Norman's Orchids / Orchids.com
 

I follow(ed) Norman on social media so I was excited to place an order with them, despite steep pricing, because of all the beautiful plants and genetics I see him post. He seemed like a friendly guy as well.

I placed a $550 order that contained 4 phals and 3 Phrags. These were all chosen from the "select plants" section of the website and I always chose the most expensive size option (in bud or premium size). The 3 phrags had zero roots when i went to repot. I messaged them to make them aware (didn't ask for new plants or a refund) and I didn't even get an apology. I expected them to at least care so they could address the issue with their supply chain but their response was very adversarial (despite not asking for compensation). After my experience I looked online and saw a lot of similar complaints.

Everything came in flimsy nursery pots and very old sphagnum moss despite the $75+ price tag. Even the premium phals had a large number of dead roots. The sphag was so old it stunk and the roots were being affected so I repotted even though I paid more for plants in bud.

Norman does not stand behind his products. I suspect much of what is sold through orchids.com are from sources in Asia, which of course is fine, but there is no quality control. I will not be ordering again and encourage others to shop elsewhere.

wow, what a shame, that is a big order to just not care about.WOW

Took them three days and a follow up message for them to respond. I think they know they can get away with these business practices because they have the orchids.com domain.

Its always sad when people previously respected let you down.

I have seen so many complaints about them over the years. I am sorry that you had to experience this. Years ago, there was a gardening site that had a really great review section of all the vendors (which I always checked before a first order) but it seems like they had to modify it a few years ago and many of the bad reviews of the worst offenders are missing. It is quite difficult, now, to know whether a vendor is good or not.

I usually learn about vendors through other members of my Orchid Society and that has been quite helpful. You could also start a post here, naming the type of orchids you wish to buy and ask for recommendations of places from which to buy them. There are some really great, reliable vendors out there and all of them have their specialties.

As someone who opens boxes of plants with all the excitement of a holiday gift, I especially feel for you.

Again, sorry you had to experience this. :(

Thank you for the kind and sympathetic words.

Yes, its quite the letdown when you drop $550 on orchids you have been wanting for a while, opening the box with excitement, then being slapped in the face by a rip off. Definitely ruined my weekend. That is a lot of money for plants with no roots. This supplier knows what they are doing to their customers. Money is simply more important to them than their reputation or doing what is right.

I have had great experiences with Hauserman, SVO, and Andy's

for what it is worth, i think we have all lost some money or time and energy to unscrupulous dealers and growers......don't take it personally, learn some lessons and move on to look at and smell the flowers.

i hate the greed and ugliness as well but don't beat yourself up, you aren't alone

Did you pay with a credit card? If so, challenge the charge with your card issuer NOW. You did not get what you ordered, so should not have to pay.

This is a very common type of story regarding this vendor.

Avoid in the future

I thought we had feedback on vendors here on OB? We should make use of that before a first order (as Leafmite suggested.) So sorry for you, Clawhammer.

His website is beautiful and he has a great selection, and I have been tempted myself to buy some things from him, but I've just heard too many negative reviews that I've resisted. It has been hard, because I have seen some things on his website that I really wanted, but I've been burned a few times by unscrupulous vendors, and you feel both disappointed and betrayed, and I don't think it's worth the risk with him.

Not the first time I've heard of problems from him so buyer beware.

To be fair, I’ve ordered from them many times and not had a problem. Since Cattleyas are my thing, I know to get them out of the sphagnum ASAP. Once repotted and acclimated to my conditions, they do well.

I've heard other stories too of people getting very nice things from him, so I know he has some nice plants. The thing is, when you order from a website and buy plants that you cannot inspect first, you have to be able to trust that you will get good value for the money you spend. You have to have a level of trust in the vendor, and based on the reviews, both negative and positive, I don't think I can trust him to consistently give me good value for my money, so I choose not to shop with him. Another vendor I feel I cannot trust to give me good value for my money is Seattle Orchids. I've received a few nice things from them, but I've received some disappointing things from them too, and they are dismissive of customers' concerns, so that's another one I don't trust enough to shop with anymore. If I'm ever in Seattle or wherever Norman's Orchids is, I would certainly visit their greenhouses, because I know they have nice things there, but I feel like I can't trust them to send me a good plant that I cannot see before I buy. I would only buy in person with these nurseries so that I could inspect first hand what it was I was buying before I paid, but i won't be buying plants sight unseen over the internet with either of them.

