Comments regarding rarepalmseeds.com

On May 27, I made a purchase for $500+ . As of today,
and numerous emails requesting ship tracking numbers they have ignored all of my requests. My customer no. is 34808, invoice 0804761. They immediately charged my credit card in May and I have never heard from them again. It is impossible to resolve this situatiuon when they are ignoring the problem. I still don't have the seeds I ordered.

Make a really long story short, they owe me $840.00 (30,000 seeds) which they scammed me out of. My only email reply was that I will receive them soon.
On top of that, recently I get a phone call from my c/c company saying this company is trying to run my c/c #'s for $3,000, then $2,000 when I never purchased anymore from them.
BUYER BEWARE **** SCAMMERS****
NEVER BUY FROM RAREPALMSEED.COM

"

Dear Mr. Wang,
the way we see this problem is that we would be happy to deliver the remaining goods to you at any time, but you refuse to have them delivered directly to you for a reason unknown to us. We have tried to explain this problem to you over the phone, but you do not seem to want to understand.

The $3000 and $2000 charges we tried to run was for a recent order you placed (order ID: 919-124-6887, $5500, Jan 24th 2008), which you subsequently put on hold. I will happily give more details if you do not remember your order.

Both of these issues have nothing to do with scamming and I would ask you to refrain from such accusations or we will have to consider taking legal action against you.

Best, rarepalmseeds.com"

My company is a small growing, retail, mail order and wholesale operation. We also are expanding into bananas and palms and have dealt with a number of seed companies in the EU and the US.

On Jan 31, 2007 I placed a order for a large number of palm seed from this company (order # 2226-131-21107) which totaled over $1000 worth of seed.

After placing the order a confirmation email was sent including a summary of my order. So far, so good.

On Feb 08 - they requested my USDA import cert, which I supplied.

On Feb 13 - My credit card was billed. When my card was billed it was charged in Euros. Every reference to funds on this web site is given in US Dollars, including the total on my order confirmation that was emailed to me. The total amount in US dollars on my card was much higher than the amount on the order. I wrote it off due to the phyto cert and shipping and insurance costs, but it was still significantly higher. They did not send me an invoice reflecting the total order costs. This obfuscation can lead to a lot of abuse and I couldn't understand why a German company would want to list costs in US $ instead of Euros.

On Mar 08 - I requested a status update along with a tracking number if the order had been shipped.

On Mar 12 - I recieved a one line reply stating that it had shipped on Feb 20 via USPS and a tracking number. I thought this was odd - USPS instead of German Post, it didn't make much sense. The tracking number was not recognized by USPS.

On May 03 - After still not recieving the shipment - I requested an update and also stating the tracking number was useless.

On May 10 - I recieved a reply that it looks like the order was lost and they would trace it from there.

On Jun 16 - After not hearing anything back from the company - I requested a credit be applied to my credit card - this was beyond ridiculous.

On Jul 09 - after getting no response from the company, I wrote a long email requesting more information, my money back or my seed - which I still would have preferred. I actually ended up sending several of the same email by mistake in a shotgun effect after my email account had gone haywire.

On Jul 12 - I recieved a generic email that had my actual invoice attached to it. The email included no other information addressing my order status or resolution. It took 5 months just to send the invoice.

On Jul 14 - I replied requesting a status.

Today Aug 11 - No reply or response. They have ran the time limit out on my credit card so I could not charge back the charges and quit communicating with me at about the time that the limit ran out.

I had done some basic research on the company plus they were recommended in such reference manuals as Betrock's 'Cold Hardy Palms'. Since I had dealt with numerous other seed companies, I figured this company would be a good one to build a working relationship with.

Scouring the website there were a few red flags that I should have recognized. There are quick to point out on their site that they are shipping experts world wide, the biggest, best, etc. Under a paragraph titled 'Customer Satisfaction' which is on their front page, they link in testimonials with people who are just bubbling and giddy to be priviledged enough to do business with this company. But when you dig deeper into their site, the disclaimers basically state that they are not responsible for anything other than taking your money. No guarantee of delivery is ever implicitly stated nor how customer resolution issues would be addressed or resolved.

