About Fayette Fish

In July 2024, I was scammed really badly through this site.

I am a disabled U.S. Army veteran. I was given a medical discharge in April 2011 after serving six years. I am on full 100% disability with the VA, which I had to fight for 7 years to receive.

Fish keeping is mostly a hobby for me, and I wanted to set a new standard of selling QUARANTINED fish - something absolutely no one in the industry does, from wild fish collectors, to exporters, to wholesalers, to retailers. Everyone sells what they get, almost immediately. 

I wanted to create a different standard and had been working with a few programmers to get the site set up the way I needed. Just as things began to kick off, I was hit with a scam. It was made to look like it came from another popular online seller, but it wasn't. Someone ordered a lot of dry goods (items that are actually purchased to resell) and then reported the purchase as unauthorized. The amount of the scam was more than I made all year.

I make less than $500 per month through my "business" as it is really only to legitimize my hobby and make my sales completely legal. I paid for and hold all appropriate licenses and certificates including business, agriculture, and sales tax. But I don't want to make more money than what I have stated above, because I don't want to lose my VA benefits - particularly the health care. So making a large wholesale purchase just to have it all stolen, was rough.

But when a scam hits, my payment processor does NOT cover me for card fraud, and that money comes back out of MY pocket. Most users are familiar with the policies of ebay or Paypal, which cover sellers as long as they send packages to the card address. My payment processor does not cover that. So when that scam hit, and someone erroneously reported the card stolen, I was seriously hurting.

I have since recovered, but the fate of the business has been in limbo ever since. Animal businesses are full of scammers, and I'm just not sure if I can survive that again. I am NOT some huge corporate conglomerate that can eat the cost of a scam. I do not make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month. I have thought about going wholesale-only, or perhaps becoming a breeder that only sells to wholesalers, just to avoid the scammers. But I've lost a lot of my desire to keep going, too. I still have dozens of tanks. I still buy fish. I even still sell fish to a few people that I know personally. But my interest in doing anything more than that has really faded.

For the time being, I'm going to be listing my fish and other goods for sale on Ebay or on Aquabid and requiring VERIFIED PAYPAL payments for the latter. I simply can not afford to do everything right, just to lose it all again. I will also begin requiring DEPOSITS for special orders to avoid being stuck with fish I don't normally carry - and don't have room to keep. Please click the links above to visit those sites for all purchases for the time being.