Plants from gardeningexpress.com

pheasantry_2

I thought it was worth adding to the post I did yesterday, just to let any potentail customers of Gardening Express know that out of 5 plants I received yesterday, only 2 are of a barely acceptable standard. I had an e-mail from them onlast Thursday saying the plants were sent out that day and I received them the next day.
Two bamboos I received were in a terrible state - diseased, spindly, broken stems and worth nothing with completely bone dry compost (despite them only being in transit for 24 hours), yet gardening Express boast they won't send out plants they wouldn't be happy to receive themselves! Another fern I ordered was about 4" tall with 4 fronds, hardly worth the £6 odd we paid for it! I could have bought the same size plant at my local garden centre for 99p, and in better condition!
I will never buy from this company again - 7 weeks to deliver my order after I sent numerous support tickets, emails, letters, etc to them. Is this what they call good service? Considering it took 7 weeks to get this awful delivery of plants, I have no confidence that sending these plants back for replacements is worth the effort and frustration.
Avoid this company at all costs, but if like me you were conned into believing they were reputable by their website, and your plants don't arrive, send them a letter by recorded delivery cancelling your order, like I did, and lo and behold a week later my plants were delivered! Strange, that.......
Use your local garden centres instead of this awful company!

pheasantry wrote: »

Gardening Express,
Gardening Express, I appreciate that you say you are doing what you can to address an excess of orders, but as a frustrated customer can I suggest that your call centre should not just be an 'out-of-hours credit card ordering line' as every time I tried calling them in the daytime I was unable to get through, and only got through early evening when the staff were unable to deal with queries, but were quite happy to deal with new credit card orders!
Can I also suggest that:-
1. You honour the boast that you respond to support tickets within the stated 2-3 working days. You ignored my support tickets for two weeks, and then just referred me back to your terms and conditions when you did reply, and asked me to wait 24 hours before raising another support ticket! Only one of my multiple support tickets were responded to in 7 weeks.
2. All customers who order and pay for goods deserve to know when a) you delay orders being shipped until the risk of frost has passed, even for evergreen shrubs! b) if items are out of stock, approximate delivery times when it will be back in stock c) the right to cancel an order, especially when customers have paid for orders, if the delivery time is extended by you.
3. You should contact customers, giving them with the option, by e-mail or post, to cancel the order, so that they can buy plants from elsewhere if you are unable to supply them promptly.
4. Don't advertise plants for sale on your website which are not in stock - if you are that successful, as you boast, pay your money and get an interactive website which tells customers which plants are in stock and which plants they have to place on back-order, or order in advance - much more honest than what you are doing at the moment which is taking orders and money and not delivering for weeks!

I am not impressed with your service, and obviously will not be purchasing from you again in the future.

N.B. I am not a rival, competitor to you or anything to do with another garden centre - just a very unhappy customer who has only today received my non-seasonal order after waiting 7 weeks for a 3-5 working day delivery order!

GardeningExpress

pheasantry,

please be assured that changes are being made to deal with the huge surge in demand that has been experienced, considerable investment is being made to eliminate as far as possible the problems you have raised.

As far as stock quality goes, everything should arrive in a good state - and we can arrange replacements if not.... all of our plants are grown outside, and therefore, may look smaller - but will hardier - than garden centre examples, as they've not been forced on artificially.

janfit1305

I placed an order in May for some gardening products and plants. I have had no response so far to email or phone (no one answers). I am now trying to cancel my order as having seen the comments here I have no confidence they will ever arrive.

pippa_r

janfit1305 wrote: »

I placed an order in May for some gardening products and plants. I have had no response so far to email or phone (no one answers). I am now trying to cancel my order as having seen the comments here I have no confidence they will ever arrive.

