That would be a resounding YES. :yes:
Precisely what I was thinking…:yes:
OK. I’ve always wanted to write this to someone. My big moment has come!
Drumroll . . . .
Read For Clarity!
If these are indeed magickal horses as the price would command, shouldn’t they be able to carry any weight over any distance? I thought that was a general feature of magick horses. Then again, maybe these are 1/2 butterfly. 300 lbs would crush them like… bugs. 
Or maybe they’re not magick at all… maybe the prices are high because this way we get the opportunity (nay, the privilege!) to tame them with our love. :yes:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.virginiasporthorses.com
The wayback machine can show you lots of cached pages from her site!
http://web.archive.org/web/20050130010529/http://virginiasporthorses.com/
This seems to be an earlier incarnation of her policies.
X- send her an email and say you are interested in a particular horse. See what happens. Unless you are defending her due to knowing her, you should get the same answer others have gotten.
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x–I don’t see that the $100 loading surcharge is only for those trying to load in a 2 horse or other small, enclosed trailer. I quote: “we charge a $100 trailer loading surcharge for those who intend to pickup their horses themselves. We will happily assist you for up to one person/hr (i.e., 1 person 1 hr = 2 people 1/2 hr ea). If your horse loads in less than 1/2 hour with one person’s assistance, this surcharge will be refunded… After 1 hour, we will be happy to arrange alternate shipping arrangements.”
This clearly says all who intend to pick up their horses themselves have to pay this surcharge. Then if the horse loads quick & easy you get your money back. Huh. I wouldn’t count on that.
And yes, it did quite clearly state that the $500 had to be paid before you came to see the horses in person. It doesn’t seem to be on the cached policy page, but it was on one page earlier–she went into more detail there about why this fee was necessary–something about how they have to transport the horse you wish to see from one of their other farms to the home farm & I forget what else. If you don’t want the horse you came to see, you’re welcome to use the $500 toward the purchase of another horse on the farm–but you don’t get your money back if you don’t buy anything there at all. If you don’t want to pay that $500, then you buy sight unseen, off the website.
Apparently, UDBB got a notice from VSH threatening legal action if the thread wasn’t removed.
She must not have seen this one yet! (Or COTH knows she’s full of hot air)
I’d love to see how she would defend some of her practices in court, especially the altering of a Coggins test.
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I think that she should pay all of us a share of the $500 100’s of people pay each year to look at her horses - we have after all given her huge amounts of advertising for no fee - not even a non-refundable deposit.
What’s the COTH record for the most number of posts in the fewest days?
And are there any awards for crashing some one else’s website, without doing anything but talking about it?
:eek: Oh, please, please tell me you didn’t just go there…not only are they magickal, the only way to train them is thru LOOOVE (and a big kohlarabi stick available en masse only
apparently? do you know for a fact that udbb was threatened? fact? frankly, i think if they were asked to take a thread down, they would take it down.
i agree that some of the stuff is a frank statement of what some other businesses would do to keep them from spending time with tire kickers and getting put to a lot of extra trouble for a possible buyer.
but i also feel that alot of it is over the top. a five hundred dollar payment to go to the farm? forget it, i am done with them right there.
i actually was going to go down there and buy a horse off them as a project horse, but i saw that 500 bucks, the charge for loading, and considering what else i’d have to pay - for the trip down there, the hotel, etc…and don’t you DARE suggest that then i can’t afford to buy a horse - you opinionated old bat, i make about 3 times what you do in a year - and i CAN afford a horse, but what i WON’T do is spend money on something i don’t NEED to spend it on, there isn’t another farm i’ve heard of in 40 yrs that charges five hundred bucks to go and look at horses.
most people weed out tire kickers without doing that. ask a few questions on the phone, that’s a lot easier and a lot more polite.
changing coggins to avoid paying for a new one with your name on it? that’s most likely a problem - my legal pal isn’t an expert in coggins, i just said it is for a reportable disease and that the coggins couldnt be altered, he said then that extends to all the info on the coggins. not just the horse info. but is that right? probably, but not sure.
alot of the wording on the post is just so rude, i wouldn’t want to do business with the person. it doesn’t matter that the stuff is legal or not - most people, including myself, don’t know much about law, and don’t get reliable legal information by asking friends even if they are lawyers (there are a lot of specialties first of all, and actually a lot of research has to be done before a lawyer can really say what’s up)…we just get a wierd feeling about the business.
the stuff about older women and being fat…it’s all just so unnecessary, and rude. frankly, about 30 percent of the USA is overweight by some measures even more, plus a lot of people with enough money to buy a horse are older, plus tons of women buy horses after having kids…so her odds of having a fat lady customer who used to ride and is now a mother are - well, pretty high.
that means her odds of pissing customers off with stream-of-consciousness crap like that on her website is also pretty high.
Too, the thing about help loading, see, it makes more sense when you realize these horses just AREN’T going to be easy to load at all - they’re basically brumbies alot of them, and they are going to get MORE money from people who show up even with a stock trailer, because alot of them aren’t going into a stock trailer either - if you have chutes and a dirt ramp, for example, and run the horses in en masse to large shipping type trailer, it is a WHOLE different thing to try to get them into a small step up stock horse trailer with no dirt ramp and no chutes.
MOST sellers have a far better worded policy. And frankly, the prices for unhandled, unbroke draft crosses that barely load and are field-kept and a saddle slapped on them a time or two - those prices are INSANE. i can buy horses up here, not pay the 500, get free delivery, have the horse cleaned up for free, for a third of what most of theirs are.
I’d just keep it realistic:
"We sell young draft crosses from Canadian PMU farms. These horses have had a few months of handling at most, and about 15-20 rides at most, and are field kept at our farm in rough board conditions. We worm them, but their teeth haven’t been done and we do only basic shoeing. The horses all have had very basic training only. You will need assistance to load these horses into a regular trailer. To be able to sell these horses at low prices, we are trying to keep our costs down and we do charge for extra services such as loading, grooming and hoof trimming. Our goal is to provide people with nice inexpensive horses. Please be prepared for the type of horses and the amount of training they have. If you are a beginner, please plan on getting assistance from a trainer. Even our sensible draft crosses need training and beginners will need help with this. "
I bet if they presented themselves that way, they’d sell 3000, instead of 1000 a year. I feel the real problem on that web site is the ATTITUDE that comes across, which frankly, is just awful.
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Yes, he posted on another board that he had received a letter about legal action that asked to have the thread removed.
SLC2, the admin posted this information himself on another bb, like yaya said. 
I don’t understand, and I admit there is a lot about that operation that baffles me. If people were simply discussing the myriad of rules, restrictions, disclaimers, etc. THEY THEMSELVES posted on their own website, what on earth could she sue over??? My husband is an attorney and I’m tempted to wake him up and get his input, but honestly, he already thinks horse people are insane and this will only further support his theory!
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411…sadly your hubby is correct in his equine-insanity idea. :lol:
But it’s a fun crazy!
what is the udbb?
link anybody?
it took me 1.5 hours to read 24 hours of posts, that has to be a record!
how about we start a paypal donation so that we can raise the 500 and send an undercover cother in to shop???
then i was thinking, if the 500 can be applied to any purchase for 12 mos, if you don’t find a horse on your first visit, do you have to pay 500 again to schedule a 2nd visit to look at horses months later and then have 1000 to shop with?
btw, for selling 1000 horses a year, i was suprised that a lot of the horses on the website had been listed for more than 6 months…some more than a year…
