I ordered plants from Harbourcrest Gardens back in March. Not long afterwards there were postings on Gardenweb regarding different people's experience with this company. Compaints coming out the ying yang! I emailed the company with copies of the complaints and indicated that I didn't want the plants. Today two of the eight plants I ordered arrived in the mail.
When I ordered the plants they were listed at $5 for rooted plants. They arrived today and I was charged $8 per plant. Is it legal to raise the price when the website says nothing about, "prices subject to change?" Would you call this "fraud?" What would you do with this situation?
One plant was obviously rooted using hormones and its been rooted UPSIDE DOWN. It has 3 tiny roots! Will this plant grow properly? All the previous leaf shoots are pointed towards the ground indicating that they rooted the cutting upside down. The cutting is less than pencil thin! Very dried out and looking half dead.
Opinions wanted as to how to proceed.
PS. Where is the forum for posting ratings for nurseries or garden centres?
!!!!Really upset!!!!!
on your right hand menu, scroll down to Garden Watchdog.
I read the bad reviews this company has on GW, but to root one upside down?? man! don't know if it will grow properly, I can't see how it will, but ????
Bonnie,
The cutting is only about 4 inches long and the end pointing up is drier and deader than a door knob as we would say here. I don't even know if I can cut above the rooted area and find enough live shoot to make a proper cutting to root again.
me? I'd be on the phone already calling them. :) good luck hon, maybe they need more time to learn about brugs?
How did you pay for them? If by credit card have them reverse the charge. Had they charged you back in March? If you canceled the order it should be no problem. If you are unhappy with shipment that should count and I would think if you order something in March and it comes in August, that is a reason! I would tellthe company to send a call slip so UPS will come pick them up at their expense. And if they don't, you have proof you tried to return them.
The plants were charged to my credit card. They were sent by priority shipment. The pencil thin, dried up cutting rooted upside down was in a 2" pot with the soil completely bone dry. The other plant looks like one they used for propagating cuttings from. The stem is very old wood and over an inch thick. It looks like they just loped the entire top of the plant off and sent me the bottom. There are little tiny leaves emerging from the stem. You can tell because the roots filled a 6 inch pot and its pot bound. They placed the root system with all the potting soil in a plastic baggie. Most of my priority shipping costs were obviously for POTTING SOIL.
I emailed them with a cc. sent to myself asking them to pick up the plants at their expense and to credit my credit card. Lets see how long it takes them to respond to my request.
I like that when they ship "at your expense" and include a lot of heavy things, like pots and dirt and a couple of their heavy catalogs. Hope you can get this straightened out, but imagine they do it all the time, so they are experts.
Oh no. I hope you can get a refund out of them. Upside down. Now that's really bad. I would let my credit card company know and try to cancel the charge. Take a pic of the upside down cutting for proof of their mistake.
this happened to me to with that company, but I recieved a few plants back just last month at theyr costs, so I guess Joyce got burned to, and SHE was the VICTIM this time.
they always say what gets around comes around.
Carmen
Please enter your experience with them at the watchdog
site! It is such a shame that we have so few tropical
plant suppliers and they are such a rip off! I had a
good laugh looking at the catalogue they sent this year-
it said all their plants are well established and many
with buds on them! I was crossing my fingers that they
would have improved but your shipment proves otherwise!!
Lilypond,
Yes their catalogue is a BIG joke! They had dozens of complaints on Gardenweb. We have very few places we can order from here that have quality plants. It may well be worth our while to do group purchases from the US and split the costs of phytosanitary certificates.
Some sites do have good plants and then they sell them in bundled packages of threes ie. Dominion Seed House has wonderful cannas and brugs-EXPENSIVE! The same is true for Versey's-nice canna varieties offered, but again bundled in pkgs of threes-EXPENSIVE.
I posted a comment on Watchdog.
I saw that afterwards. P.S. You've got mail!
I'd be willing to go in on a group purchase...
Logees...Kartuz...Grassy Hill Knoll....gotta clean
the drool off the keyboard!
This message was edited Wednesday, Aug 20th 2:03 PM
Lilypon, here is a fabulous Canadian source: http://www.brugmansiasetc.com/
Thanks TiG-I'm already one of her best customers!!
It's Passifloras like Lady Margaret etc. that don't
come true from seed that we can't get anywhere in this
country! Brug wise no one can beat Liz!!
I'd sure be interested in a group purchase. let me know if you want to organize something for the coming months. D.
I live near Kingston Ontario so am a little out of the loop from all of you west but still very interested.
I received an email from Harbourcrest Gardens. They are sending me a cheque for my purchase. I'm going to take a picture of the brug to indicate that it was rooted upside down!
I think that companies who do mail order from websites should indicate whether or not they have plants in stock and available. Logees does this, and if you still want plants then you know immediately you will have to wait if its not in stock. If the company knows that they don't have plants due to limited cuttings available they only need to post this! It would certainly cut down on the number of complaints they receive and for customers to receive plants that are barely rooted.
Logees has a great looking brug-delicate peach Lorely and it looks yummy. They also have citrus plants that I've wanted for a very long time! I would be into ordering from any of the companies, but I'm not an organizer by any means so if anyone is interested in organizing it, applying for the import permit I would be more than willing to pay for shipping, plant costs etc for their time and trouble.
PS.
Kartuz has Vulcanicola that is to die for! Plus the yellow sang. Our dollar isn't much lower than the US dollar now so some of the rarer types are within our reach in terms of cost.
This message was edited Thursday, Aug 21st 8:19 AM
Why don't you wait Joydie till you move to the states? You will just have to leave or send them on when you move. You must be moving soon. Is your fiance already in the states?
Kell,
He's already in New York. I won't be moving before spring or even later. It depends on so many circumstances.