Garden plants

Has any one else had the same dire experience I have had with Ideal over plants?
A month after ordering (and with Ideal taking the money immediately), I have not received one particular order. Of course I had to go through their dreadful overseas customer services who could only say that even after a whole month, I would have to wait 7 working days for a claim form before they would even consider a refund despite their system showing that the plants had not even been sent out to me. Part of the other order I made arrived in such a condition that I had to dispose of the entire set of plants... lord knows what condition the remaining plants yet to arrive will be in. Admittedly I have been promised a replacement and chasing up of the outstanding plants but it begs the question why they are allowed get away with offering their customers such poor service.
They have definitely lost this customer!
Their complaints department do not call when they are supposed to and an email to Gareth Parker gets no response in my experience.
I hope that the new owners do better as far as Customer Service and Relations are concerned as my experiences with Ideal in the past have been dire

Rant over... but I am slowly learning to be more careful in dealing with home shopping. I hope I haven't bored anyone by this long post

The last lot of plants I had were dreadful. It was a POTD with fuchsias, upright and trailing begonias and million bells. It didn't arrive and after several weeks I contacted customer services---India of course---who said ring back in a week. Blow that! I e-mailed them instead and eventually a parcel arrived. The packing slip was for only a couple of days before but the plants were truly awful, stems slimy and rotten, the million bells leaves as yellow as guineas, the real dregs of a nursery. I tried to save them. but half the fuchsias died in a couple of days. the millionbells never regained any health and the few begonias that survived are pathetic little specimens. I have a greenhouse full of lovely plants that I have grown from cuttings ,plugs and corms and I certainly won't be buying anymore from IW. A chap rang up trying to get me to buy more plants so I told him what I thought of them and not to bother me any more.

Didn't you demand a refund from him?

Thank you for letting me know that I'm not alone in having a bad experience with Ideal. Like you I have had the most awful delivery of geraniums which were too rotten to even try saving.

asking for a refund from their Call centre reps is like trying to squeeze blood from stone... you have to wait for claim forms which will take 7 working days to be sent and then of course the time it takes for them to get your form and process it. They really should deal with customer issues in the UK. When I talk to people who continuously repeat my name at the start of every sentenceas if I don't know who I am really grates...even if eventually the person tries to be helpful. I have no option but to go through their long-winded refund system and wait for the rest of my delivery to see if they arrive as plants or a slimy mess!

I hope they never call me trying to persuade me to buy from them again.

I've started taking photos as evidence!

great idea! I will remember that for the outstanding order - and all distance purchases.
Somehow there is a positive development... apparently the payment for the order that never arrived is being refunded so I now only have to wait for the other outstanding order to be sorted out.

I shall have my camera ready!

Trading Standards always recommend taking photographs of proof where possible. From a personal POV I never order from IW but I agree that their CS should be in this country and not abroad (anywhere). There will always be a language/culture problem and the CS people cannot deviate from their scripts. I have to be honest...whenever I end up talking to an indian call centre my heckles are up immediately (because of the language issue) and this isnt fair on the CS representitive who invariably are very friendly and really do seem to want to help!

You are so right... The CS representative was actually very pleasant and was trying to be helpful and I believe that was why my refund seems to have materialised so quickly. I appreciate her help despite the reaction described.
I thank all who have joined in this posting as it has helped me calm down, and more importantly given me some brilliant advice

Oddly my mother was saying she'd never buy plants from IW again (fuscias not that impressive) nor from another plant seller on the internet. But fruit trees are ok from IW :call:

Though to be honest, the CS people don't sound like they're from India as their english has subtle nuances which suggests somewhere else possibly Phillipines. Anybody got a link proving me wrong?

sheepdog said:

But fruit trees are ok from IW

Click to expand...

We bought the three flowering cherries last year (that implied they were originally intended for Woolies) and they are strong healthy specimens. Trees are probably from a different grower to the annuals/perennials they sell. When IW had the free P&P deal a few weeks ago I was tempted to buy again (reality and lack of space kicked in at the last minute....):smile: