Comments regarding Brighter Blooms Nursery

I purchased four Emerald Green Thuja trees advertised as "5'-7' tall". I measured the trees after arrival and the heights varied between 48" to 52". Eventually, I filed a complaint with the BBB. Better Blooms Nursery manager Alyson Smith requested that I upload photos of the trees to her, and I did. The trees were photographed with a ruler next to them. After viewing the photos, Alyson concluded that the trees were of the advertised height because they also calculate the container size in the height of the tree. I visited several local nurseries to shop for and measure new trees (all of their trees were advertised with accurate height information) and questioned the merchants about the practice of adding the container size to the trees, and the common response was that although unethical, its just something that some nurseries do. Mmm.....Brighter Blooms Nursery refused to replace or pay the difference relating to appropriate tree height. Their final offer was to offer me 10% off for future purchases! My advice is if all possible, go to a local nursery. Do business with these people at your own risk.

"On Aug 3, 2010 10:18 AM, Brighter Blooms Nursery responded with:

First I'd like to say that this customer never contacted us directly. Her first course of action was a complaint with the BBB. After at least three separate responses and rebuttals the BBB closed this complaint stating "Your company has made a good faith effort in an attempt to resolve this issue; therefore we are closing the case at this time."
This customer never wanted to return her trees, in fact they had been planted upon arrival. When I received the pictures they did appear to be of the correct height, but we still offered her a 10% discount on a future purchase as a courtesy.
I am sorry this customer is unhappy, and after getting no satisfaction from the BBB she has continued to post bad reviews.
Certainly if she had been this disappointed in her trees she could have returned them rather than plant them.
On a positive note, our trees are very healthy, and these are very hardy, fast growers. We wish her our best. "

Posted on June 24, 2010, updated July 2, 2010
I ordered 2 yellow rhododendrons from Brighter Blooms. One seemed to be doing well while the other was shedding its leaves daily. Upon closer inspection I have now determined that they both have weevils which is something I have never experienced before. I have other rhododendrons 3 feet away that are growing beautifully and this problem didnt crop up until I received these. Customer service "Carla" is unwilling to replace or refund until they completely DIE. When I sent pictures, she said they looked great. I don't think brown leaves and notches made by weevils look great. Poor service, plants shipped with bugs!!! Never will buy from them again. Don't recommend!!!!

I paid for a 3 Gallon but it was not nearly the size of the brighter blooms video where the woman says "look at the size of our giant 3 gallon roses." What arrived was something 10 inches tall and similar to the 1 Quart size she pooh poohed as being too small. I emailed customer service with a picture of the 7 inch high rose bush when I paid for a 3 Gallon size and they didn't offer to credit me for the difference.

Posted on June 1, 2010, updated June 3, 2010
This relates to the experience, rather than the product, because I have not received my order. I ordered 6 tea olive bushes on May 13. As of today - June 1 - nothing has been shipped. You cannot call the company - they have only recorded messages - and e-mail responses take over a week. But you can have an "instant" chat. I was told that my plants have arrived and would be shipped soon??. I could have driven to their nursery and back about a dozen times since May 13. It's getting too hot in MS to start planting. I would recommend other online sites before ordering from this one.

"On Jun 3, 2010 8:54 AM, Brighter Blooms Nursery responded with:

The customer did place her order on 5/13, but we were out of the tea olive bushes at that time. They did come in on 5/27, but because of the Memorial holiday we could not ship her order until 6/1. It did ship out on 6/1 and she will receive it tomorrow. We have both sales people and customer service people answering phones between 9:00 am - 6:00 pm, and chat is available from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. If anyone calls the sales line, they can leave a message and someone will return their call. Emails are answered the same day, or possibly 2 days at the latest. These plants are used to the heat and can be planted with no problems whatsoever. We apologize for the inconvenience to the customer."

I could not find the Sunny Knockout locally, so after a long search, I purchased on-line from Brighter Blooms. Delivery was fast, and the plant arrived in great shape. Over the summer, the rose continued to grow quickly and produce large quantities of blooms all season. The flowers were beautiful and brightened my garden. My experience with BrighterBlooms was a positive one and I highly recommend them.

I was very skeptical of this company but i must say the plants i ordered (3 frost proof gardenias) were packaged very nicely, the plants were as green as they could be. I am VERY happy with this company and plan on buy more from them in the future.

I have made several orders with Brighter Blooms - bought 4 bazoo bannana trees and not one came up. 2 bushes that have died (may have been the oklahoma heat) but we followed all the planting and water instructions.

Decided to give them one last chance - ordered a empress tree and have not recieved any info on the delievery date. We did send an email enquiring about any other problems with people that order the bannana trees, have not gotten any reply.

My hopes are that Brighter Blooms will respond to this post and make right the problems we have had. Then we can change our experience to positive.

