Claessen Orchideen, NL -- worst experience I've had

[meridiannight]

I placed an order with a Dutch nursery called Claessen Orchideen. Had a very difficult experience with them.

First off, they couldn't process and send out my order within 2 weeks' maximum, like is stated in their policy. It was in the middle of August, they had a summer holiday or something, and they just couldn't process the number of orders coming in. They lied about and evaded my wishes to get my order posted sooner (their explanation on why it was even further delayed, was simply that I had not answered their question as to whether they should send plants out ASAP or wait till next Monday. So, we exchange several emails, and the one with my answer mysteriously gets lost, was in essence their explanation). I placed my order on August 7, it was eventually sent out on September 4 (they were supposed to send it on the week starting with Aug 12).

Then, when I expressed my wish to cancel the order, they ignored that as well. They claimed the package had already left their nursery. It was Saturday. I got the tracking link from the carrier next Tuesday, Sep 3, saying ''shipment expected but not received yet''. So, at the time I requested cancellation they lied about having already sent out my plants.

I replied that I intended to return everything when I received that package so again they might as well not send it out, and I threatened legal action. That was when they finally agreed to cancel my order. I was told I will get a refund within 14 days. And it took them the whole of 14 days and some 10 hours to finally refund my money, 220 euros by 23.34 at night.

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In sum, TLDR, they easily lie and offer excuses why packages aren't sent out in time, and on other problems concerning the order. Correspondence with them is not transparent.
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Their customer service is a complete joke when things turn bad and there's some kind of a problem. When you want to order plants, and have questions about their plants then they will be very nice and helpful to you. But when things don't go well, they will be extremely difficult to deal with. I heard all kinds of traditional excuses of how their employees were sick, and how another employee had left work for a while as to why issues with sending out my package or refund were not completed. These types of excuses are so naive, that not even kids will buy them.


As for the plants, if you ever order from this company, I advise against ordering their Vandas. All their other plants appear to be fine (I had ordered prior to this last awful exchange with them), but their Vandas have very bad root systems and are not the healthiest you can find. If asked, they will tell you how those Vandas came from Asia, and how the Asians cut off the roots for the transit, and also that new roots will grow on the plants. Like that explains the bad condition of the Vandas coming out of their nursery. One of the Vandas I ordered from them arrived with 70% of its root mass rotting! Stay away from their Vandas at least!

And one other huge minus with them is that they refuse to use faster couriers. They use regular postal service, postNL, and flat out refuse to send plants by DPD, or DHL or the like. They answered that postNL is their partner, and they cannot use any other carrier service. Huge problem. I had my plants sit at postNL facility for whole 7 days before anybody sent them out.

[camille1585]

I'm absolutely not surprised. I live in the Netherlands, and used to regularily place orders there simply because the shipping costs are much lower than ordering from Germany for instance.

I started buying orchids there maybe 7-8 years ago, only a few years after the business started I think. Back then they had big, beautiful, healthy plants and impecable customer service because the owner seemed to be doing it mostly on his own at that time. I even visited the greenhouses around that time, and was very impressed by the quality of the stock and the cleanliness of the greenhouses.

Anyway... As the years went on, I had more and more issues with my orders. A plant with no roots, smaller and smaller plants with increasing prices, tiny plants advertised as blooming size, plants that were shipped soggy. The biggest change was the customer service which went from good, to ok, to bad, to terrible. I was told that the fact some of my orchids arrived rootless was normal because they were freshly imported plants so I shouldn't expect more than that. They all died, with no apologies, no refund, nothing. Sorry, but if a company imports plants and they are in poor shape, then they either need to a) sort things out with their supplier or b) nurse the plants back to health before putting them up for sale.

In Dutch Facebook groups I see a lot of people with the same complaints. In the past others would defend the company saying that it doesn't happen often, and they're a great vendor, but now the comments are nearly all negative. I did get some fairly good plants in my last order, but it really feels like a gamble each time I order, so I only shop there if I can't find a specific plant anywhere else...

