When Another Breeder is Mean to Your Buyers; Help?

I sold someone several Silver Foxes as breeders to start them off, recently my buyer has been looking for new bloodlines to work with and they had plans with another breeder of Silver Foxes to buy some from them. Well, my past buyer ( all of my past buyers keep in touch with me ) has told me that this other breeder will not support them and has been very mean to them. E.g telling them to get lost when they asked about receiving their rabbits' pedigrees that they've been waiting on for THREE months, not answering their questions and telling lies to them about me. Like I sell unpapered Silver Foxes (false), that I have sick rabbits (fale again) and that I am a awful person to deal with since I tell my buyers to f*ck off or to get lost when they ask questions (false AGAIN). What?!?!

My buyer told me all of this. :-(


I know who this breeder is. . . Why would they speak so poorly of me? I've done nothing to them. RabbitTalk, help me. :-(

Possibly the other breeder doesn't like competition. Your buyers know the truth about you, so I suggest not taking it to heart. Also, you must take into consideration possible exaggeration on the part of the person who told you.

I really don't think there is a good course of action here. Retaliation would be a mistake and letting it get to you will only hurt you.

Something about that writeup gave me a weird gut feeling. It may be best to carefully consider how you feel about the buyer who is telling you all of this. Are they someone you trust completely? If not, the mis-truths may have come from a very different source.

The one thing you must not do, is say harsh or critical things to the buyer about the other breeder.
I can almost promise you that whatever you say WILL get back to them, and quite possibly in an exaggerated form. They may even hear about things you have never even said. Be in the alert for that.

I suggest staying as far away from the "drama" as possible, and watching things play out.

Wow, Zass! I think you nailed it. :doh:

I've seen this kind of thing happen in other contexts and it can get real messy if a person buys into it. I agree that something feels a bit "off" about the whole thing.

I can almost promise you that whatever you say WILL get back to them, and quite possibly in an exaggerated form. They may even hear about things you have never even said. Be in the alert for that.

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:yeahthat: This buyer may be a first class gossip :gossip:and troublemaker. :stirpot:

Maybe I'm more outgoing than some people, but I'd call up the other breeder and ask them if they were having issues with the buyer. Find out from the horses mouth, so to speak. And be honest about who you are. After they answer what the buyer was like with them, flat out ask them about the rumors going around about you from them. Might shoot the buyer in the foot on getting pedigrees, or maybe the buyer is a pain in the butt. I went through something similar when I was breeding lovebirds. There were two of us breeding here in town. (She had way more colors and pairs, my babies were a bit tamer due to having fewer of them and more time with them). Both of us were friends. Insert person number three, who had a single overpriced lovvie to sell. It WAS a nice color and I would have bought it for myself if it was a breeder (it wasn't, it was a pet). She was also the owner of one of the facebook pet groups up here. Well, it was the ONLY one at the time. I was trying to sell my babies, the other breeder was trying to sell hers. All was good, until this lady tried to sell hers. I think mine were priced $45, the other breeder had other colors at $55-70. The 'wanting to sell her baby' lady wanted $90 for something that looked very similar to one of ours.

So she bad-mouthed us, blocked and removed us from the only pet selling group in the area, and reported us whenever we tried to sell our babies, just so she could sell hers (pretty, but 'normal') for way too much. She wasn't aware that me and the other Lovvie breeder were pretty good friends at the time. We sat back and laughed, and laughed. Another pet selling group was started within the week 'cause lady went bat-s-crazy. We sold ours, she didn't sell hers for a long, long time. This was many years ago now, but my rambling point is-open up communication with the other breeder. You may have a new friend, or you may find out she is bat-s-crazy.