Comments regarding Seed Savers Exchange

We attempted to purchase one (1) pack of expensive small seeds from this 'nonprofit' company through their checkout & the shipping costs came to be $18! We called them & asked why such a high cost of shipping/handling when the envelope could weigh no more then 1oz. & they said it is calculated according to the amount of money the order is not by weight. For us it was $185 for one pack of 250 small seeds. They said they would adjust the shipping down to $9 for this one time exception. We reluctantly still followed through with the order. The seeds arrived nicely packaged, that we will give credit for but the postage they paid on the envelope was $1.56, still a far cry from the $9 they charged us & they should be embarrassed to call themselves a NONPROFIT if they normally will charge anyone $18 shipping on this ONE pack of seeds. They really need to fix that...but 2 phone calls later, neither time did they seem concerned at all. Reason why we are leaving a negative is because they said the shipping 'discount' we did receive was a one time offer, & if we wanted to purchase again in the future we would be charged the $18!

"On Nov 28, 2011 4:23 PM, Seed Savers Exchange responded with:

Thank you for placing an order with Seed Savers Exchange. To provide a bit of explanation, our shipping costs are 10% of the total charge when the order subtotal exceeds $100. The 10% is to cover not only the shipment, but also the handling/packaging. Since the Snail Flower is a difficult seed to harvest, they are higher priced. In your case, it does create an astronomical shipping total for a small package of seeds. I recall Sarah (your CS rep) pointing this out to me, and recall making adjustments to this order. I don't remember looking at the particular seed that was ordered, therefore the total (cost) of the order didn't reflect the 'size' of the order... and I apologize for not paying closer attention to that. We are in the process of moving to a new ordering software that will allow us to charge actual shipping with a fractional packaging/handling fee to avoid this situation. We try to be fair, and I appreciate you pointing this out, and would be happy to refund your total shipping cost for the inconvenience. "

I order from Seed Savers Exchange every year and have been very happy with my orders. The seeds germinate well, they ship quickly and the varieties are wonderful. They are more expensive than some of the seed companies that I use, but the incredibly beautiful catalog (and great varieties) make up for it. I definitely recommend them.

I just received my order and I received the order in one week, which to me is acceptable since that is about how long it takes to receive an order from the two other online companies I have dealt with recently. I have called them for assistance with my order and found the person to be very friendly and easy to deal with. I would order from them again because of lack of issues with my order and ease of receiving answers to questions.

I ordered seeds from this company last year as a surprise birthday gift for my brother. That order was processed fine, no complaints. This year I ordered a bunch of seeds for myself. The company morphed my mailing and billing addresses into one undeliverable address. Since I filled out 2 separate boxes on the form, I don't see how that happened. When I contacted them about it, it took them 5 days to respond and the response was "well the computer did it". No apology, just sort of a shoulder shrug after they charged my credit card and made up an address. No concern over the delay or possibility of never seeing what I paid for. No "gee, we are sorry for OUR mistake". I won't order from them again. I wanted to really like this company but the response time was too long and now the way they handled their mistake is completely unacceptable.

I was very pleased with my order of seeds. I thought the shipping was a bit high for seeds, they don't weight much, but no complaints other than that. Near 100% germination rate on some tomatoes, not so high on some peppers, but it's hasn't yet been the full two weeks. Love the full color beautiful catalog and easy to order online. Packets are very informative.

Suggestions on the packaging: germination temp and daylight hours requirement. I use grow lights and that would be helpful.

I have ordered over $300 worth of seeds from SSE. Orders have always arrived quickly and the staff has answered questions I have (mostly dumb ones) courteously. They are my seed supplier of choice.

I had a large order of seeds, a full order form full. It took about 10 days or maybe a little longer, at the time they were snowed in bad in Iowa and the surrounding area so that was most likely the short delay, i don't need the seeds until spring so I wasn't expecting them in 3-4 days anyway. All seeds arrived in great condition, only one item was back ordered[ bunte forellenschluss lettuce. I love SSE, I visited their farm on labor day weekend 2010, a way positive experience, I bought a lot of things in the visitors center, staff and clerks were very friendly and helpful. I will order from them again anytime.
vikingred Wyoming

Posted on August 16, 2010, updated August 18, 2010
Posted on May 4, 2010, updated August 16, 2010
Posted on April 20, 2010, updated May 4, 2010
Posted on March 18, 2009, updated April 20, 2010
A great place to buy seeds.
A wide selection of heirloom vegetables and herbs. The germination rate has always been as stated on the seed packet, and my potatoes have always produced many large and tasty tubers.
Tara in customer service is always quick with a response to your questions and concern's.
I highly recommend them.

