ComplaintsforCarolina Canine Consultants

• Initial Complaint

  11/08/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On April 4th of 2023 I reached out to Carolina Canine Consulting to ask if they could provide house training for a 9-week-old puppy I had recently rescued. I am a full-time employee and a full-time student and was not able to house train a dog. I was already caring for another dog with no issues, I just needed the puppy to be house trained. Patrick S****** told me he could provide this service, and on April 4th I submitted a $500 security deposit to their business ***** account. For this and all subsequent payments Patrick asked me to refrain from checking that I was paying a business. The puppy was in training for roughly a month, and on April 7th once the puppy was back in the house I made two separate payments of $3,000 for the training, and $350 for an additional week of boarding that Patrick reccomended because the puppy needed more time. The day that the puppy was brought back, roughly an hour after he had been in my apartment, he peed on the floor in front of both me and Patrick without giving any indication that he needed to relieve himself. Patrick explained to me that he was not house trained, but on a potty schedule, and that when he was not training or being walked he would have to be in his crate. He was aware of my schedule restraints and why a potty schedule with a dog that had no house training was not something I could work with. The puppy was well trained with his obedience training, and Patrick demonstrated this multiple times on the day he arrived, and had no excuse for why the puppy was not house trained. I have had to rehome the puppy due to the lack of house training, and the payments to Carolina Canine Consulting have put me into financial hardship. I asked Patrick S****** for a partial refund of only the $3000 on October 21, 2023 and he is refusing to give me the $1500 I am asking for. He failed to provide the service he promised and now I am struggling financially and without the puppy he said he could help me keep.

  Business response

  11/24/2023

  We never promised *** ****** a potty trained puppy, simply because it’s not reasonable to expect a small three-month old puppy to be reliably potty trained. Additionally, potty training isn’t a service we offer since it is highly contextual and comes with consistency on the owner’s part and maturity of the puppy. What we did offer, was to get ******* on a potty schedule, which required frequent potty breaks and supervision/crate time to accommodate his size and level of maturity. This information was relayed to *** ******. In the included screenshots, *** ****** apologized and acknowledged that she misunderstood the potty schedule which she would be required to keep ******* on. Furthermore, *** ****** never told us that she was having additional potty training issues until after she rehomed ******* 5 months after the training program was complete.  We went above and beyond in establishing this potty schedule, including taking him out in the middle of the night during his program so as to avoid “mistakes”. 
  
  Had *** ****** contacted us prior to re-homing the puppy we could have collaborated on potential solutions for the issues she was having. 

  Customer response

  11/27/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint. 
  
  I had explained to the business that I would not be able to uphold a potty schedule due to my schedule of full-time employment and full-time college, and I would have been unable to meet with him for followup training for this reason. In addition I did not have the available funds to re-board the puppy for proper potty training; as I said the payments to this company have left me in an ongoing state of financial hardship. I filled out a form before this company took in the puppy - they should have records of it - that detailed in every available section that I needed the puppy to be housebroken. The puppy was returned to me with the capability to perform several complex tasks, and the owner was unable to provide a reason for why he was not potty trained. He agreed to train the puppy fully knowing that I needed him housebroken, and that his normal method of keeping the dog in a crate unless he was being walked or trained was incompatible with my lifestyle.
  
  Regards,
  
  ***** ******

  Business response

  12/05/2023

  Our previous response has detailed a clear picture of what we offered *** ***** with our training program. We returned ******* home with above-average obedience skills and on an age-appropriate potty schedule. A refund is not warranted in this case and will not be granted.

  Customer response

  12/06/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint. 
  
  As stated many times before, the obedience training was secondary to the house training, and this was stressed to Carolina Canine Consulting several times before ******* saw them for training. I had explained to Patrick several times that I worked a full time, 40-hour a week job as well as attending school full time for 20 hours a week. On certain days this left me with fewer than an hour in my home, and I stressed to Patrick that ******* needed to be able to move about the house in my absence. He told me at the end of the training, when I raised concerns, that ******* would have to be crated when I was not walking or training him. This was the exact opposite of what I had asked for. I did not readily have $4,000 to give to this company, I was desperate to be able to keep the puppy I rescued. Now I am without the puppy, and in intense financial hardship as a direct result of the payments made to CCC. Again, I am not asking for anywhere close to a full refund. I do not expect the security deposit back, nor do I want a refund for the additional week of boarding/training that CCC provided. I am merely asking for half of the $3,000 I paid CCC to house train ******* because, while he was incredibly well trained after the program, the one thing I needed was not delivered and resulted in me losing the puppy.
  
  Regards,
  
  ***** ******

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