Have any of you bought horses previously from Equiporium Sport Horse’s/Genene in the UK? We personally did not have a good experience with them as they misrepresented some of the horses they sold us. Was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and what your recourse options were. Thanks!
I know enough to know that I wouldn’t recommend them. In 6 lifetimes.
Em
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No experience with them personally but I would take a look at your contract- where would a dispute be domiciled and was it an ‘as is’ sale? If domiciled in the UK you may need to consult a local attorney/solicitor to review the contract and see what the best recourse would be. I would specifically see if an ‘as is’ sale has legal limitations wherever the contract is domiciled.
Additionally- if you haven’t already, you could reach out to them and discuss your issues; as they have a large online presence I suspect they would be hesitant to ignore you for fear of bad PR. If they are unwilling to work with you, I would leave a detailed review. At a minimum, it would help the next person considering them
We have reached out over the past few months to the business and owner directly with our concerns and either received irate defensive responses or we were entirely ignored (while they continued posting sales ads and my personal riding results with other horses as a positive “reference” for their business). We were advised after 6 months of owning the horse our legal options are limited.
A negative review actually was posted for them this week and now their Facebook page is no longer existent.
I found some not so great reviews of Genene’s Equiporium clothing business as well where the customer service often ignored any complaints.
Hi there,
My mom purchased a mare from them for me to ride/show about two years ago now. I would say that the horse is 99% exactly how they represented her, but of course when someone is trying to sell anything, it can be embellished. Feel free to PM me for more details. Overall I think we had a pleasant experience and absolutely love our horse. Would we do it again? Perhaps if we actually went over there and tried some horses.
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I bought a horse from her as well, and I love the horse that I got. I agreed of course it was Embellished a little bit but 99% accurate. I did find her a bit abrasive and Bossy. I did not really care for her personality .
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You would have to have an experienced equine lawyer, and the passage of time kind of rules out some things. Is it behavioral or medical that you feel has been misrepresented?
I think an x-ray that is obviously “not this horse” or a non-disclosed surgery or cataract or something would be a solid reason for a false sale claim. But it’s pretty difficult to prove that it’s been misrepresented behaviorally after quarantine, shipping to a new country, presumably a couple of weeks off work, change in feed, routine and training schedule… after 6 weeks it’s kind of becoming the horse you made it. They can have one bad fall in a trailer and change their attitude about loading for life, or be super wired with a feed change and less work/turnout.
We originally bought 2 amazing horses from Equiporium and a 3rd horse 6 months later as the first 2 were so great. One horse we originally purchased has always been great and still is but the other horse came up lame 10 months later and has a history of major injuries prior to purchase on both front legs that were not disclosed to us. The third horse was behaviorally misrepresented and has been nothing like the other 2 horses since he’s arrived.
Neither of the two misrepresented horses are currently fit for purpose when purchased as one horse has a medical history of significant injuries that were not disclosed to us during the sales process/vet check and only discovered on an MRI scan a year later when the horse came up lame. We have now had multiple vets and a radiology expert confirm these injuries (NAVICULAR PROBLEMS!) were pre-existing and could not have developed to this degree between showing one day and the first sign of lameness/MRI a few days later. Our vet said these injuries would have caused the horse lameness issues prior to purchase. These injuries didn’t show on the X-rays as they were soft tissue injuries. One of our vets described these injuries as a “ticking timebomb” in this instance. We later found through the horses FEI record that it hadn’t shown for over a year before we purchased it. A friend of ours in a similar situation with their horse said that legally even if Genene/Equiporium didn’t know about the injuries, as the seller they are still responsible and the sale would have been void had we found the injuries earlier.
The vet Genene suggests clients use classified this first horse in his PPE as for the purpose of “General Equestrian” which our vet later explained means a “trail or hack horse” but certainly not specifically a show horse. Our current vet said the horse likely was subjected to lower standards for passing the PPE if this was the stated purpose of purchase. It was explained to us that the sales contracts and PPE forms with terminology like “General Equestrian” that Genene/Equiporium uses are carefully crafted to protect her legally if things fall apart with the horses she sells after the fact. This horse is now in rehab thru next spring with no guarantee that the horse will return to a full International Derby circuit. On the other horse’s PPE, who’s been sound, it says the purpose of purchase is Show Jumping/Equitation. Unclear why the horses have different purposes of purchase when they were bought for the same thing and Genene has provided no explanation.
