What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

I need to ask for some advice. There is a large, popular carnivorous plant nursery based in Australia that sells carnivorous plants (rooted, and having been grown in media for a while ) as well as tissue culture carnivorous plants (shipped directly in the tissue culture media). I wanted to explore a purchase of these plants from them in tissue culture (neps, sundews, pings, cephs, you name it…). I corresponded with the lady in charge over there. The procedure is they debit you half the cost up front, and the other half the cost when the order is ready to ship.



So they billed me for half of the order one and a half years ago, and now, one and a half years later, they shipped it and billed me the other half. More than half of the plants arrived dead on arrival, in the mail. The remaining half are not healthy and the leaves are yellow, and the plants don't have roots.



I took some photographs and got the information to the nursery as quickly as possible to find out if they could arrange for a refund or a replacement. They pointed out to me that they have a disclaimer that says once plants leave their nursery, anything that happens to them is no longer their fault. I have seen this disclaimer on many nursery webpages but I have never actually had one refuse to replace anything that arrived dead on arrival. Usually, the nursery will either refund me, or offer to replace them for me. This has been my experience every time I ordered from any other nursery when ordering carnivorous plants. If the plants died as I did not know how to care for them, then I deserve what has happened. However, in this case, the plants were in the mail for eight days, and more than half came dead on arrival. I find this very unusual for the short transit that the plants have had to go through. I have ordered things that have sat in the mail for two weeks without problems before. This is also not my first time ordering tissue culture. I have ordered CP tissue culture from other nurseries which took two weeks to arrive in the mail and were also without problem. This order was not cheap, it cost me over $700.



I wanted to find out if any of you have had experience with nurseries in the past and if you had run into a situation where plants arrived in very poor condition. I wanted to find out if there is anything else I can do or try, or if all I am left with is to write this off as a very expensive loss. Because they billed me one and a half years ago, I can't even tell my credit card company to halt payment. Even the second half is going to be difficult to halt because it was billed in February and we are now in March.
 
Thats why its buyer beware when purchasing from overseas. That same nursery probably has a CP distributor in the states or several that you could order from. You will have to do some research to find them/ask around. It may cost you a little more, but most CP distributors in the states will not ship out a problem. They will deal with said nursery for refunds/replacement. I was burned many years ago by a nursery in Singapore. But my problem ended up being with the USDA. Never again. Its worth the extra money not to have the hassle. I mean what are you going to do/they are in a foriegn country.
 
You can say the name of the place if they are from Australia. At least you can help others that might do the same thing.
Just keep on talking to them...nicely! It's the only thing you can do now. Try to get the last payment back...i think it's possible.
 
I'm not sure whether you can do much in regards to them dying in shipment unless there was another problem like poor packaging or you could some how prove they sent unhealthy plants to begin with. You might be able to get something back since they made you wait so long but if they informed you of the wait to start with and you agreed I don't think you could get any further with them. Since your not an established customer and won't be ordering from them again I assume they will be less willing to work with you because they won't gain anything from it in the future. I guess sometimes we have to lose to learn. That said I'm truly sorry that this happened to you and that the nursery has been so unhelpful.
 
Since it was overseas I susect you used a credit card.

From the sound of things I dont think the vendor is going to be of much help. I would immediately dispute the credit card charge.
This way at least you can recover half of your loss.

All parties lose in something like this, basically its either you eat it all or they share it with you.... Id want them to share.

Av

Edit: jeeze, just noticed you said it was too late to dispute...
Please PM me the vendor's name, I have a friend who is considering a simular purchase. I have to imagine its the same vendor
 
That vendor, through choosing not to keep their customers satisfied, risks losing repeat customers as well as bad word of mouth with regards to their business. It is probably better in the long run to keep the customers happy.

I had a rather large CP order from a European vendor seized and destroyed by Canada Customs.

He resent the order, only to have that order arrive frozen. He resent a third time and Customs again intercepted the order and informed me that the plants had some soil on the roots and thus would not be allowed into Canada. Customs sent the order back to him. When the plants arrived back to him, the vendor told me that half of them were dead, and the other half were in very poor shape.

But still, he resent the order again, along with some bonus Neps. This time, the fourth time, they arrived safely to me. And even though he had to ship the order out to me four times, he did not charge me anything in addition to what I had originally paid him, for the initial order.

That is customer service, and I will order from there again.
 
Back
Top