I had a good experience. . .
 

I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. I did want to mention that I've ordered from them twice, mainly angraecums, dendrobiums and phals, and both time have received large healthy plants with great roots.

I’ve ordered from them a couple of times and have been happy. But, I’d read enough negative reviews that I limited my purchases to “small ticket” items. Sorry to hear about your experience :-( I think there are other threads on here with people having a similar mix of experiences.

Our local OS ordered from Norman for our auction in 2018. Two plants came in with incorrect labels, and it took about 8 messages to get that straightened out.

Personally I will not buy from that organization, as he is known in the industry as 're-naming' Norman. I have seen photographic proof, that he renames material purchased in Taiwan (unfortunately I did not save a copy).

Avoid Norman's
 

After a number of bad experiences with Norman's, I stopped dealing with them several years ago. Recently I found a number of the plants I had received from them are virused.
BUYER BEWARE!

Okay, so kind of wished i had read this prior, but i have an order coming in later today. SO will be so interested to see. I did call in a couple of times to check on how to request a very selection of Phal. schilleriana from San Ramon island, and to choose a plant with the strongest banding of the population. I was assured that it would be highlighted for selection. I grabbed a few other plants that were of interest. I'll post what comes in today.

Upon checking, I'm sure they know since you have to agree not to bring customer service complains to the private facebook group it seems.

UPDATE

Photos:
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...lbums1694.html

I'm happy with what was delivered today. These plants don't demonstrate the pinnacle of greenhouse cultivation practices, I'd like to have seem more healthy root tips, have to consider what the last year has been like for running a greenhouse and maintaining operations. The process was streamlined and quick, decent, but not careful packing. My two impulse choices came with blooms (one very much on the way out).

Upon depotting it is evident that they are not removing old sphagnum bark ect. when they size up the pots. The center of each is filled with a wet dead root mass, leaving each to live solely on new roots alone. this in conjunction with the tight plastic pot it is really suffocating. SO, it will be a process to get the roots all cleaned up, but they'll be okay under new care.

Hopefully they can steer the hobby side of the business to a more carful practice that addresses the concerns presented.

I think you're cutting them too much slack. The past year has done very little to affect their greenhouse operations.

Treat the plant with KelpMax and it'll bounce back much more quickly.

Yes, I probably am. I do hope they change, there is no reason to cut corners with the potting process the way they have and ultimately detrimental to the business.

I haven't tried kelpmax, I'lll look around for a smaller size, only found $40 for liter.

I was just planning on going in strong with 5% bleach solution and scissors, a little dry out and repot and superthrive. It's the way I had learned way back when, but open to new if it makes a huge difference.

1liter is the smallest package.

You’ll pay too much if you go through Amazon.

where should I purchasing it? I had the same issue with amazon and hydroton... and thank you for your information on LECA, i'm giving it a try for the next while.

orchids.com aka Norman's
 

UGH. I also wish i had found this forum before ordering from orchids.com. I ordered 5 orchids and received 4... no spikes, no flowers so I cannot address anything regarding the correctness of the ones I received. I am missing the phal schilleriana and when I called to tell them, the lady was nice enough but dismissive. Her solution... reply to the email she sends and she will forward to the "order packer". Excuse me? This just proves that they are outsourcing their orders to other vendors. I have done as she asked and have received no reply. I am not patient with shitty customer service such as this and will be disputing my cc charge until they offer something.

I have had this exact problem with Seattle Orchids. Yes, I have received some very nice things from them, however most of what I bought from them was trash, and they had no interested in making it right by any means. They were actually hostile about it.

