sent me an email today that they are having a lily sale....$100 worth of lilies for $25....Does this sound to good to be true?????
Brecks
Yes.
My experience with Breck's is that it's always too good to be true.
Check them out on Garden Watchdog
When over half the comments are negative Beware.
http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/183/
They sell the worst merch. Beware.
Van Bourgundien is another rip off. Some gardeners have good luck with bulbs from VanB but I can attest to horrible plants.
I have known about Brects for years and never go there.They are blocked on my email.
I've only had 100% success with VB bulbs Every one has been true to name.
Their plants do not share the success story here.
Breck's has always been disappointing and yet some people do very well with them. I'd rather spend my money at Faraway Flowers and B & D Lilies. Their bulbs are superior.
ahhhhmen
I have only bought bulbs from vanborgondien and about 50% are incorrect. The last straw was when they shipped my order when they were in the TEENS! not me, we are typically mild. What little did arrive alive was WRONG and I had to grub it out and throw it away, bulbs are VERY hard to kill out with herbicides. I never bothered to spend my credit after that, too hard and too time consuming to get rid of the wrong thing.
I ordered lilies once from Van B, and they were mostly wrong, and some had rotted. I ordered the Glamini glads, and very few were wrong, and they were in good condition. I would never order from them again, but I fell for the Glaminis, and couldn't find them anywhere else.
How can one company be wrong for so long and still be in business/
Its amazing.
Customers are probably typical and just "eat their losses" and dont get the mistakes corrected and give mail ordering plants a bad name.
It amazes me that nurseries can remain in business when they either send the wrong plants or the wrong bulbs or send at the wrong time as when J & P sent me roses while the earth was still frozen. I think Michigan Bulb Co. must be the worst rated company ever and yet they remain in business.
tHey probably have a larger client list than we could imagine.
I wonder what percent are first timers who never go back.
I repeated the warning to some people and yet they gave in to the "too good to be true" ad but won't return. You'd think word of mouth would be sufficient but obviously it isn't.
Despite all the negatives against MB, Zuzu, the Rose Queen, ordered from them long ago and has thriving clematis.
I bet alot of folks buy from them once or twice and when nothing grows or they look crummy, they think it is their own fault and that they just don't have a green thumb and stop gardening. There are many more non gardeners than gardeners, unfortunately. LOL And those terrible companies just count on that being their client base.
I'd bet you're right.
Imagine having a customer base of people who may never know the joy of gardening due to bad products! It's not what reliable companies would ever want.
Most of those companies just resell imported bulbs and plants and some like Vanborgondien mostly sell to other resellers so the end customer is so far removed from them they never hear back. And there are gardeners who don't even remember what they have, much less where they got it from and keep reordering! But far too many just quit ordering from all mail order and internet sites once they get a bunch of garbage delivered to them.
As I recall, "breck's" is part of the "Garden's Alive" group which has a warerhouse mail order operation outside of Cincinnati in Guilford Indiana. When I last checked on Breck's three years ago or so these 'companies' were all under the same ownership:
Gardens Alive!
Audubon Workshop
Breck's Bulbs
Gurney's Seed & Nursery
Henry Field's Seed & Nursery
Michigan Bulb
mySEASONS Garden Solutions
Spring Hill Nurseries
I have never heard anyone around Cincinnati talk about who exactly owns this enterprise and it is never written up in the papers or the business news here. This isn't surprising given it's business 'scheme', though.
Garden's Alive/Breck's is essentially a mail order sales operation that gathers names and personal info by making offers that we know are too good to be true. What they are really after is your name and address and other information about your purchasing power that they sell to other companies.
Just be careful if you buy from them... o:
p.s. Here is a name and address of the fellow who owns the Garden's Alive enterprise thru the holding company known as 'Scarlet Tanager, Inc.' in case you want to get in touch with him:
Scarlet Tanager, Inc.,
Mr. Niles Kinerk
7602 Hyland Lane, ,
Guilford, IN 47022
This message was edited Apr 13, 2010 9:37 PM