Comments regarding Thuja Gardens (formerly PlantsRus)

Roy,
I'm just writing to tell you that I received my trees yesterday. I unpacked them, inspected them, and watered them. They all seem to have survived UPS shipping. I'm finishing up the 15 holes they'll be planted in tonight. They should be in the ground tomorrow and covered with twice ground mulch as we
discussed on the phone (tapered inward toward uncovered top of root ball).

Thanks for you're reassuring phone call last Saturday - you were right the trees are pretty. I will be taking good care of them and hope to not have to contact you for any replacements.

Plants are presently surviving the Connecticut winter.

Thanks,
Dave

I received my Thuja evergreens today just a few days after I ordered
them. The plants arrived in great shape, very healthy and I did not
have to wait 6 weeks to get them like other online nurseries. I will definitely be ordering more.

You guys are the epitome of great Internet service, I wish more
companies would follow your example.

Thanks Again,
Kevin

Ordered 20 Green Giant Arborvitaes (10 quart size, 10 gallon size). I received 10 of the quart size a few weeks later. Where are my other 10 trees? I have made numerous attempts to contact this company via phone and email to no avail. I even complained to PayPal about the transaction; I paid for 20 trees! I ordered these trees to have a privacy screen for my family. I had to hire someone to dig 20 holes in the ground because I have 3 kids under 5 and cannot possibly do it myself. The rain washed away the 10 other holes a month later. Where are my 10 one gallon trees Mr Roy???

"On Apr 28, 2009 12:39 PM, Thuja Gardens (formerly PlantsRus) responded with:

To say the least this lady ordered 1 Quart Size & Small Liners,no 1 Gallons. We do not use Pay Pal.The lady got what she ordered,if not happy..should have sent them back for a full refund. What do you do? GOD BLESS her and her kids."

Order several trees via Paypal. 1 day later I got a message from PayPal, that the charge had been reversed. Naturally that left me in limbo right in the middle of planting season. Was a "re-charge" forthcoming? Would I ever see trees? Did I just give my credit info to some hack? I'm gla I stumbled onto Dave's Garden. At least now I know that Roy is TRYING to run a real business, but as I can see from the other reviews, he apparently has the business sense of one of his trees. So anyway, to make a long story short, I've sent him 3 emails and of course have received no response. Since I consider the ignoring of emails from customers, to be THE cardinal sin, I'm giving him a hearty NEGATIVE, and will be thankful for the reversed charge. Sounds like I dodged a bullet.

"

Dave's Garden should take this rating off the site. This order was voided the same day it was recieved,how did that cause limbo in the middle of the planting season?We recieved no Emails.Person got an Email from PayPal saying the money had been refunded because we do not ship to CA...mabey person does not know what refund means?I say person,because we do not have customers from CA.That information is listed on the very page that the order came from (We can not ship to the following states of:AZ, CA, Or, HI)this is due to the strict regulations of the CA Agriculture Department.I spend enough time trying to keep customers happy,I do not deserve this kind of criticism from someone that is not even a customer.I try to treat people the way I would want to be treated,but some people tries my patience.

Roy D. Lawing DBA Thuja Gardens"

We ordered trees size 18"-24" from Roy (Thuja Gardens). What we received was few at just 18", and the majority are around the 12" size. We contacted Roy a few times to get this resolved, he advised us that his packers had pulled from the wrong batch of trees, and as a result, we were sent the smaller size trees even though we were charged at the higher price. He met us in the middle, and credited us back for some of the price difference. After we planted the trees, we realized that we would need about 6 more trees, so we placed another order of the gallon size 18"-24 ", and our credit card was charged. A week later we got a email from Roy that he was about 1 week behind, and therefore the trees wouldn't be shipped for 3 weeks. So, it took a month to receive trees after our credit card had been charged. When we finally received that shipment of trees, they were all around 12" in size. ( We paid for the 18-24" size.) We also noticed that after we placed the order and he shipped them to us, he changed his website to reflect the gallon size trees as 16-18" (the trees we received were still smaller than that) We attempted to contact Roy a few times with no response. We FINALLY received an email from him several weeks later to ship the trees back to him and try another company since we were not happy. Roy is very unprofessional to deal with. BEWARE, he sends smaller than advertised trees, and is very difficult to deal with, and it is hard to get a response from him in a timely manner.