Normally when a company goes out of their way to pat themselves on the back yet backs away from responsibility I shy away from them.

I normally don't like to complain publicly about a mail order company since I am one myself and know how quickly problems can be compounded. Since the shipper is the only one who can turn in a claim, I have little recourse. Especially since they won't provide any details at all including shipping details. Since my experience with this company, other palm books that I have read have alluded to hints about the integrity of the owner of this company. At a minimum they have some of the sorriest customer service that I have experienced. They appear to treat their customers as a minor nusiance other than to market a good game to and walk away with your cash (read the other feedbacks on this page, I wish I had). When a company points fingers and blames everybody else and refuses to take responsibility then that should be a strong indication of how they operate.

Other than this feedback mechanism then my last resort will be to file an International Wire Fraud complaint with the postal services, so I have little hope of ever seeing my $1088.72 again.

My strong advice is to steer clear of this company if you are in the US. There are much better and more reputable palm seed dealers to deal with here.

Caveat Emptor - Let The Buyer Beware

Have ordered seeds twice from this company. Both times the seeds have looked wonderfully fresh. Had great success with the washingtonias; limited with most others. But I am a beginner and was expecting it to be difficult.

Have just put my newest seeds into their baggies after soaking them (only two floaters out of eighty) so I will report on germination later.

My Order :

Dear Customer,
Thank you for your order dated 02-07-2006 at 00:57. We hereby confirm receipt of your order as detailed below. (Please keep this e-mail for your records, as you will not receive a written invoice with your delivery):

My first message to Rare Palm Seeds:

Dear Service

I have not recieved my order yet. It has been 10 days. Please could you let me know the status of it. Order details below.

Many thanks
*************

Response from Rare Palm Seeds:

Thank you very much for your mail. Unfortunately there will be a delay in processing your order as Mr. Spanner is abroad travelling at the moment. The seeds will be shipped at the end of July.

Best regards,

Silke
--

DELIVERY TIMES:
All goods deliverable from the warehouse are generally dispatched within seven working days. Once dispatched, delivery within the E. U. takes 3 – 5 working days, and for products delivered to other countries up to 4 weeks. Please do not submit delivery status queries before the expiry of these periods. With inquiries about your order, please be sure to include the order number and the purchaser's name.

DAMAGE TO PACKAGING:
If your parcel is damaged on arrival, we recommend that you make an immediate claim for damages to the delivery agent and have this claim confirmed in writing. This is the simplest way of making a claim.


Second message to Rare Palm Seeds at the end of July:


Hello

I am writing with regards to the order I place for some palm seed. My concern is that the viability will be affected now as they should be very fresh when sown. Please let me know what you will be doing about this. I am paying quite a ot of money for these seeds and I want them to be in top condition. Can you let me know when these seeds were harvested?

I hope you understand my concerns.

*********
No Reply............


Last message from me 06-Aug

Please can you let me know the status of my order placed on 2nd July. You did not reply to my last e-mail and I am left wondering if I am ever to received my seeds. Please can you tell me what is happening.
***********
No reply to this as I assume the order had been despatched and I recieved the seeds a couple of days later.

They should learn to communicate with the customer not leave them hanging wondering if they have just kissed goodbye to their money. I am not giving a negative because I think that what Tobias is doing is very good but the problem is one of communication........Please, Rare Palm Seeds take note and listen to your customers without whom you do not have a business.

"

Our apologies, we are aware that our communication is not always 100% efficient. We are trying to reply to every message, but sometimes we are simply overwhelmed with the amount of e-mails we receive (and that already excludes all the spam messages). We try to concentrate on getting out your orders. Please take into account that we are shipping out hundreds of orders a week, to nearly 150 countries around the world, all with different import regulations that require attention. We handle large quantities of perishable, difficult-to-handle and even more difficult to obtain palm seeds in a large variety that is second to none for good reason. Our website is the most popular palm site on the internet and naturally requires a lot of maintenance as we would like to keep it there and have the best information on palms available for everyone.
Rarepalmseeds is just a small company with 8 employees. Our communication is not outsourced to some call center in a far away place and hiring and training more people to answer all the e-mails we receive is a serious cost factor that will reflect on the cost of seeds you buy.
We think we can offer a good compromise between cost and service and hope you will be easy on us even if you are not getting a reply to every e-mail as you should. Its not because we are rude or lazy, just very busy."