"On Apr 27, 2010 3:33 PM, Seed Savers Exchange responded with:

Seed Savers Exchange will be happy to provide replacements for potato varieties you found to be unacceptable. The Caribe is a very large, good eating potato, but is not a very good keeper. In fact we struggled again this year to sort through our supply to have enough "acceptable" potatoes to meet committed orders, and quit taking new orders in mid-February as a result. We furthermore have decided not to offer the Caribe next year, and are growing a number of varieties this year to decide on a replacement. Thank you for your feedback and we hope you will try potatoes from Seed Savers again in the future.

I've ordered from SSE several times and every order has been just fine. I never ordered seed potatoes, so I can't comment about that. But all in all I'd recommend them to a friend. I intend to order again in the future.

Great response, received my seeds in just a few days. I like growing peppers, carrots, & tomatoes primarily. I'm trying out both of their paprika pepper varieties, the hottest pepper variety they offer (Fatalii), and the Paris Market carrot. I recommend Seed Savers to everyone, and will be a repeat customer.

The problem with this company is that it doesn't tell you it is out of something until you receive your order. Surprise! You open the package and discover the item you really wanted (the rest you had just ordered as filler), the company is out of. Oh, the company didn't bother to tell you after you placed the order that the item was no longer available. It just added the note to the shipment box. How about some organization and communication!

"On Jun 17, 2010 10:32 AM, Seed Savers Exchange responded with:

We apologize for the inconvenience with this order. This is a rare problem and one we take several precautions to prevent. Occasionally we run out of seed or are otherwise unable to fill catalog offerings. In these instances the item is flagged in our system as backordered or sold out. While we are not sure how Connoisseur placed the order, here is the usual protocol.

Phone Orders: We alert the customer on the phone when an item is not available.

Web Orders: Items flagged as unavailable cannot be purchased online.

Mail/Fax Orders: When an item is unavailable as listed in the catalog and the customer prefers not to accept a substitute, we contact the person. If we do not hear anything back from the customer, whether via email or phone, we process the order as it is. We would rather have them receive what is available and work out the details on the remainder of the order later. Unfortunately in this specific case it did not turn out very well. We encourage customers to email us at customerservice@seedsavers.org and we will work out all the details.

We will respond also through Dmail to learn the name/address of Connoisseur and research the audit trail to make sure that we took the steps we needed for this person. We apologize for this breakdown of communication, but welcome the feedback.
"

What happened to the Seed Savers Exchange I once loved. There has been a total lack of communication between customers and customer service. I sent 3 emails to 2 different representatives and received no reply.
It seems I am not the only one who had bought the Caribe potatoes and received useless garbage. They obviously don't want to give the money back. My problem is not related to storage......it's bad suppliers. These potatoes should have been thrown into the compost heap in the fall and should have never made it to the warehouse. These were not even close to being seed potatoes.
Buyer beware.................
GO ELSEWHERE for your spuds!

Posted on April 13, 2010, updated April 30, 2010
I joined the SSE this year and ordered some seeds as well as transplants from them. The seeds arrived promptly. Had germination issues with one of the seed packets, e-mailed them and got a replacement packet.
Waiting on the transplants next week. Will give an update after they arrive.

I recommend this company and their products and support their non-GMO and non-hybrid seeds.

Login and creating a new account were ridiculously difficult and took a tediously long amount of time.

Trying to purchase seeds was unsuccessful at first attempt as the website claimed I had a previous membership which is impossible because I only discovered Seed Savers a few months ago. I requested a "new" password but nothing was sent to the email address they indicated they had on file.

I really wanted to order some seeds so I went ahead and set up a new account. It's an email address I rarely give out because I don't want to be slammed with spam and I'm hoping SSE doesn't sell it.

Another gripe is that the SSE search function isn't reliable. When I first discovered SSE, I asked it to find several unusual seeds that I wanted to find, that came back negative so I found and purchased them elsewhere. Then I found them in the catalog, and they were not only available from SSE, but at $2.75 were a lot less expensive. Later I went back and used the search function again because I didn't want to plow through an entire product line to get to the ones I wanted. I got a couple of false negatives for things I know are sold there.

This next is a minor point but shipping & handling charges are based on a $10 order, though almost all seeds sold by this company are $2.75. They probably should tie s&h charges to the number of packets. I misread the information and had 4 packets picked out so I dropped one to come in under the cutoff.

I really don't think it should be necessary to join SSE to buy seeds. I'm annoyed at the length of time it took me this afternoon to even be able to buy my seeds. I should have been able to jump on, call up the seeds I wanted and type in my order without jumping through hoops.

On the positive side, I'm impressed with the quality and variety of the SSE catalog. And every single plant image I've seen on the site is at least beautiful eye candy, and some of them are are stunning.

Another positive observation is the excellent variety of unusual and heirloom seeds. And if my income tax refund had arrived by now, I'd probably have purchased several others from SSE.

In short, my ordering experience this afternoon was ridiculously time and process consuming to buy just three seed packs from this company. And I resent having to join to make the purchase. I get nothing for my trouble unless I actually take out a paid membership and that's not going to happen.

Posted on December 25, 2009, updated March 15, 2010
Started ordering seed for the 2010 season two weeks ago. All of the 2009 garden was done with nursery transplants and I wanted to try (once again) starting my own plants from seed.

Found the SSE website from an article in Mother Earth News.

Downloaded their catalog (.pdf). The photography is excellent. Ordered Stevia seed. It arrived promptly and well packaged.
Ordered Tomato seed with the same results. Only problem is to figure out what to order next.

I have ordered seeds from SSE for at least two years. Germination has been better than any other company I have received seeds from. Shipping is fast. And as other posters have mentioned the website is easy to use and their catalog is among the best.

I was impressed with the tremendous selection, and the mission of SSE so I called them regarding an order I wanted to place. I let them know it was important that I receive the seeds quickly, since they were for our annual garden tour, for a display garden to be grown from seeds. I was assured the seeds would be shipped quickly, so I placed the order, asking that the seeds be sent to a friend who would germinate them. Several weeks later, I learned the seeds had not arrived at my friend's house. When I called SSE, I learned that the seeds had not been shipped due to a minor error. I reminded them about our earlier conversation, and asked if they would expedite shipping. The person I spoke to was apologetic and polite, and she did offer to personally make sure the seeds were sent out that day, but did not agree to ship by an expedited method. Under the circumstances, I thought they should have done so. I'll follow up this feedback when the seeds arrive.

I have never had a bad experience with anything I have ordered. My husband and I pour over the catalogues when they come. They are so interesting with all of the things we have never seen before even if they aren't something we have room to plant. The membership is so worth it. I wish I could visit there in person.

Have ordered from them in years past and this year. I LOVE their Reine de Glace lettuce. Best summer lettuce I've ever grown!

I have ordered from this company many times and am always impressed. The seed packets themselves are sturdy, with lots of information, so you can save your own seed in the same package! Or at least keep the packet on file for the information.
I also appreciate the fact that they don't cheat on number of seeds; I've received packets with FAR more seeds than was indicated in the catalog.
Their test farm in Iowa is definitely something to visit if you're in the area.

Over the past few years, I have ordered the majority of the seeds for my garden from SSE- the orders have always been accurate, and when I emailed them with questions, Tara responded immediately. Germination rates have been good.

I order at least a couple varieties of seeds from Seed Savers every year--this year no exception. They have items that I haven't seen in other catalogs. Last year I tried the ground cherries (yum!) and this year I'm giving Sunberries a try. Shipments have always been quick, and germination very good.

Enjoyed the catalogue. I like that they post a picture of each type of plant. Prices and shipping are in the middle of the road.

Received my order in a reasonable amount of time. Was missing an item, but the order form told me it was out of stock. Received a refund check in the mail a couple of days later.

Germination rates are good. Seed packets are very informative. Will order from them again.

First time ordering from SSE, it happened about 10 days ago. I am impressed at the wonderful variety they have, all heirloom/open pollinated vegetable seeds. I was very excited to see that they carry a Romanian heirloom bean that I've been longing for. Reasonable prices, fast shipping - my seeds arrived within 1 week from ordering. Great quality too, all the beans are sprouting already! I will definitely order again.

I ordered seed potatoes this spring - 5 different varieties. When my shipment arrived, there were only 4 - beautiful!!! However the 5th variety was missing, I looked at the invoice expecting that they were sold out (even though I had ordered last fall) but the invoice showed that I had been charged for these non received potatoes. I have called and left 2 messages and sent 2 emails, but no response. I have been very happy with previous orders and this company's mission, but am greatly disappointed at this situation.

Thanks to poor planning on my part I hadn't ordered any Amish Paste tomato seeds for this year. It's getting late so I rumaged around in my old seed box and came up with some of yours packed for 2006. 3 out of 5 are already up. Wow! That's better than some other brands that are packed for this year. I'm impressed.

They always offer a decent selection of popular heirloom vegetables. Have ordered a few times and had nice results from their seeds with pretty standard (good) germination. Most certainly a good source for heirlooms. I'd love to visit their farms, maybe someday!