The other misrepresented horse was bought in December 2018 for my mom. This horse was NOTHING like he had been when I tried him. He was far too much horse for my mom to jump and was very spooky in and out of the arena, over-jumped everything, and is essentially a professional ride at 3’6”. This maybe wouldn’t be a problem if he was purchased for me but he was sold to us specifically for my mother who has been riding 20+ years but can not afford an injury. The sales ads for this horse and info from Genene directly stated this horse was a perfect gentleman and extremely well behaved. We believed this as that’s how the first 2 horses were. When we sent the videos of this horses behavior to Genene, her rider Sebastien said that they knew this horse to be cheeky, which suggests to me the horse behaved similarly in their care as they were not surprised by the videos. This horse was particularly badly behaved with male riders which leads me to believe there was more to the story on him as he seemed more frantic and worried than usual with men on him.
Additionally, when we visited we had tried a few other horses. One horse the vet told us to pass on as it had a severe wind issue and wouldn’t be suitable for the hunters here or to re-sell. Another horse we liked but passed on ended up having congenital heart problems that Genene later disclosed to us as she tried to sell the horse to us at a lower price.
While Genene has largely ignored our messages, especially when we shared the MRI report, she has since been reaching out to my personal local riding friends on Facebook in order to directly message them. She states “friends of theirs” (meaning myself) have bought “lovely horses” from Equiporium. While using myself as a reference, she has attempted to sell multiple horses to my close friends while full-well knowing that we are in fact very unhappy with our experience. Thankfully, most of my friends who Genene has contacted, then contact us to get more detail.
The horse coming lame 10 months into your ownership is probably not something you can sue over, because it’s been doing it’s job and staying sound for nearly a year. It would be difficult to prove that the injury was not your fault This is why it’s often recommended to get YOUR OWN vetting, YOUR OWN x-rays etc… realistically if the damage was only detected via MRI, like who does that for prepurchases and how many of these findings are incidental? (ie, a lot of people probably have horses with “kissing spines” but they don’t know until they go looking for them.
Again, super difficult to prove in court over what is essentially a property case. There’s a lot of precedent here in the UK that after a given amount of time and change in the animal’s life, it is no longer the responsibility of the seller.
FWIW, her behavior after the fact sounds a bit shitty, and it may impact her business in the future. But a lot of this is really a good reason why buying overseas is such a gamble. Did the contract prescribe where disputes would be solved? What sort of outcome are you hoping for? I think your best bet is to find a lawyer in the US with equine experience and go from there.
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I would not recommend them, after talking to several other people that have had poor experiences similar or worse then mine I finally realized how unprofessional and [edit] they truly are. This difficult part with discerning how bad they are is that one of my horse’s is an absolute gem (given the horse was much greener that we expected when we bought the horse and overpriced to say the least) but has grown tremendously since purchase so I couldn’t be happier with horse #1. However, horse #2 has not turned out to be the horse I though I bought AT ALL. This horse will jump max height two divisions lower than we bought the horse to do. Plus, the horse is not very amateur friendly like we intended the horse to be so it has been difficult trying to sell the horse. At this point I feel bad for the horse because we had vet work done and the vet says she is shocked how well the horse has done considering the problems were a “ticking time bomb”. At this point we have lost a ton of money on the horse and the horse is also in a poor position because it cannot do the job we expected it to do. We are trying to find a home for the horse with a less demanding horse show life or if needed we will retire the horse. It just seems like Equiporium is getting away with a lot of shady things because the problems only arise after the sale. It’s just so odd both my horses were completely different when I tried them. [edit] Also, horse #2 has serious behavioral issues it came with (not a mean horse in the slightest, very sweet horse) but severely mentally traumatized from something, my trainer and I believe the horse was beaten because it used to not go near anyone that was standing near a jump or holding a pitchfork or changing jump heights. The horse has gotten much better but still, I feel so bad for it. And I’m never buying a horse from them again.
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