Hi All,

I have had an unpleasant experience with T&M. I would like to know do
you have similar experience? If you were I, would you accept the
VERBAL apology or I was right to request for some other compensation?

The following was the message I had posted in their guest book with the
event.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have an very unpleasant experience with your website recently. I
would post the event first before I have my suggested improvements:

On 23rd March, I received your company's newsletter on the offer of
Busy Lizzi. The offer was rather attractive as my mother-in-law would
like some for the flower beds in her front-garden.

Although I would be away from the UK between 30th March and 22nd April
and there was no more room on capillary mats for any more seed trays at
home, since the delivery period would be within April, I still thought
it would be fine to order it as long as I inform your company to
deliver it after 22nd April.

I ordered the plug plants online on late Saturday afternoon. From your
website, I was told that for special arrangement about delivery date, I
could EITHER email or call your company. So once I got the email of
confirmation with the order reference, I sent out an email (I copied
and pasted the email address from your website) within 5 minutes to
mention about the delivery and stated that if there was any problem,
please sent me an email.

However, when I was away from the UK, I was told by my husband via IDD
that the plug plants had arrived on 1st April. My husband is not a
gardener, but he still transplanted those plug plants into modules. I
had suggested him to create some more water tanks with full-sized seed
tray and capillary mats. However, he had no time to do it before
flying out to join me. As we had arranged a neighbour to water the
indoor plants twice a week, he swap the seed trays of Busy Lizzi with
an seed module tray (a 6 X 10 core modules) where I had transplanted
various seedlings (all of them had at least a pair of true leaves when
I transplanted them) which I had sown from January:
3 Busy Lizzi (Double Carousel Mixed F1 Hybrid)
6 Marigold (Marionette mixed)
13 Nemesia (Shooting Stars)
16 Petunia (Super Cascade Improved F1 Hybrid)
7 Summer savory
3 Strawberry (Sarian F1 Hybrid)
4 Tagetes (Golden Gem)
Of course, when I arrived back home, the above seedlings had ALL DIED!

I called your company this morning (24th April), but needed to wait for
nearly 7 minutes before I got hold of someone. I was told that there
were so many emails to that email address so it was impossible to
reply. The company needed to deliver the plug plants otherwise they
would die. However, I was asked how many Busy Lizzi had died. But
most people would understand that It was senseless to get another lot
of 35 plug plants of Busy Lizzi. (I would have order another lot if I
needed so many.)
Since your colleague seemed has not the authority to decide what to do
except saying sorry, I asked to talk to someone more senior. I had
waited another 3 minutes before I was asked to left my telephone number
and convenient time to ring.

I got the phone call before the convenient time. That time I was told
that the company had not received my email concerning about the date of
delivery. I used Yahoo and I always got notification if there is a
failure of delivery email. I was told that I should call your company
when I had not got any reply. (I told her that I do not trust the
services of the department anymore so I would not expect to order any
stuff from the department). I was told that though I lost so many
seedling even though I bought the seeds from your company, she would
not be able to do anything about it as it is the business of another
department (of course, no one would like to tell the other department
about their own faults). I was told that since my Busy Lizzi survived,
I would not get any compensation even though I had suggested some
petunia. So I told your colleague that I would not accept the VERBAL
apology and would post the whole issue to any newsgroup about
horticulture. She agreed that I had the rights and the company would
not be legal to sue me.

Suggested improvements:
1. Please make it clear about the date of delivery on your website. If
I knew that the plants would be delivered in EARLY April, I would not
order it.
2. Your colleague said I should call the department instead of sending
an email. So please state it clear in your website.
3. There was a remark on the form of online order. However, it stated
any request about holiday delivery should be contacted via EITHER email
or telephone. It would be much better if customers could add the
request in the remark.
4. It should be stated in your website that if there was no respond to
the email within X office days, the sender should contact your company
again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With regards,
CK

I ordered a load of seeds from them and a couple of other companies. The T&M
ones came 2 or 3 weeks later than the other two and only after I'd rung and
hassled them. However they had accidentally sent me 5 packets of mixed wild
flowers rather than the one I'd paid for so I didn't mind too much

--
Hayley
(gardening on well drained, alkaline clay in Somerset)

Hi All,

I had gone back to the guestbook of T&M this evening, the message I
posted was deleted without any feedback.