I purchased 26 Thuja green giant trees for my Son in Lexington NC from this Company. They were delivered April 5th at 4PM. Well more than half the trees have died now. . They are under a 90 day guarantee - so I E-mailed this company - See below my E-mail & Roy's answer.

rita leocata wrote:

I purchased 26 1 gallon Thuja Green Giants trees from you on the phone and they were delivered to my Son in NC on 4/5/07: Ten of the trees died. I will be returning them to you and I want to know if you are going to replace them or refund the money ?
Please respond - Mrs. Rita Leocata -

His Answer:
From: Roy Lawing
To: rita leocata
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 8:13 AM

Subject: Re: 10 thuja green giants

When did you plant these trees? Its a wonder he did not loose them all...the April freeze came on the 6th.

I then called Roy and advised him that the trees were not planted till 2 days later and were well protected from the freeze. His response was - he lost $17,000 due to the freeze and was not honoring his guartentee. This man & company is unprofessional & nasty. I would like to warn any one who is thinking of purchasing plants from him that he is a cheat.

I ordered 30 of the small Thuja slips March 13, 2007. I waited a while and had no luck with the email address I had been given for contact when ordering, so I went back to PAYPAL and signed into the account I had created and challenged the charge for non delivery.

Well, to make a long story short, Roy had frost damage to a large amount of his small Thuja slips from the NorEaster storm they had this spring. He thought he could scrape together 30 for me but could not and refunded my money.

However the refund process took 5 days (over a weekend) and the Payment process (with PAYPAL) was insulting and demeaning. They began calling me "unregistered" or something like that and asking for bank account information... really a royal hassle and an insult too. Remember this is all after charging my card almost a month before.

In my view I would give Roy this neutral rating and I would give PAYPAL a Negative rating of their own if it was possible. They are ok if you're donating to charity of putting money into KIVA.org but I won't use them in the future to send money to a business!

I was able to reorder from another company the next day and I have written another review about that experience on this site.

Seeking Thujas (well I found them but that's another story!)

I bought eleven (11) Green Giant trees from PlantsRus last fall.

I tried to meet personally with Roy, the owner, before the trees were to be shipped- Roy is a very difficult man to meet.

The trees all arrived as promised. One had its top damaged because of crowding in the cardboard container. I called Roy and he sent a replacement immediately.

All the trees survived the New York winter and are doing nicely.

Roy does not seem to want to have person to person contact with his customers; however, I found him to be a man of his word.

BEWARE--of Plants R US-- and of ROY!! I purchased 5 thuja trees fo a total cost of $107. I was told that I would receive this shipment in the fall. Well, here is fall no trees! I contacted ROY and was told that the order was lost (now remember, I had to contact ROY- 3 times before I was able to get a response. He would say he would get back to me and NEVER did) I was promised that the order would be shipped on a Monday. I called ROY to confirm that it was shipped--ROY said " I meant to get ahold of you." (Sure you did ROY, sure you were going to get back to me like the other 3 times). Now ROY, was telling me that he had no record and could do nothing about it, even though my credit card statement clearly showed I was charged for them. I then had to call my credit card company to set things straight. So there IS a happy ending, but it took 5 calls to PlantsRUs, who did NOTHING and a call to CHASE who did something.

Look there are lots of companies that sell these trees, go to them not PlantsRUs and not ROY--He won't do a thing!

Oh, by the way, the reason the Shipping is free--- they don't ship!!! LOL

"

We get calls from people from time to time checking on orders they have ordered from other nurseries, even get checks written to other nurseries. When Rev. Mattax first contacted me I done everthing I could to pull up his order without any luck so I talked with Paypal and had no luck finding any order in his name. Rev. Mattax waited 6 weeks after he should have recieved his order to contact me,when I told him I could not find his order he was very mad....and with good reason. When Rev. Mattax contacted his card company they contacted PayPal. At that point I recieved a chargeback from PayPal and could actually pull up his order. As one can tell from the comments above, it was to late for me to try to make things right with Rev. Mattax. I'm not here to put down PayPal, they are a big business but I had problems trying to run my business with them processing my customers credit cards. This was my problem not my customers, I do fell bad about what happened to Rev. Mattax. I do have a new credit card processer now and feel alot more in control of my business through better availability to customer information.

Roy D. Lawing DBA Thuja Gardens"

I have to give this company a neutral because owner does not seem to respond to customer emails at all. I called before ordering and was told my order would ship the following week so I went with this company, but it turned out to be over a month before my order arrived. All customers at the time that were waiting for this particular tree were sending emails around to each other including to owner, but never a response from him was given at all. I did finally receive my order and the trees are a good size for the value, therefore, I was pleased with that. He also offers a year guarantee on his trees, but I have sent two back with no response from him again. If he is not going to send any, I would at least like to know so I can order the replacements elsewhere.