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I think a lot you are letting your individual experiences effect your overall judgment of this corporation. All fish stores/ pet stores experience these ailments and there will be loss of life at every stage of the handling process. That is the unfortunate side of this hobby. Don't blame Petco, because the moment these fish are removed from their natural environment they are condemned to death in a aquarium. I guarantee you it's 10 x's worse at most importer's and vendor's facilities. I worked for Petco for many years and the one thing Petco has over most LFS's is that they are very strict on who they order their livestock from. What you see as a consumer is that you want a very exotic fish and most LFS will stock what you want and you bank on them to keep their husbandry up to offer you a healthy specimen. Often time the problems arise during the care at the vendor's facility (i.e. health & stress issues) or during the transit to the store (improper handling by Fedex/UPS, bad temp etc). But you don't see this and you blame the store employees, because they don't have the adequate experience as most hobbyist do to id what was the cause of the problem or what the problem even is. They just have a sick fish on their hands. Petco knows that all their employees can't be as knowledgable about the hobby as we are and that's why they're very selective of their vendors. They know they have to do their best to acquire the healthiest livestock as possible, because the margin of reefkeeping knowledge from store to store is very small. When they notice fish aren't arriving at the stores in acceptable conditions they stop ordering from these vendors.
In my experience I brought a lot of experience to the table when I worked for Petco and I shared it with everyone who worked with me. There are a few improvements I personally would have liked to change, like the use of Ro/DI water and higher powered lighting would go along way. But for the most part everyone knew the importance of water changes and proper feeding. Even if the employees couldn't id a fish they knew how to test water. When we opened our location, our variety of livestock and the care of our fish was unrivaled by any LFS in the city. And yes I have seen Petcos with full blown SPS prop tanks, so the experience is out there. I can't tell you how many times my ex-coworkers have bagged up Perculas and they kept asking prying questions and come to find out the customer has a betta bowl in their shopping cart. So if you're offended by Petco and think they should be boycotted, maybe you should just think twice about keeping pets all together, because all animals have a 100% mortality rate in captivity.
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