All this talk of packages and delivery reminded me of the one time my orchid
shipment got misplaced on a different floor of the office building that I
used to work in. I never mail-ordered from that vendor again.

That sounds harsh and unfair doesn't it?

Except that it's actually rather silly. You see, the vendor was Al -- it's
ok to name names, since it certainly wasn't his fault that the orchid got
misplaced in my office building. And his greenhouse is located only a 40
minute drive from where I live. Don't ask me why on earth I mail ordered the
orchid instead of coming for it. Insanity? I had bought from Al before, and
I have bought from him since. Al was nicely calm and reassuring about the
mail misplacement, and he didn't call me an idiot for mail ordering the
plant to begin with (not calling client idiot, even when they clearly are at
fault, is a big plus). We both agreed though that the mail ordering was a
bad experiment not to be repeated.

Joanna

"Kenni Judd" wrote in message
...
Hi, Dave: In my effort to be brief, I neglected to mention that we will
replace rather than refund -- if we believe the complaint to be in good
faith [note Rob's post]. Otherwise, we'd rather have our plants back,
issue
the refund and be done with it.

It's only happened to us 4-5 times in several thousand shipments over the
last seven years. A couple of times, it was good repeat customers; we
took
them at their word and replaced the plants, waiving the return of those
deemed unsatisfactory. A couple of times, it was people obviously "trying
out" plants, at our expense for shipping both ways [we used to include
shipping costs in our prices until the post office made that unfeasible].
E.g., one lady complained about a box of vandaceous; when we got it back,
one plant had one brown leaf-tip -- and then she wanted Catts in
replacement
... So, generally, we won't waive the return of the "unsatisfactory"
plants
for a first-time buyer. [Note Rob's post again] But we pay the return
postage to get the plants back, which is more than I think most nurseries
do.

The notice issue hasn't seemed to be a problem for us. I tell people when
their orders are going to ship, and so far the USPS has been good about
confirming it when I generate the labels. The only delivery problems I
can
recall a (1) the postal worker got stuck in a snow drift; she used
her
cellphone to call the customer to rescue her plants; (2) one gentleman
relied on his neighbor to get his plants, the neighbor left them broiling
in
the metal mailbox for 2 days (we took the plants back, he eventually
re-bought them G); (3) one lady claimed, after I had a delivery
confirmation receipt, that the USPS had stolen her plants (I offered to
replace them at half-price, to "share the loss," didn't hear back from
her).
--
Kenni Judd
Juno Beach Orchids
http://www.jborchids.com


"Dave Fouchey" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 13 May 2005 17:04:19 -0400, "Kenni Judd"
wrote:

I would like to hear the concensus of those who post here concerning
this
topic. I'm not asking anyone to "name names" but I would like to know:

If you place an order, receive it, and are not happy with it, for
whatever
reason, what do you want the grower to do?

Our own policy is to apologize [whether or not we think we did anything
wrong G], and ask that the unsatisfactory plants be returned,
whereupon
we
will issue a full refund including the return postage. Fortunately for
us,
it's a rare occurence, but I'm still curious.

What say all of you? What more would you expect, if anything?
Well so far it has not happened to me with Orchids. (Thanks to you who
know who you are!)

I would like the chance to have the vendor make the order good first
before going for a refund. Just my Humble Opinion. Everyone has a bad
day or has an unforeseen accident happen to their shipment, and it
seems to me that letting the Vendor have the option of making the
order good or refunding the order would be a reasonable attitude and
policy to have.

But then I do own rose colored glasses..
Dave