Its been a few months now, and I've heard some good things about this nursary, so I decided to give them a second chance. I placed an order for 4 roses about a week or so ago, and in today's mail I received a refund check for the full amount of the order, stating that the roses are now too big to be mailed.

Is this common? My first reaction is that the seller remembered me and is refusing to do business with me.
Or do you think that the roses are really too big to be mailed? I've received emails from different sellers letting me know that the roses I ordered are too small to be mailed and need to grow out a little more, but never that they are TOO big...lol. I even received a 5 gallon potted rose in the mail last year.

Please don't think I'm a habitual complainer, this was actually the first time I've ever emailed a seller about how small their plants were and I've ordered over 500 roses online to date. I've only had one other time that I contacted a seller was for a rose that was DOA and the seller quickly sent a replacement, and I've dealt with them many times since.

I guess at this point I should just move on, and deal with the other sellers who will gladly take my business and enable my rose addiction :)

Tammy

The thing with nurseries (and a lot of other businesses) is that they're run and staffed by PEOPLE, and as my grandmother always said: "People make mistakes. That's why they put erasers on the top of lead pencils."

So I wouldn't judge a nursery by its errors, but rather by how it addresses them.

This nursery DID refund your money, for the bad plants, so I call that fair.
And, maybe, they refunded your payment because the roses you had ordered were no longer available.

Give 'em another chance.
And if they turn out to have "fired you as a customer," write 'em off and move on.

Jeri

Tammy

I was really looking for Lady Ann Kidwell (I love Cecil Brunner and her decendants), and everyone seems to be out of her ownroot...I may have to wait until next season and order early.

If you want to order this nursery's roses, go ahead and do that next year. If you don't, quietly move on. The stuff we post on GW is here forever, and we all have to keep in mind that what we put here can do serious harm to someone's reputation.

Connie

As for offering alternates, I've been emailed by quite a few sellers who are out of particular roses to see if I may be interested in something else, before offering a refund and terminating the sale. Smaller nursaries have always been more customer friendly & offer a more personal buying experience (in my opinion) than larger sellers. I just think from a customer service perspective, that they are more likely to keep their customers happy this way.

Tammy

Personally, I appreciated the photos you posted a few months ago illustrating variations in the quality of plants you had received from various sources.

The photos from one vendor were truly an outrage. I doubt that any vendor who would supply such pathetic plants is concerned about their reputation. By selling such a substandard product, they alone have done serious harm to their reputation, and you've provided a service by sharing visual evidence of what to expect should we order from them. The fact that the nursery refunded you for some of the roses is commendable, and I commend you for at least attempting to give them a second chance.