PetSmart Selling Sick Pets Everett, Massachusetts

I am an employee with over 10 years experience in the Petcare Dept. We see this type of devastation nearly every week when new small animals are delivered to our store. I am not sure where your local Petsmart gets their animals from (to my knowledge all come from a distributor called Rainbow)...I know ours do. I also know that there is no way in h**l these animals are "vet checked" before they are shipped out to stores. Any respectable veterinarian would catch these problems, and take the proper medical steps to fix the situation. We constantly have guinea pigs being delivered with ringworm, or pigs that are way to small to be taken from their mother...which in turn have to be taken to the vet, and then isolated and treated by us...by either administering the prescribed meds and or critical care for the severely small and underweight. Petsmart issues you a refund on your pet and it is then taken to a vet (NOT Banfield~as they are NOT certified to take care of anything but dogs and cats)

Our bird shipments also come from Rainbow. We have had a rash of birds, namely parakeets coming in with severe neurological disorders, splayed legs, disfigured beaks etc.  Again, there is no way any respectable vet would pass such issues as healthy or acceptable!

Basically, what it all boils down to is this...if you want a healthy, happy pet..whether it be a small furry animal or anything else, buy it from either a reputable breeder or a small, independently owned pet shop. They buy from local breeders who (in most cases) don't over-breed their animals and take much better care of them than any big pet distributor.
*If you have a strong enough stomach..look up some of the undercover videos posted of the "care" given to the animals @ Rainbow.

Petsmart sells sick animals in order to bring business to their in-house hospital, Banfield.

This is where they were counting on you taking the hamster.

Bunch of SCUMBAGS!

I'm very sorry this happened to you.

Pets get checked for health before they come to the store, and when they arrive. Pets should be checked daily for health issues in the store as well. Hamsters are prey animals and often hide signs of being injured. We have no reasons to pick up each hamster every day and if the animal was still eating, drinking, not losing weight, etc, then there usually isn't a reason to inspect it further. Even when we pick them up, we don't do random mouth checks, we only look for illness or injury when there are signs.

 Hamsters are rodents, which means their teeth continually grow all their lives. Normal hamsters are able to chew and wear them down enough to not need their teeth trimmed, but this is not always the case. I've owned several hamsters and maybe 1/3 to 1/4 of them have needed to have regular teeth trimmings. This is something you can easily do at home once a vet has shown you how. With the sugary hamster food on the market, a lot more hamsters are having dental issues, even losing teeth.

I am not justifying the case at all, but just want to help you understand how this could happen. You could have returned the animal and told the manager you wanted to purchase it when it was healthy again. This has happened a lot, even when someone returns an animal within their 14 days and it gets sick at home, they return it, PetSmart takes it to the vet, gets it better, then resells it to the original owner.