What I find amazing is that so many people will absolutely blast a store like petco because of the way they keep their animals and be adamantly opposed to buying any animals from there but they have no problems buying their cheap tanks and supplies. My feelings have always been if the store keeps their animals in such horrible conditions that you would never buy a live animal from them you shouldn't be buying ANYTHING from them. Back before you could get everything on line I had one customer give me his pair of leopard geckos he had had for 10 years because when he moved the only store that was close to him he could get supplies at was a petco and he refused to do business with them because of the way they kept their animals. I should add that so far, I don't feel that anyone who has posted to this thread has necessarily said this, its just something that usually comes up in threads like this.

As far as them being a big reason people are not interested in pets I say on the contrary. The big box stores get more people into pets every day than the small stores do in a month. I got far more customers once a petco opened up near me because they got people into the hobby (mostly aquatics but reptiles and amphibians as well) and when they couldn't satisfy those customers those customers sought out people who could help. Two of my better customers were petco employees who didn't hesitate to send people my way. I sold hundreds upon hundreds of Angelfish because these two people sent anyone looking for them my way rather than sell them their own. A lot of these were people that didn't even know I existed before petco got them into the hobby.