Gardening Express - Hit and Miss experiences

Hi All,

I wanted to share my experiences of Gardening Express.

I'll start of by saying - Not everything is bad, but the bad can be very bad. So bad in fact that their customer support department hides behind a 2hour delay chat bot as there are so many people in front of you trying to discuss their purchases.

Years ago i got burnt by them with a dead Magnolia, and when i did get through the only way of complaining was to physically mail them my credit card details to get a refund. Written down credit card number details is a fraud waiting to happen.
So I ignored them for 3+ years.

But 2 years ago i tried a few low risk purchases again and was generally pleased, however this year they have crashed for me again - mostly around Magnolias on two different orders and now on a "superb Dwarf lilac shrub" their image shows it as a small 30cm flowering plant. However the supplied product is 3 time as big and shooting only from the base graft - presumably a different plant entirely - see pic attached.

The annoying thing is that you have to wait for a month for so before you can be sure its really dead before complaining.

They are sending customer surveys out but you never get a response so thought i'd share here.
I now have five and a half plants from them in what i call my emergency care space when I can try and recover them before planting out for real in the garden.

I'd love it if they could just deliver what they promised.

 

Opinion always seems mixed here regarding Gardening Express, @Stuart Fawcett. That alone completely discourages me from wanting to order from them, I use about a dozen nurseries nowadays and would much rather stick with them and have a worry-free experience. Why is it that these repeatedly manage to deliver quality specimens to me and their other customers, but companies like GE can't?

I definitely do not want a "Gardening Express Emergency Care Space"!

Nick