I ordered about seven different seed small packs from this company. My order arrived after 17-18 days, which I consider logical. I must say that ALL the packs contained more than 10 seeds, which is the quantity of the normal pack, and one even contained about 18 seeds (great). Now, after 2 months that I've placed my seeds in containers and with constant ambient heat between 22 - 35C, the results are the following :

Sabal causiarum : 11 germinated out of 14.
Bangalow Palms : 4 germinated out of 14
Arenga Engleri : 4 germinated out of 12
Roystonea Regia : 3 germinated out of 16
Roystonea Borinquena : none out of 18
Euterpe Edulis : none out of 15
Musa Sikkimensis banana : 2 out of 14

I can't say that the germination results are too great, but seem more or less ok, although I expecting roystonea borinquenas to have germinated (at least some) by now. The rest of the seeds appear in good condition though, so I'll keep waiting.

One thing I have to say is that just minutes after I placed my order in their site, I emailed them asking if I could add another seed pack in my order. They replied that I could and I replied right back asking to add a phoenix rupicola. But my addition never arrived.

Overall, though, I'm fairly satisfied from my first purchase and I will definitely buy again from them in the future.

"

Your original order was shipped mid January, not an unfair delay. After your call, a replacement was shipped on Feb. 21st, which should arrive any day. Please blame any shortcomings beyond this on the Greek postal system."

Last year I ordered small packets. 3 packets of Ensete perrieri, and 1 packet of Musa cheesemanii. I had 100% of my Musa cheesemanii germinate, and none of my E.perrieri germinate. Since this is the first introduction of the new Ensete from Madigasgar it may need special germination temps, who the heck knows, but if takes 2 years to germinate then I'll still be happy. I've had R.hystrix take up to three years to germinate, and some can take longer! I never give up on seeds, although some of them have shorter viability than others, and I reccomend people research what ones those are and buy them fresh. Some palm and banana seeds are very tough to germinate.
Pretty much every company I have ordered palm seeds has sent some crap seeds, so when I get some I either complain if they are expensive, forget about it, or just pout.

Ordered my seeds in Late December. After waiting 2 weeks longer than the web site tells you to wait for order to arrive, still had nothing.
I e-mailed and asked them about the seeds I payed for and they told me that the order had not been sent out do to one of the seeds not being in stock. I responded and asked them to kindly e-mail me when they were shipped. They told me thay could not do that. When I asked why they couldn't at least have the kindness to e-mail me, they then told me they HAD been shipped out.
I did receive them about a week later.
I ordered the "Cold Hardy Packet".
None of the Butia Yatay have popped.
None of the Trithinax have popped.
One of the Hystrix has popped.
One of the Nannorhops has popped.
4 of the Sabal Minors have molded away and had to to be tossed.
3 of the Phoenix have molded away and had to be tossed.
I got three free Phoenix seeds from a guy and sowed in the exact same medium and exact same heat, all three popped in 3 weeks. So it is NOT the medium I am useing.
DO NOT BUY FORM THIS GUY!!!!!!!! He has junk!!!

"

Did it ever occur to you that some palm seeds may take a long time to sprout? Our instructions say up to 2 years, even if you do it right. Perhaps patience is needed here more than anything."

I have bought 6 times from rarepalmseeds various seeds with a total of 318,60$. My first order was in August 4, 2003 and my last one on Ocober 4, 2005.
All orders arrived with more than one month delay. One particulary was 2 months late.
I had mixed results from the seeds that i received: for more than 50% of species i had 0% germination.
In the begining, i thought it was my mistake, but later when i had in the same time, same species seeds from RPS and another source, stil RPS's seeds had zero germination although other sources's seeds were germinating ok.
I reached to the conclusion that you only have chances from them when you buy seeds signed "new" next to their catalog - the others are just not viable anymore. This explains why in some not "new" seeds they send more seeds than you order.
Don't buy seeds unless they are "new" signed!

