did the same thing that Brighterdayaviary stated that they do, I would set up a time for the prospective owners to come and meet the baby, or babies, and then I used a room in the walk-out floor of my house (3-story split-level, so the basement is connected to the garage and has 4 finished rooms), and I would either bring down the specific baby they were interested in, or I'd bring down the multiple babies I had if they wanted to pick one. People could then just walk-in through my garage and into the house, right into the room, where I had a couch, a TV, a big flight-cage, and a huge play-stand, so that the person or people/family could actually sit and spend time with a baby if they wanted to, and interact with him. When I bred Green Cheeks and Nanday Conures I would get a lot of people that would give me a deposit on a baby well before they were weaned, and a lot of them wanted to come and visit their new baby many times in the weeks or months before they were weaned and could go home with them. So I'd set-up a specific day/time for them, or multiple days, they'd come over, I bring their baby down into the room, and they'd sometimes spend hours just sitting with their baby on the couch, watching TV while holding them, etc. My breeder's room was on the third floor of my house in a large spare bedroom I converted, so 2 floors away, and I never let anyone in either.

I would have people who wanted to see the parents of the babies, and I did that with photos. If you have your aviary/breeding-room tested yearly, as all breeders should (most don't do it at all), then you can't have people walking in and out of it or being close to the birds. But there is no excuse at all for anyone who tells you that you must pay them in-full for the baby and then they'll ship him to you without you ever seeing them, even though you're within driving distance. Red-Flag!