seeds - anyone tried Nicky's Seeds?

foreign_correspondent

Davesnave wrote: »

No, but if I wrote to seed companies every time something failed to germinate, or came up having obviously been open-pollinated, mis-labelled or whatever, then I'd not get anything done.

I agree they should answer your emails, but I'm not sure what you'd expect them to do. Credit note? Refund? By the time they've dealt with that, their profit has gone.

Feedback from the public is important though, because without that they won't know the dodgy suppliers. Also it's far from clear-cut in the case of the chillies. Have you left them long enough to develop the flavour? How warm were they grown? etc etc.

I used to sell plants to people, and sometimes they would complain that x or y hadn't survived. I always gave a refund without question, even knowing that I had no control of their growing conditions. If I handed over, say, £4, I knew that it would take three more sales to recover that as profit.

And profit is what business is all about.

Absolutely - I sell a few plants, and I sell my tomatoes in the summer - it is not my main employment, just a sideline, but my dad is a market gardener and was a commercial grower on a large scale, and I worked for him for several years, so I am not naive.

However I don't know how they expect to keep trade, obviously, they should label their tomato seeds correctly and and send out the right ones - if I had bought a lot of seed and planted a greenhouse with them and they were the wrong variety I would not be happy. It is not just the cost of the seed, it is the labour and time, the cost of compost, and potential lack of trade if you cannot sell them (i.e. my profit would be gone!). As it is their mistake, even an apology would be helpful!

Luckily, I've grown several varieties, and only planted about a dozen or so of the ones which turned out yellow, so it's no great loss this year, but I am not impressed with Nicky's to be honest, and do not feel I could rely on them enough to buy any significant amounts of seed from them.

I sold some of the plants earlier in the year too, which were labelled as black tomatoes, but are clearly Golden Sunrise or similar.

The chillies are only for my own use, so not bothered as much about them anyway, just not impressed - they have been grown in a glasshouse, alongside jalapenos, chinese 5 coloured etc, all of which are fine.

Profit is what it is all about, but if you do not deal with customer queries well, you tend not to get any return trade!

Davesnave

We agree on the fundamentals, that they should respond, that they should label correctly etc etc. Like you, I clearly did consider reputation important when trading. However, I'm suggesting why they haven't bothered.

Still think you should persist with the chillies. Some of mine haven't 'fired up' until October/November.

foreign_correspondent

Davesnave wrote: »

We agree on the fundamentals, that they should respond, that they should label correctly etc etc. Like you, I clearly did consider reputation important when trading. However, I'm suggesting why they haven't bothered.

Still think you should persist with the chillies. Some of mine haven't 'fired up' until October/November.

I can understand why they havent bothered - and that's up to them, but I won't bother trading with them again!

...Put it this way, if someone mentions to me that they had found a couple of split tomatoes in a punnet they bought from me, my response would be to apologise and give them another punnet of tomatoes - I would rather they go away happy and buy from me again, than go away and moan to everyone that they were not impressed with the produce!

Yeah, I will leave the chillies in and wait and see if anything happens with them - you never know!

olly300

SEE wrote: »

I've find most online seed shops too expensive and have always used these two on Ebay. Always had great germination and double the quantity of seed of the main suppliers with good and unusual varieties. I have recently purchased some lovely looking tomato seed for next year called great white, and haven't seen that in my T&M catalogue which I now only use for reading on the loo:o

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/The-Seed-Merchant

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Premier-Seeds-Direct

I've used Premier Seeds as well I've mostly got flower seeds from them but have brought chilli seeds.