SSE has a little higher prices than some of the other catalogs, but they offer heirlooms that can't be found anywhere else, which makes the price more than worth it. I ordered a mixture of seeds and potatoes from their website this January, and they shipped the seeds promptly. The potatoes of course won't ship till March planting-time. The seeds arrived in less than a week, which is pretty impressive for cross-country shipping.

SSE has one of the best online ordering systems I've seen anywhere, and many of their seeds include seed-saving information right in the description.

I spent ten years getting hooked on heirloom vegetable varieties at farmers' markets; when I moved to a small town and couldn't get those varieties anymore, I figured I'd just have to grow them myself. It was a real treat to get the Seed Savers catalogue and find so many old favorites, not to mention discover dozens of varieties I'd never heard of!

I bought seeds for direct-sowing outdoors (I'm not yet set up to do indoor seed-starting), and the germination rate has been impressive given the cold, wet spring we've had, not to mention my own inexperience. I particularly enjoy explaining the unusual varieties of potatoes and winter squash to my friends and neighbors.

I doubt I'll ever become a member of Seed Savers Exchange -- I like growing too many varieties of things to maintain pure strains! -- but I'm deeply grateful that there's a catalogue available to non-members and that I can still support the work they're doing in some small way.

I have placed relatively small orders with SSE over the years and have loved the selection, information, and quality of seed. For the past two years I have purchased a few live tomato and pepper plants. Each year I have had excellant results with these very healthy plants, and very tasty produce. The first year, two of the tomato plants looked like they had gotten too hot in the box and would not make it, but after a few weeks languishing, they began to grow and produced well. I plan to continue to order from SSE, and may even join one year.

I ordered online in late April (seeds and seed potatoes) and received all my seeds within the time period stated on SSE's website. The seed potatoes came a little later than expected, but it worked out because I was behind in preparing my "potato box." I have nice potato leaves coming up and have started to hill the potatoes. Seedlings of direct-sown seed are also up; I have hope that this year I can eat some real meals from my (small) garden!

Just completed this year's order with Seed Savers Exchange, which prompts me to extol a too-often overlooked virtue: An easy to use Web site. This is especially important to me since I have an elderly computer and creakly old dial-up Internet service. Never have I experienced a Web site as easy to navigate as that of SSE. Online ordering is a joy. And, of course, the seeds are to die for, especially the tomato and pepper varieties. Heartily recommended. Oh, and any garden lover definitely should take a pilgrimage out to Decorah, Iowa, at least once. The SSE farm is a wonderful place to see.

IMHO,this is a wonderful organization with a great philosophy. As a past paid member I took advantage of the vast and sometimes unusual selections available through fellow members always experiencing a pleasant exchange. However, I did have some germination issues occasionally when ordering through fellow members. This was more than made up for by the generosity and good spirit of the members at large.
As far as ordering directly through SSE goes (no membership required), I have had deliveries that seemed a little on the slow side but I would certainly still recommend them.

I have had ordered seeds online and bought them at the visitors center in Decorah, Iowa. All of their seeds have performed very well, from tomatoes to melons to flowers.

We are fortunate to live only 2.5 hours from Decorah, and try to make the pilgrimage to Seed Savers once every summer. It is a beautiful area and there is so much to do and see.

After reading about Seed Savers here on DG, I checked out their site and ordered 6 packets of seeds. Their communication via email was first rate and the delivery was fast. The seeds were packaged nicely! Highly recommend!

I ordered seeds from SSE and they arrived promptly, were well packed and had colorful packaging with good planting instructions. The selection is good, but I thought the seeds were a little pricey at $2.75 per packet; however they still were not overly expensive.

Ordered seeds this year and last, they arrived in a timely manner. Seeds are great, selection wonderful. Love the catalog and the history behind where seeds were obtained. My favorite so far!

I've ordered from SSE for years and have always been pleased with my interaction with them. I've purchased vegetable and herb seeds, as well as tomato plants, garlic and potatoes. I've been very happy with everything. The plants have arrived in great shape. I also LOVE their catalog -- it is a real treat whenever it arrives.

I've ordered flower seeds from Seed Savers for the last three years and have always had a good experience. Seeds arrived promptly and planting instructions were printed on the packages. Some seeds that I have tried include hollyhock, cleome, moon flower, morning glory, bunny tails, and more. I ordered seeds for Corkscrew vine, package of five seeds, and all germinated. This year ordered corkscrew vine seeds from another vendor, also sent five seeds, I had no germination.
This year I am trying tomatoes for the first time. I ordered Brandywine and Beams Yellow Pear. Again, germination was excellent, and the seedlings all look strong and healthy.