About after sales support:
One of the few seeds that were really fresh , was Kerriodoxa elegans: they were already germinated when I got them. Only that most of the sprouts, radicle - tap roots, were broken. This happened of course because the large seeds were in just a plastic bag, hiting each other, causing this miserable result.
When i emailed them, reporting my problem and asking for help (but without asking a replacement), they replied "I'm sorry, the seeds with broken roots are dead, and they cannot continue sprouting anymore". These k.elegans seeds cost me 19$.
But i ordered seeds, not living plants without proper packaging! so that was their fault.

Also many of their seeds, are getting mould as soon as you try to start them, mainly because they are in plastic humid bags when they ship them and without good cleaning.

In my last order, i received DOA: dypsis baronii seeds that had already green mould in their bag, and p.silvestris that half of them were already rotted. I emailed them, but I never got a reply back.

I'm sorry to say, but I am very dissapointed from them, and it's a pitty because they really have very big selection of seeds.
They seem that they don't dare to put old seeds out of their list, and causing customers to loose their money among with their nerves!
I was about to write a negative report since my previous order but I gave them a last try, that now i regret.

"

You should have inquired or complained about your lack of success. We don't claim that all seeds work every time. It is in the nature of palm seeds that many of them are not easy to sprout. For this reason we are not shy sending replacements, but we need to hear about them.

On the Kerriodoxa seeds with broken radicles, why did you not ask for replacements? We surely would have offered them had you informed us that most of that item was damaged.

As for shipping seeds damp, in plastic bags, this is the only way to keep many palm seeds viable. Many palm seeds are tricky items. It can happen that one or more seeds in a bag get moldy in transit. When you receive seeds it is therefore a good idea to float the seeds in water and clean them gently if necessary. With some exceptions, good seeds will sink, bad seeds will float.
We were unable to find your e-mail complaining about this. We have a very large volume of e-mails to handle, and a spam mail problem like everyone. If you don't get a reply, please send your mail again."

Only made one order to this company about 1 year ago. My germination rate exceeded/met expectations with all species. Downside was that it took about 2 months to receive my seeds.

I ordered $168 worth of palm seeds on June 29th. According to the website, it can take a month to get orders to the US.

Well, it is August 23rd and I am still waiting. My emails inquiring about my order were answered with one line each time - "You should get your order in a few days."

I've emailed a cancellation request and will get a refund from my CC company, since I never got the promised seeds.


Lisa

S. Florida

"

We did have a problem with a particular batch of orders held up in the mail. Please be aware that many time consuming factors of mailing seeds from Europe to the US are not in our hands, such as phytosanitary certificate, US customs inspection, USDA inspection, delays in the postal system etc.
Please understand that we can't accept cancellation for seed already mailed.
We assume you eventually got your seeds and that they were ok since there was no chargeback to your credit card. We hope they will do well for you. "

OVERCHARGED ME. I ordered $100 worth of palm seeds and my CC was chgd $174.96 !!! I was expecting MAYBE $25 for phyto and MAYBE $15 for shipping global priority. I haven't got my seeds yet, but i'm terrified to think all that money.....down the drain.....If ....IF I get decent germination I might change my rating to Neutral. I will NEVER give out my CC number ever again! Man.....buying seeds is a gamble. You're gambling they will sprout.

I ordered seeds two times from this company.

First time order:
Most of the seeds had heavy fungal contamination when arrived, because were packed in plastic bags at very high seed humidity.
Order was delayed for 2 months but shipment was done via a very costly speedmail - no info about the shipment costs at the time of order. You give away your cc-data and shipment costs are added without prior info.
My customer complaint first was ignored, then the owner of the company told me to send the seeds back. He told me that they do not perform germination tests on most of the seeds because of the costs.
I payed for certified shipment and neither heared anything from the company nor received a refund or replacement.