I ordered 3 Annabelle Hydrangeas from BRIGHTER BLOOMS. They arrived, more than 4 feet tall, spindley, few blooms, broken, damaged leaves, and the poorest example of a hydrangea I had ever seen. I promptly contacted the company, and they agreed to replace the sick and broken plants, and now 2 and a half weeks later, I received replacement plants that are in WORSE shape than the original plants they shipped me. I have contacted the company again, and will change my negative experience to a positive if they FULLY rectify the problem.

D.Proctor
Nashville, TN

We ordered 42 dwarf boxwood bushes because it said they were in stock and could order now with shipment in the next week. The total was almost $800. That was fine but after I ordered and checked in to my order number, it read 42 ordered, and 0 available........delayed shipping item! No shipment date of any kind. That means they could wait until 2012 to ship if they want to! We decided to cancel since reading the negative feedback and their lies of having them in stock before we ordered. Guess what??? There is a 15% cancellation fee even if you cancel the very next day. What a way to make money! So I have gone to our credit card company and they said they will take care of it. Since then, they have sent me an email and given me back 15% less of what the total was. The credit card company has the money in a holding space, they don't even have it but keep lying and then even when the credit card company went to them, magically, they sent me an email and said 42 ordered, 42 available, BACKORDER FILLED. That was their way of trying to get the $$ out of the credit card co. Of course there was no hint of a shipping date. Just that the order had already been filled. This is one of the most dishonest websites I have ever ordered from. Please, don't believe their lies that these items are in stock, they aren't and they will try to keep atleast 15% of your total you ordered.

Don't waste your money with BrighterBlooms.com, which also goes by the alias of fast-growing-trees.com. I ordered a 1 gallon Rhodo from them, and what arrived was a 7" seedling with a root ball the size of my fist in a half gallon container which contained mostly loose mulch. A 1 quart container could easily have contained this plant. I contacted BrighterBlooms customer service, explained my situation and forwarded pictures of both the pot and the plant. After giving them every opportunity to correct the "mistake" by either shipping a plant that met the specifications on their website or by offering a discount, they were completely unrepentant -- even offering up the explanation that pot sizes vary depending on the plant and that a half gallon pot is the correct size for a one gallon Rhodo.

Go elsewhere!

I ordered 150 of the "mistake" daylilies last spring. When they arrived in one bag in a tangled mess I was surprised. I followed the directions that came with them which told me to soak them in a bucket of water before planting and then I planted them directly. They were difficult to separate without pulling apart other plants. I know several were damaged but since I had 150 I figured if I lost a few it would be alright.
Over the summer I tended to them nicely. I fed them with a good fertilizer, I watered them often and I still lost 50 of the plants. I thought maybe I would get them back in the spring and the roots would recoup. This spring I counted what came up and I am down to 47 plants, total! Yikes, I have been gardening for a long time and I have hundreds of perennials for any type of sun or soil. I know my parenting wasn't the problem so I contacted Brighter Blooms via email.
After 2 weeks of not hearing a thing, I resent the email with more information and begged for a response. I finally got the email message stating it was their busy season and it may take 2-3 weeks before they got back to me. When 21 days passed I sent another email in which I included the first 2 emails and still I got no response. So last week I called their customer service line and spoke to one of the representatives there, she was shocked that it had been over a month and no one had gotten in touch with me, further, she informed me that their policy is on 90 days on the plants. However, since my service was terrible and my order was large she told me to email "Wendy" the manager with all of my concerns. So I did. That was Friday and I still have not heard a word. I will never purchase from this company again and I will tell all of my gardening friends to avoid them at all cost!!!! Do NOT buy from them; there are companies out there that will do whatever they can to give you the best service. As a professional salesperson I would like to just add that the customer is always right, if you think they are wrong, I tell you they are right, and the best way to resolve any situation is to acknowledge the problem and work WITH the customer to find a solution that you both can live with.

I ordered a "frost proof gardenia" from this company. Well....they aren't frost-proof in my zone (zone 7) even though the site says they should be. This plant was planted in an area that receives full sun. The soil is well drained and mulched heavily. I have zone 8 plants in this area that survived. The plant died over the winter. I contacted the company by email indicating the problem and that I wanted a refund or a replacement. They finally answered my email after I emailed them 3 times. In their response to my email, they asked me to be patient and added that "someone" would contact me shortly. Well, no one has contacted me in almost 2 weeks and I still don't have a refund or a replacement. Never again will I order from this company.

Early fall 2008, I ordered 24 ivy plants, an order for over $100. The website states usual shipment within two weeks. However, my plants didn't arrive in the fall, and I assumed they would be shipped in the spring.

On January 16, in Montana, with the ground frozen and minus-20-degree weather, my plants arrived. I immediately emailed the company and asked why, in the middle of a Montana winter, were my plants shipped. I received no answer, but instructions to purchase a large pot and potting soil to plant them in and store them outdoors near a building where they will recieve runoff water.

I emailed again, telling them pots and soil in a rural area in Montana are impossible to locate in the middle of winter.

They kept giving the same instructions. I finally suggested they ship the items necessary to keep my plants alive, or to refund my money.

