Frequently Asked Questions

Many commonly asked questions that we answer frequently can be found right on this page so there is no need to call or email us asking any of these questions.

1. What do the terms "C.B. Baby" and "C.B. Adult" mean?
2. How do you ship your reptiles and amphibians?
3. What is your shipping schedule?
4. Is it safe to ship reptiles and amphibians?
5. My order came D.O.A., what are you going to do about it?
6. Can I pick up my order rather than having it shipped?
7. Why is shipping so expensive?
8. Can I pay using a method other than a credit card?
9. My credit card was declined, now what?
10. The address I gave during checkout was wrong, how could I fix that ASAP?
11. Why can't I pick the sex of a baby reptile or amphibian?
12. Do you ship internationally?
13. Do you ship to Hawaii?

1. What do the terms "C.B. Baby" and "C.B. Adult" mean?
C.B. Baby and C.B. Adult mean that the animal was born and raided in captivity and not collected in the wild. For many commercially available species there are ample breeders to ensure a steady supply of captive breed reptiles and amphibians. However, there are simply not enough breeders for many hard to find species to offer the captive breed option. We only deal with commonly available wild caught reptiles and will never knowingly offer anything that is endangered or threatened. Which should you choose, a captive breed or a wild caught specimen? Where possible it is always best to obtain a captive breed animal as they are usually disease free and relatively more docile that animals taken from nature. If you looking to inject a new blood line into your captive breed breeding program than you will need a wild caught specimen.

2. How do you ship your reptiles and amphibians?
We ship all orders using FedEx Priority Overnight delivery. Expert packers pack all orders in sturdy cardboard boxes. Heat packs are used during cold weather while cool gel packs are used in warmer months to ensure the animals survival during shipping.

3. What is your shipping schedule?
We ship daily, Monday thru Thursday. Orders must be in by 2PM Eastern Standard Time to ship the same day. Orders that are placed after 2PM will ship the following day for next day shipping. For example, if you place your order on Monday at 10AM you can expect your order to arrive the next day on Tuesday morning. On the other hand, if you place your order at Monday 2PM you will not get your order until Wednesday morning. Why? That’s because your order will ship on Tuesday if it comes in too late in the day to ship on Monday. In general, if you want to ensure that your order is shipped for next day delivery it is advisable to place your order early in the day, before 12PM if possible. NOTE: We do not ship on Fridays. Friday shipping is expensive and dangerous. If there is a problem with your order for whatever reason, be is a routing error or miss-delivery, there will be little we can do to correct the matter as there is no delivery on Sundays. This would result in your order being delayed until Monday, which will no doubt compromise the health and life of the reptile or amphibian inside the shipping box.

4. Is it safe to ship reptiles and amphibians?
There is always a risk associated with shipping live animals with any delivery service. To help minimize the loss of your reptile or amphibian we only ship using next day delivery service. Our mortality rate is about 5% per month, which means that 95% of our orders arrive alive and healthy. What happens if you’re in the unfortunate 5% D.O.A. category? We offer a generous replace/refund policy. If your reptile or amphibian arrived dead on arrival and you where home to accept delivery we will either A) issue you a refund for the animal that died or B) ship you a replacement at no cost. However, all replacement reshipments are subject to additional shipping charges. The same goes for D.O.A. animals. While we will issue you a refund for the full value of the dead animal, we do not offer refunds on shipping and handling. This is non-negotiable.

5. My order came D.O.A., what are you going to do about it?
Dead on arrival animals, otherwise known as D.O.A., are always a tragedy. Often this is the result of carrier mishandling or miss routing of the package. It’s almost always beyond our control as we only ship the healthiest animals to our customers. As far as what we can do about the situation, we offer one of two options. Option A is to offer the customer a refund for the cost of the dead animal. Option B is to offer to ship a new animal free of charge. However, there is one caveat. While we may offer you another animal for free we cannot ship it to you for free. If you wish for us to send you another animal free of charge you will need to pay an additional shipping and handling charge. For a list of current shipping and handling charges please see our shipping page. In addition, shipping is non-refundable on D.O.A. orders that arrive on time.

