Live arrival guarantee & refunds

Every animal is guaranteed to arrive alive and in the condition described on its listing. If an animal arrives dead, we will refund the full purchase price or supply a replacement animal of equivalent value — your choice.

The guarantee applies when all of the following are true: delivery was accepted on the first attempt, someone was present to receive the package or it was held for pickup at the courier depot, and the claim is submitted within the window below.

Claims must be submitted within two hours of delivery, by email to drew@thegeckco.com, and must include:

• Clear photographs of the animal, unhandled, inside the opened shipping container
• A photograph of the shipping box, the insulation and the heat or cool pack
• The courier tracking number and the registry number of the animal

The two hour window exists because a reptile's condition changes quickly once it leaves controlled packaging, and photographs taken later cannot establish whether a loss occurred in transit or after delivery. Approved claims are refunded to the original payment method within 5 business days.

A reservation may be cancelled for a full refund at any time before a shipping date has been booked. Because nothing ships until you confirm a date with us by email, there is always a window in which you can cancel.

Once a shipping date is booked and the courier label is purchased, the animal is committed to travel. Cancellation at that point refunds the purchase price less actual shipping costs already incurred.

We do not accept returns of live animals. This is standard practice among responsible breeders: an animal that has been in another collection cannot be reintroduced to ours without risking the health of every animal here.

If an animal is not what you expected, contact us. We would rather talk through a rehoming or a partial resolution than have an animal end up somewhere unsuitable.

We ship overnight, Monday to Wednesday only, and only into safe temperature windows at both the origin and the destination. If forecast conditions are unsafe we postpone, at no cost to you, until they are not.

A postponement is not a cancellation and does not affect your purchase. If a delay becomes unacceptable to you, the full refund terms above still apply because no shipping has been booked.

Once an animal has arrived alive and healthy, its ongoing health depends on husbandry we do not control, so we cannot guarantee it. We do provide husbandry support for the life of the animal at no charge — see our care guide.

If an animal develops a problem in the first 30 days that you believe originated with us, contact us with photographs and we will work with you in good faith.

If something has gone wrong, email us first. We answer every message ourselves and we would far rather resolve a problem directly than through a card dispute. A chargeback filed without contacting us removes our ability to fix the issue.