Sure they have some good stuff and if I was ever in Seattle, I would definitely take the time to visit them so I could have an opportunity to inspect individual plants before I bought to make sure they were healthy and it good condition. I don't order from them anymore because I don't feel like I can trust them to send me a quality plant that I haven't inspected myself. They are just not trustworthy.

I think it would be more useful if you opened a new thread for this since it's a different vendor.

I don't believe the Phal. schilleriana are outsourced, they do grow many varieties of this species as their specialty. I have the San Ramon Island variety. Once I repotted from the old compacted sphagnum it began doing very well.

Orchids.com/Normans
 

:(( I echo the notion they are not great.

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A few years ago I purchased 3 phals as gifts for my mother. one was fine. the other two were obviously mislabeled (found upon blooming). back then I only started virus testing and found that 2 of the 3 were virused. When I called I was told they would refund the two wrong plants, but they never did. Eventually I got sick of calling them and filed a dispute with my CC company; despite me furnishing documentation of receiving incorrect (and virused) product they took their side! We then had a nasty google review/comment thing going for a while. (They certainly seemed to have plenty of time for that, which was comical).

Bunch of crooks. Nasty to boot. So many places to get good plants. Don't support these clowns.

CC companies, Paypal, ebay, etc., have never sided with me when it came to plants. All the vendor has to demonstrate is that a plant was shipped. Whether it's the correct plant, whether it's virused or anything, is not within the expertise of the auditors.

It is such a shame so many of you have had a bad, negative experience with orchids.com. And at those prices, one would expect better quality and attention to detail. I have ordered 5 orchids from orchids.com over the last few months, and i haven’t had any problems with quality or shipping. They were all carefully wrapped in styrofoam sheets with lots of packing peanuts. The Mini Mark was the only one that was in questionable health. The micro mini Cattleyas were potted in tiny plastic pots packed tight with sphagnum, but given that they are so small, I guess that was appropriate. I do like the wide selection of orchids that they have, especially the mini ones…

I urge you to consider supporting businesses that don't treat their customers like trash and routinely screw people over.

I couldn’t agree more, there is no excuse for the way you were treated…deplorable, in fact. Do you have any experience with SVO? Their listings are a bit confusing to me, so it’s not quite clear to me what I am ordering.

SVO is top notch.

I also want to say SVO is Top Notch! Extremely healthy, robust plants at a very good price. Add to that Fred Clarke and crew are Genuinely nice, very passionate orchid growers who will respond to questions via email about their orchids and you owe it to yourself to give SVO a try. SVO has a world wide reputation for orchid hybridizing excellence (Fred gets my vote for hybridizer Hall of Fame), and I greatly appreciate all the information listed on parent’s growth and flowering characteristics. If you have trouble figuring out what is written on the site and don’t want to do the research to figure it out send an email asking for recommendations based on what you desire. I am adding this to this thread because the question was asked about SVO.
To bring it back to orchids.com, I placed one order with them years ago, and was not happy with the quality of the orchids, especially not compared to the several hundreds of dollars for the order. I have not placed a second order with them, and won’t unless they have something I desperately want that is not available anywhere else, and even then I would understand it would be a gamble, the orchid would probably be weak and/or diseased. When you look at the sheer number of negative reviews for orchids.com it is pretty clear what one should expect. To end on a positive note the BEST things about orchids.com is they have a great domain name, and they post pretty pictures of what the orchids should look like on the website if they were well grown!

An experience with Orchids-Dot-Com
 

I'm posting this experience here, and Norman's orchids is affiliated with Orhids-dot-com.

I purchased a Brassocattleya Rustic Spots 'H & R' from orchids-dot-com. It arrived today, and the photo shows what I found. I contacted them, and argued via messages, for 30 minutes. The contact person tried to tell me they recently whitewashed the greenhouse, and the spots were specks of whitewash. They then told me that I had ordered a Phal, and the photo was not Phal leaves.

Ultimately, I received Prepaid return postage for a yet to be seen full refund. The plant is packaged so as not to spread more malicious Whitewash.... Whoda thought.

ALWAYS pay with a credit card. If you don’t get what you ordered, simply challenge it with the card issuer.