6. Can I pick up my order rather than having it shipped?
We receive a fair number of inquiries requesting to pick up their animals aat our Brooklyn, New York office or our shipping facility in Arlington, Texas. However, our Brooklyn office is only the customer support center as well as where we maintain our website. We do not have any animals for pickup at the Brooklyn, New York office. Our shipping facility in Arlington, Texas is off limits to customer pickups. All orders are therefore must be shipped next day delivery.

7. Why is shipping so expensive?
With fuel costs continuing to rise all the major overnight shipping carriers, be it FedEx, UPS, or DHL have increased there shipping rates. Currently, we charge a flat rate of $49.95 to ship up to six animals per order. In many cases it is more cost-effective to order more than one animal per order to save money on shipping. In many cases shipping costs more then $49.95 due to the size and weight of some orders. However we absorb the extra costs so as not to impose an unnecessary burden on our customers. We will always try and keep our overnight shipping charges as low as possible.

8. Can I pay using a method other than a credit card?
While we prefer that you that our customers use a credit card we do except other methods of payment. We accept money orders and personal checks. The advantage of using a credit card is that we can immediately ship out your animal the same day. A personal check must be deposited into our bank and then wait for a clearance period of 3-5 business days. Sometimes and animal will go out of stock during that waiting. So it is therefore more advantageous to make a purchase with a credit card. For further instructions on paying with either a money order or personal check please click here.

9. My credit card was declined, now what?
There are many reasons why your credit card may have been declined. The most common reason is that you have omitted some vital billing information during the checkout process. On our checkout page, the information that you first need to input correctly is the billing address of your credit card. In other words you need to put in the address of where your credit card bill is mailed to which is usually most people’s homes. However in cases where people have moved recently the credit card billing address may not be updated with the credit card company. If one puts in their new address, which is not the current credit card billing address, the result will be a failed payment. If you have further trouble making a payment you may need to call your credit card or issuing bank and explain the situation to them. They, rather than us, are in a better position to help diagnose complicated credit card issues. If the credit card company asks what is the name of the company you are trying to make a purchase from, tell them it’s RC Enterprises. RC Enterprises is the parent company of ReptilesNCritters.com. In fact you will see RC Enterprises on your credit card statement after you make a purchase off of ReptilesNCritters.com.

10. The address I gave during checkout was wrong, how could I fix that ASAP?
In cases where the customer accidentally put in the wrong shipping address is imperative that they contact us as soon as possible to avoid sending off the animals to a wrong address. The fastest way to contact us is to call us at our business line at 347-587-3277. If we do not pick up the phone then please leave a detailed message with the correct address information as well as a phone number in which we can call you to confirm the address correction. Or you may use the contact page on our website. Once you e-mail us with the corrected address we will e-mail you back confirmation that we received the new address.

11. Why can't I pick the sex of a baby reptile or amphibian?
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to sex baby reptiles or amphibians. The reason is that sexual differentiation is impossible to accurately tell at very young ages for most lizards, snakes, turtles, frogs, and other amphibians. Therefore, we only sex for male and female on our adult animals. In fact, we have made it impossible to select the sex on our website of any of our animals unless the size description is set to “Adult.”

12. Do you ship internationally?
Lately, due to the growing popularity of the ReptilesNCritters.com website, we receive many inquiries from people in various countries of the world. However, we are a United States based company and can only serve customers within the 50 states of the U.S. Due to the very high cost of shipping internationally, and the time-consuming and costly import and export paperwork associated with shipping overseas, we do not offer this service.

13. Do you ship to Hawaii?
While Hawaii is part of the United States, due to the sensitive nature of its island habitats, the Hawaiian fish and Wildlife Department severely restricts most, if not all exotic imports to the islands. The vast majority of the exotic animals we sell on ReptilesNCritters.com can quickly run amuck and displace native species that have no natural defenses. It is therefore the customer’s responsibility, and not ReptilesNCritters.com, to find out what the state of Hawaii allows in terms of imports of live exotic animals. For a list of allowed and restricted imports into Hawaii we have provided the following link from the Hawaiian Department of Argriculture website:
http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/pi/pq/lists

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