I was at the vet's a couple of weeks ago and there was someone with a dying guinea pig that they'd bought from Pets at Home four days before and the staff were telling them to contact the shop to ask them what to do. The implication was that Pets at Home should be asked to pay the vet bill.

To be fair p@h usually will pay for vets bills, sometimes even when the animal was bought several months previous.

We had a hamster in a while ago that a woman had brought back to p@h because she had let it loose on the floor and accidentally crushed its leg with the sofa . Instead of taking the poor thing straight to a vet, she marched into the shop demanding a refund and a new hamster .
The staff gave her a refund (I think just to get the hamster away from her), refused to give or sell her another one, and then paid all the hammies vets bills as he had to have his leg amputated. He now lives happily with one of our vet nurses

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It very much varies from store to store.

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"Have you ever licked a lamp post in winter?" -- Alistair, Dragon Age: Origins <3

At my local stores the staff never seem to know what animals they have in store, and they never know the sex of any of the animals. The staff will usually attempt to sex the animal in front of the customers but all of them seem too scared to even touch the animal, let alone know how to sex it.
We went in to look into getting some gerbils, They brought out 15 gerbils in a small gerbilarium that's suitable for 2 at most.

Not all pet shops are as bad as P@H though, I know of a few where all of the staff have taken the time to research everything there is to know about the animals that they are selling. They also breed their own animals rather than buying from rodent farms so they never have too many animals.

fortunately my hammys that i purchased were fine- but my friend bought a hammy which had a disease, and couldn't move or open its eyes. it died(, and it is even worse that they probably get them from rodent farms.... ban them! kill them, evils which torture these sweet creatures!)

i bought some hermit crabs a few years ago within two days two of the crabs died

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mammy to dai bach a sausage & dinky mash

It has to be one of the most hit and miss places to buy livestock around.

3 of my old rats came from a small chain of pet shops in the south (couple in wales as well I think) where a very good friend of mine worked. I took pity on 2 rats in a local P@H they looked so sorry for them selves, I was in two minds of days on end and went in every day to see them. I gave in and brought them home and slowly intergrated them with my other 3 ladies. They has respiratory infections so I got baytril & treated them one remained fairly dammaged from it and very feral despite my best efforts to tame her. But my current local store seems to have some clued up staff & the animals seem fairly well looked after and healthy.

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I own (and occasionally breed) bearded dragons - my ten year old cousin outsmarted their staff :P
Wouldn't be hard, though....the idiots didn't know what a morph was!!!! and, what's worse - THEY WERE FEEDING THEM CABBAGE AND SPINACH!!!!!!!!!!!!! (not poison, but very very bad. They SHOULD be getting rocket and corriander, with the occasional carrot.) I dread the 'advice' the new owners are given....And I wouldn't go to their vets in a fit.

and guess what....They didn't even know what a morph was.
(those of you who do not keep reptiles, a morph is a colour mutation, search royal python morphs/bearded dragon morphs to find out more) Half of the reptiles in she shop were morphs and she didn't have a clue!

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I recently bought 2 degus from Pets at Home and the two members of staff I spoke to were very knowledgeable because they both had degus at home! They offered me lots of advice and correct information that I'd also heard elsewhere. I think as with any pet shop, whether it's a chain or not, it just depends on the people that work there.

we got our guineas from pets at home and one of them started hopping around like a rabbit and squealing when touched because he was in pain. . . turned out he had a vitamin c deficiency. ..we actually went to P@H and a young lad at the desk told us not to buy their vitamin supplement for the water because it will just denature in the water and it is pointless and to go to boots and buy the tablets you put in water for humans and syringe feed him it and force him to eat any fruit or veg with vitamin c in because he had completely stopped eating.
this lad was genuinely concerned for the health of the guinea pig but he had not had any training from P@H it was literally because he just knew about them himself. . . .
they're a crap place to buy animals from anyway though they once brought out literally a bucket of hamsters crawling all over each other for my OH to pick one from when he was little.

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