Their response was to instruct me on how to store my bare-root tree in an unheated garage.

I've never experienced such stupidity and dishonesty with a company like this until now!

It took too long for my plants to arrive. When they did, they were almost dead with withered brown leaves and broken plastic pots which had spilled most of the soil.
I immediately sent photos and was assured by someone named Trish that replacement plants would be rushed to me.
That was more than 2 weeks ago. Now, when I call, I get the recorded message and a "hang up".
I would never do business with them again and certainly will never recommend them to anyone.
What a terrible way to run a business!

I ordered $400 worth of plants. I had a terrible experience with them.

The plants came with half of the leaves brown, and 1/3 of the leaves had fallen off. The stems are brown and dry.

The customer service is horrendous. I emailed them right away with the problem. They didn't respond for 5 days. They said that the plants were normal, and that they were growers, not florists.

I've ordered from 4 other online nurseries and never had a problem with any of them except BrighterBlooms.com. This is by far my worst experience ever with any online venders.

I ordered a purple wisteria vine in June of 2008. It took a couple of weeks to arrive, but I followed the planting instructions and planted the wisteria. Almost immediatly the leaves started to fall off. i emailed customer service and I got a reply the next day suggesting miracle grow. The customer service dept. made a note of my trouble for the future. The miracle grow is working and now my vine has grown about 4 ft. since planting. My husband liked the vine so well he wanted another one so my pergoda has dual vines. I ordered it July 3 and it arrived today. This vine is fuller and taller than the first. I am expecting the leaves to fall; customer service said it was trauma from travel for the plant. I planted it using miracle grow. I will let you know how it does

I also orderd over $200 worth of plants from Brighter Blooms, and also had a very bad experience. Daylilly bulbs were moldy, knock out roses were dead, and one plans is still on backorder after over two months. I, too, got the "This is our busy time, please try back later." message followed by a hang-up when I tried calling. Emails went unanswered. I finally did get through on the phone and was told that it was my responsibility to take pictures of the damage and send them using the contact us link on the website. I did, and heard nothing for two weeks. I finally got another person on the phone who asked me to send the pictures to her email. She reviewed them and promised to send a replacement for the knock out rose. It still hasn't arrived. She also promised that the backordered honeysuckle would be in that week and shipped the next. Haven't seen it. She didn't mention the molded bulbs, so I emailed her back about it. She didn't respond.

Something else to be aware of when ordering is that you'll get a message about it being their busy time of year, so don't expect your order any time soon. They weren't kidding either. It took a long, long time for my order to come. This, of course, comes up only after you've placed the order and given them your credit card.

I feel this is a case for the Better Business Bureau and North Carolina's Attorney General to look into. Other than sending a note to them about my experience, I don't feel there's much more that I can do to get this matter resolved.

Where to begin? I ordered close to $200 of plants from this company in early April. When the plants arrived (at the end of the first week in May) they were all crammed into a long, narrow box. They were stapled to the box from the outside with more than 30 large staples. Most of the plants had broken branches. One plant was nearly dead and another was missing altogether. Three of the bushes that were supposed to be in gallon containers were in quart pots. I am generally not a complainer-and the plants seemed to be salvageable- so I waited for the arrival of the final plant and tried to revive the worst of the lot. The final straw was when the last plant finally arrived- yet another three weeks later(end of May) bare rooted in a plastic bag with no packing protection whatsoever. What was left of the plant was a few etiolated broken stems, a ball of bare roots and some loose dirt. Frustrated and upset, I decided to call the 800 customer service number. I got a recording that concluded with a hang up. I e-mailed my complaints and got a response asking why I hadn't complained about the original shipment earlier. When I tried to respond, my e- mail bounced back-multiple times as undeliverable. I even tried to email through their website- and that bounced back as well. I have continued to call -with no luck. Because of the size and condition of the plants I recieved, the terrible packing , the lengthy wait, as well as the inability to communicate with them, I would never do business with this nursery again.

I ordered two annabelle hydrangeas from this company, then when I went to prepare the holes I realized it was taken over my dead tree roots, so I called to get a tree removal service to do stump grinding on the spots, they told me two weeks, so I decided to cancel/postpone my order, then I was told by Judy "Yes, I will take care of this for you. As per our terms of service, orders
over 24 hours that are canceled are charged a 15% cancellation fee." I'll never order from them again.

I ordered a flowering almond bush from Brighter Blooms because I can't seem to find them at any local nurseries. The plant I received was healthy and huge; I don't think I've ever gotten a bigger plant through mail-order.

Brighter Blooms may be a good source of plants, but there lack of communication leaves a lot to be desired. I ordered a plant 2 months ago, they never emailed to advise what was going on with the order, so I called and was told it would be shipped by April 15, due to weather. I called again this week, this time I was told the plant is on back order. In my opinion this is poor customer service, as Brighter Blooms, never sent emails advising of status of order.

I bought a Fragrant Tea Olive tree. It's very good in package and pot and shipped very quickly.