Robert S.

I ordered an adult male European Pond Turtle that was confirmed via email to be available. I received an adult female today and took a photo of the cloaca / tail that is proximal to the plastron. Males have a distinctively larger, muscular tail with the cloaca closer to the distal third of the tail to facilitate mating. Despite the picture, they insisted it was a male and that their "guy with 22 years experience" says it is. "We appreciate your understanding the complexity that often goes with identifying the sex of many animals." Perhaps he thought the turtle identified as male. They also cited their proviso that "sexing" of turtles is not guaranteed. Well they advertised this as an adult male for sale. This "male" turtle is also gravid with eggs that can be palpated.

Update: The turtle in question was found dead in my pond 3 days after delivery. Cause is unknown. I dissected the turtle and found eggs and ovaries confirming the gender of the turtle.

I ordered 3 female yearling Japanese Pond Turtles on a Monday and my credit card was promptly charged. I was expecting a fed ex or ups tracking number on Tuesday and delivery on Wednesday. I called and emailed about the order status. It turns out that Next Generation Enterprises LLC (with an out-of-service phone number) runs Tortoise Town.com and turtlestore.com (same contact phone numbers and identical website language.) After an internet search the contact addresses for TortoiseTown.com and TurtleStore.com and are not correct. I thought this was a fake website and that I was scammed.

However, I received an email on Wednesday evening that they needed to wait 2 weeks to ensure that I receive healthy turtles. I ordered yearlings and not hatchlings. Two weeks is insignificant for year old turtles. It sounded as if they were going to send hatchlings. They gladly offered to charge me 20% and cancel the order (which I did.) The error was on their part for not updating their website. Out of stock turtles are listed as "out of stock" and you cannot even add them to the cart. There was no message regarding a delay in shipping. So I am out over a hundred dollars. I ordered turtles they don't have under false pretenses and they charged me a "20% restocking fee" to cancel the order.