Dave: On our policy, we pay the return shipping -- no expense to you. And
you can use Priority Mail, which means you can print out a label with
postage and schedule a free pick-up by the USPS [either at your home or your
workplace, whichever is more convenient for you] using their "click-n-ship"
service -- takes 2-3 minutes. And if you really had to buy a box, you could
put the receipt in with the plants and I'd reimburse you for that, too. For
one guy who insisted on paying by money order rather than credit card, we
offered to pay the money order fee, too! [He still wasn't satisfied ... ]

I am only human and I do make mistakes. One time I sent a lady the wrong
plant entirely -- it was in the next tray and I grabbed it by mistake. She
got a new plant of the right kind, without shipping the other back. But
when I send out say, 10 of Plant X in the course of a month and get back 6-7
responses from customers who are thrilled with it, I trust you'll understand
that I'm a bit leery of the customer who calls upon receipt of #11, foaming
at the mouth about how awful it is ... It might not be true of the large
farms, but in our case, I'm the one who packs the boxes, so I happen to know
that #11 was just as good as #s 1-10, at least when it left here.

And, like one of the other posters, I do have to say that the tone of the
complaint does influence our response. Even semi-polite complaints elicit
our best effort to make a happy customer. [The lady mentioned above was
rather accusatory at first ... ]. But foaming at the mouth (name calling
and gratuitous insults involving foul language) generates "I'm so sorry you
were unhappy with the plants. Please return them, and as soon as we receive
them, we will issue you a full refund including your return shipping." We
don't expect to receive future orders from such customers, but in the
unlikely event that we do, we WILL be "out" of whatever they order .. no
matter how many of them we have. Kenni

I really hate having to ship stuff back. Not only do I have spend the time
to re-package the silly thing but I have to spend money to ship it back
making the whole transaction more expensive for me. Of course the box it
came in is probably too big for shipping it back (who mail orders just one
orchid?). Oh by the way, my wife throughs all empty boxes in the trash so
in
all likelihood I'll have to buy a box in order to ship the plant back to
you.
Worst of all, I have to somehow find time in my day to make the trek down
to UPS/FedEx during business hours to stand in line to get the thing
shipped.
My life is too hectic already without having to deal with all that hassle.
You will go on my list of high maintenance vendors and one of three things
will happen. First, if I perceive you to be a high quality vendor then I
won't sweat that rare problem and I'll take the hit myself and make life
easy on myself. Second, if there are other vendors that I know of who
don't
require me to ship stuff back I'll deal with them preferentially over you.
I feel that I should state that while I don't expect a grower to provide a
replacement without returning the unsatisfactory plant I greatly
appreciate
(and am amazed at the trust) of the growers that do. Third, if the first
two situations don't apply I'll silently never order from you again.

As a side note I think the preceding diatribe answers Rob's rhetorical
question about why an honest customer would object to sending an order
back.
Then again, maybe my laziness qualifies me as a bad customer. :-)

Dave