Second time order was done via my daughter
I received 1000 Musa velutina, 1000 Ensete ventricosum and
200 Woodyetia bifurcata.
All the seeds exhibited zero germination

I say hands away from this company
They have no custumer service and the seed quality is very low, reflecting the very low prices of standard varieties.
If you pay a few Dollars for 1000 seeds of Banana you will get shit because nobody can harvest, clean aseptically, package and ship high quality seeds for such low price. For sure they get most of the seeds from Asia. People there let the seed flesh rot in order to clean the seeds. Under this uncontrolled septic conditions heavy fungal contamination is a normal finding and prolonged high humidity and temps may start the germination process that is stopped upon drying, leading to dead seeds upon arrival.

I do not stand alone with my findings, there are some people more, experts in growing, like me, having had bad experiance. (Info on request)
It´s not the costs for the seeds alone, there are costs for the time you waste, costs for substrate, costs for your nerves.

But is there a really good alternative on the field of palm and banana seeds?

Please no advertice at DG
If somebody has one, please send me a personal note

"

About problems with the first order we had a lengthy exchange with "semillas". Seeds were shipped exactly 2 weeks from the date of order by regular airmail, for which we charged, at cost, $20 to the Canary Islands, certainly not outrageous in my perception (we do encourage our customers to ask for shipping costs on wholesale orders as they differ vastly between destinations all over the world). After a complaint about fungus, the seeds were eventually returned to us and it turned out they had never actually been sown. We could not find anything wrong with them, they fared well in a viability test, and we offered "semillas" to return them to him. Since we got no reply, the seeds were sown and we got reasonable results from them, good if taking into account the months that they had beed sitting around.
On the second order we never received a complaint.
That we do not perform germination tests is an outright lie. In fact we test every single batch of seeds for viability and sow sample batches of most in our own nursery, not many seed dealers can claim that. Our seeds come from all over the world, not just from Asia. In fact, in "semillas's" case they came from Chile, Brazil, Italy, Madagascar, Australia and South Africa. Apart from the fact that none of the seeds were actually from Asia, I would like to question "semillas's" expertise on how seeds are cleaned in Asia.
We rest content knowing that most people have good results with our seeds, otherwise they would hardly be coming back for more."

By far, the best company for hard to find palm and banana seeds. seeds arrived quickly, were of excellent condition and had excellent germination! A+

I have ordered seeds from Rare Palm Seeds at least 6 different times since 2001. Seeds usually arrive promptly and the quality is excellent, I get germination rates that consistently exceed what is to be expected from each species. One shipment back in 2002 was lost in the mail and they replaced it at no cost. A very professional company that sells top quality (and hard to get) seeds.

I've ordered from these folks three times. Orders were in excess of one hundred dollars. All of the orders were recieved in a timely manner and I had a viability of better than seventy percent. Unfortunately the squirrels in my yard got most of my young palms. I recommend this vendor.

I ordered 100 Trachycarpus takil seeds from Rare Palm Seeds in 2001.I used various methods to start them but not one of the seeds sprouted. The seeds did come to me from some address in Texas. I dont know, maybe the seed packet was x-rayed or something in our country. Ive never had any trouble getting Trachycarpus seeds to sprout in the past.I did e-mail Rare Palm Seeds about this but never got a reply.

I have used this comp for lots of orders and will continue.it may take 4-6 weeks(germany to usa) to get seed (with import permit) but all species arrive at once and viability has been spectacular.had one order lost in mail for 2 mths and most lost viability ,I emailed tobias spanner which wasn't the first and he has always returned emails,He has guaranteed the order and will send replacement order as soon as they are to be offered again.And as far as price he is the cheapest i have found for rare palm seed.I reccommend this comp highly.Have ordered from several dealers and he's the best jason S FL

They advertise that they sell banana and other odd seeds. They're based in Germany; the person I dealt with, I believe, is British. I ordered seeds from them, paid for them by visa, and they were here within 10 days. Whether or not the seeds are viable, I can't say because Bismarckia take two or more months to germinate and I've just started these.