Good luck with getting a refund.
I suggest you contact Trading Standards. Here's a copy of the email they sent me regarding my order:

GARDENING EXPRESS
Your complaint against the above trader has been passed for my attention.
I intend contacting Gardening Express in the near future to enquire after the status of your order, and I would appreciate being informed of the following: -
· the date you placed your order,
· the payment method,
· the order number you received,
· any delivery ‘tracking’ number you were provided,
· the details of the goods you ordered,
do you still want the order or a refund,
a phone number for you.
Once I receive these details, I will contact the trader and make enquires on your behalf.
I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.
Trading Standards Officer
01245 341914

loveithateit

Gardening express have very good customer records as do not action / reply to complaints.
Most customers will forget about their moans after a while. Taking further action: anyone will think about the cost small complaints - court action c. £25 to £30
credit card complaint - no joy as they refer to the seller
therefore, it is better for them to ignore any issues and they will pass with time:
our experience:
plants damped behind house (although at home)
plants in appauling state (damaged top half - frost certainly and insects - dried leaves - dehydration and lack of nutrients - roots separating from ball - bad handling and dehydration
we raised a ticket support ticket as per the site FAQ's
did managed to speak to someone (yep, there is someone at the end of the line)
send some pictures as per their request
Result : we have a reply to our support tickets - sorry too busy to reply, referral to FAQ's
raised other support tickets
spoke to someone else
we have now issued court threats.
I would rather loose an extra £30 going through a claim in court than let them get away with it.
We have also advised trading standards

I do work in the service industry. Should we handle issues the same way they do, our company would go down. My old boss used to say we strive to 100%, bu no one can achieve 100, above 90% we have room for improvement 95% service level, we are doing well 98% nearly there, but still room for better service.
No one can really do 100. I would not even attempt to give a rating to garddening express as so far they have failed with all the possibility to recover I have given them, definetely thumbs down.

Gardening express = big mess.

Thanks Martin to give us the opportunity to warn potential customers, for them to make their choice with greater awareness.

Alfietinker

Please don't shoot me but.......

I also had problems with Gardening Express. I ordered summer plug plants which were due for delivery April-May. As I was going on holiday early May I wanted to know when they would be dispatched - not because they were late, just so I could get somebody to take them in if they were delivered when we were out.

I did raise a support ticket, which WAS answered the next day, albeit referring me to the FAQs. I raised 2 further support tickets which were not answered. I then spent 3 days trying to phone them, getting the message "unable to take your call etc".

However, and I say again, please don't shoot me :eek: when the plants did arrive I was actually quite impressed. 4 boxes of fuschias were delivered when I was away and a colleague took them in. She rang me to say one of the boxes plants were all battered and broken so I asked her to take some pictures.

Upon my return 5 days later, I did manage to get through on the phone - by constantly redialling a few minutes before the lines opened so must have been one of the first calls through.

And this is where I am impressed. I explained the situation and a replacement box was sent out within a week - I could keep the broken ones (which with a little tlc have now recovered so I have free plants). The rest of the shipment arrived in perfect condition through the post over the next few days.

I wouldn't use them again, the customer service is awful. However, it would seem if you can actually get through they will help, so it is worth persevering on the phone?

Dusk_is_Falling

I too am having problems getting any response from Gardening Express. I placed my order on the 6th May and dutifully waited and waited.

At first I thought maybe the plants I ordered were out of season but after checking I found this was not the case so I raised a support ticket on the 28th May and another one on the 1st of June neither of which were answered. Next I emailed Chris Bonnett, the founder of the company, on the 2nd and as yet have received no reply. I have tried ringing their customer support line about 20 times at various hours of the day only to get their voicemail each time.

I have sent them a letter by special delivery today asking for a full refund, though by the sounds of previous posts they will probably ignore this and send me an incomplete order of half dead plants at the end of the month!

Nightmare!!!:eek:

GardeningExpress

we are looking into the individual issues raised on this board. In the case of the above, I can confirm a refund has already been processed. many thanks

janfit1305

janfit1305 wrote: »

I placed an order in May for some gardening products and plants. I have had no response so far to email or phone (no one answers). I am now trying to cancel my order as having seen the comments here I have no confidence they will ever arrive.

Just thought you may want to know that I cancelled my order via recorded delivery letter,issue log on website and message on their answer machine and I got an email response within a few days confirming it had been cancelled. the amount was then refunded to my card a few days later.
Thank goodness there is someone out :j there!

pheasantry_2

That's brilliant! I am really pleased for you, and hopefully if other customers do the same, Gardening Express will realise that awful customer service results in cancelled orders and loss of that business in the future!