On 11/07/2014 14:01, Sacha wrote:
On 2014-07-11 10:44:04 +0000, News said:
snip

But buying online is a simple procedure that almost always works well
- and on the odd occasion where there is a problem with the goods, the
companies work hard to fix it. Failure is much more visible to other
customers with online shopping so I think companies will work much
harder to sort out grievances than the high street equivalent.

I've been buying online for many years and have only ever had an
unsolved problem with one company - coincidentally gardening related -
and that was Ideal World's gardening offshoot. Needless to say, I
haven't done business with them again.

You've just demonstrated why people offering mail order have to send out
good quality or lose cutomers. Word of mouth is a powerful tool! How
many times have we seen adverse comments about plants and seeds and
people swearing never to return? We sent a Reinwardtia indica to a
customer just recently (he's delighted with it) which was smaller than
we would normally send but it is all we have until later, so we gave him
a partial refund. If something goes wrong, we fix it or we refund. At
least one third of our customers are repeat business and others have
heard from a friend etc. Trying to palm off shoddy goods by mail order
is a quick way to lose business or fail altogether.

Which is why the EBay feedback system generally works very well. Nobody
wants to risk negative comments