I worked freelance in evaluating website. I would rank the service of
the guestbook of T&M as unacceptable.

For the response from the T&M this afternoon. That woman (she hadn't
told me her post) tried to avoid any responsibility by claiming that
they hadn't received my email was totally not a proper way to respond
to a complaint. A better way of answering should be although they
hadn't received the email, they would investigate the reasons.

There might be several reasons behind it:
1. I hadn't sent the email (of course, I had.)
2. I sent to an wrong email address (I copied and post the email
address and there was no notifciation of failure of mail delivery from
Yahoo).
3. T&M used a spam filter which had filtered my email. Then, they
should reset the criteria of filtering.
4. Someone else in their company had accidentally deleted my email.
Then, they should set up a rule how to prevent it happening in the
future.
5. Someone else hadn't done his/her/their job properly and then
deleted my email to cover the fault. It is highly possible as my
message in the guestbook was deleted too.

CK

Hi Hayley,

You were lucky. I think I will still buy seeds from T&M when there is
sales as the date of delivery would not be a great issue in most case.

With regards,
CK

Hi All,

Since my message was deleted from the guestbook, I posted it in 9 parts
(as the guestbook doesn't support using of paragraph) again on Monday
night. On Tuesday morning, the site administrator deleted all but
part one and suggested me to contact the Customer Care. I sent an
email to tell them the whole event again and forwarded the original
email I sent to the youngplantsenq 'at' thompson-morgan.com which they
denied receiving it. I got an auto-reply which had been filtered as a
spam by Yahoo, stating it would take 2-4 days for a proper reply.

Today is Thursday, I am still waiting for the reply. Hopefully, I can
get a proper one before the end of this week.

Regards,
CK

CK wrote:
Hi All,

Who are T&M? A nursery?

"La Puce" wrote in message
oups.com...

CK wrote:
Hi All,

Who are T&M? A nursery?


In a gardening context, T & M probably refers to Thompson & Morgan, see
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/en

BAC wrote:
In a gardening context, T & M probably refers to Thompson & Morgan, see
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/en

Duh!! Ta )

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message . com
from "CK" contains these words:

snip

Today is Thursday, I am still waiting for the reply. Hopefully, I can
get a proper one before the end of this week.

I know it was an online order, but complaints should always be made
in writing, and request a written (on paper) reply. Preferably, address
it to a named person and department, but failing that, to a job title
(such as "Customer services manager". Send the letter by recorded
delivery and mention it it that this is being done. (Remember to check
and copy your letter's delivery (online, free).


Forgive me for being pedantic, but by 'free' in this context, you mean 'for
no additional charge', as the customer has already paid for this part of the
service. And don't be surprised if, sometimes, the delivery of a Recorded
Delivery item is not actually recorded. You can then of course complain
about that, which, in my case, led to a nice polite apology and
'compensation' in the form of two first class stamps. I would have told them
what I thought of their two first class stamps, but I didn't want to waste
the postage :-)

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:42:22 +0100, BAC wrote
(in message ):


...And don't be surprised if, sometimes, the delivery of a Recorded
Delivery item is not actually recorded. ...


Not only is Recorded Delivery not always recorded, it is not always delivered
either!

Although it costs more I would only use Special Delivery (previously called
Registered Post) for anything that I wanted to be fairly sure is actually
delivered, and that delivery documented. Recorded Delivery is normal post but
(usually) with a signature- not necessarily always delivered to the address
or person on the envelope, nor necessarily signed for by anybody that can be
identified or traced afterwards. It is only as reliable as normal post but
it's more effort, costs extra and guarantees nothing.

--
VX (remove alcohol for email)