I've had experiences of buying three puppies over the internet, two from the Pets4homes website and one from the KC website where my cavalier (Benji) was KC registered was the unhealthiest of my three puppies. In 2007 the ability to buy a puppy was very limited, it was either the newspaper, KC website or word of mouth. So everyone has their own stories about buying a puppy, my other cavalier and goldendoodle were from the internet, I rang up every advert which was posted recently and I got a few answer machines which didn't get any comeback from so I just kept on them and eventually got a person to speak to and she had 6 week cavaliers 2 left so at the weekend we went to view them, we saw the mum and dad which was unusual and chose one, paid the deposit and we went to collect him 2 weeks later.
After my good experience with Pets4homes website I went to them first for my goldendoodle, and she was more tricky to find as initially I wanted a full blown Golden Retriever but the waiting list was too long so I decided on a Goldendoodle where they are more available. So I trawled the site and there were a few puppies available everywhere ( I always do a 100 mile radius). I spoke to one breeder and she was very pushy and had a few females available but I decided she wasn't right for us so that's when I found the breeder of my Goldendoodle and she seemed genuine so we did the 120 mile round trip to find her and we fell in love with them so we chose her, saw the mum and the breeder showed us a picture of the father and collected her at 8 weeks, it was the first time out of three puppies I signed a puppy contract, she was very professional.
Nowadays there are loads of puppy scams around so its important you always see the puppies with the mother, if there are a few mothers there, try to see the mother who has swollen nipples. And always get to speak to the breeder, and never get the breeder to deliver the puppy to you,always go to the home and collect it. There are some big scams around like the one where a person who pretends to own a house, takes the money and gets the puppy from a breeding farm and then gives it to you, in that case the puppy might be very unhealthy. Always be wary of breeders with more than one breed, then it could be quite suspicious. It's better for a breeder to concentrate on one breed because breeding dogs is hard work.
This is my personal opinion