If you want some great plants, try Elsner Orchideen or Orchideen Lucke in Germany. Their customer service is also excellent. A good dutch grower (small but healthy, proportionally priced plants) is Orchidz.nl. If you like novelty Phals and Neofinetia, try Orchids Deluxe (used to be in NL but now moved to DE). The owners are a charming couple (I've met them at shows) and though the plants tend to be small, they are beautiful healthy plants.

[jcec1]

Thanks for the heads up. I was very tempted with their huge range of vandas - I won't be placing an order now. I can vouch for the suppliers Camille mentioned and will add OrchideenGarten to that list of decent suppliers.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by jcec1

Thanks for the heads up. I was very tempted with their huge range of vandas - I won't be placing an order now. I can vouch for the suppliers Camille mentioned and will add OrchideenGarten to that list of decent suppliers.

So that was the place! I remember that you had suggested this grower perhaps a year ago, and I was trying to remember the name.

[meridiannight]

Originally Posted by camille1585

If you want some great plants, try Elsner Orchideen or Orchideen Lucke in Germany. Their customer service is also excellent. A good dutch grower (small but healthy, proportionally priced plants) is Orchidz.nl. If you like novelty Phals and Neofinetia, try Orchids Deluxe (used to be in NL but now moved to DE). The owners are a charming couple (I've met them at shows) and though the plants tend to be small, they are beautiful healthy plants.

Originally Posted by jcec1

Thanks for the heads up. I was very tempted with their huge range of vandas - I won't be placing an order now. I can vouch for the suppliers Camille mentioned and will add OrchideenGarten to that list of decent suppliers.

Thanks for the recommendations, both of you! I will look them up.

I can add one German guy to this list of quality suppliers. He sells on eBay, I'm not aware that he has a site up anywhere. He's called olympus1975:

https://www.ebay.com/usr/olympus1975...p2047675.l2559

Hope it's okay to link him. Not a very broad variety of plants, but every plant I've ordered from him has been very healthy. I've only bought Vandas from him so far, 7 altogether (with one Laelia arriving next week as well), and I can vouch for his Vandas. He even accepts offers if you wanna bargain with prices. He sends the plants by DPD or DHL, and I've received them within 2-3 days from sending out.

[bogdan]

Regarding the seller olympus1975, do the plants have an actual name or just a tag with a made-up name as in the listings? Because paying 60 euro for a noid Cattleya perhaps jenmanii is quite awful.

[meridiannight]

Originally Posted by bogdan

Regarding the seller olympus1975, do the plants have an actual name or just a tag with a made-up name as in the listings? Because paying 60 euro for a noid Cattleya perhaps jenmanii is quite awful.

Some of his plants seem to have made-up names, yes, and they do not come with any kind of tag in the package.

He does use real IDs as well (e.g. some Cattleyas like maxima are correctly presented; Grammatophyllums; Vanda Ambrosian Twinkle, and a few others). But for reason unknown to me he does appear to just invent names for most of the Vandas and some other orchids he sells.

[Tango]

I ordered once from them. All the plants came without alive roots, except for a single one... A Den. nobile that one year later turned out to be a whitish hybrid and not the natural form I had bought. The other plants are alive but they are still recovering 12 months later... The Cattleyas will need several years. I complained and they asked me to send photos of the plants (as if they did not know what they had sent), then answered that they looked perfect and beautiful!!!
Don't buy anything from them, they are simply shameless.

[NatalieS]

I'm just going to provide the facts of my experience here, and people can arrive at their own conclusions:

I ordered 6 in-stock plants from their website on 30/07, but because I paid by bank transfer, the payment took a day to go out to them, and so I received my order confirmation 31/07. I therefore calculated shipping times based on confirmation, not from when I placed the order.

On 09/08, 9 days later, I had had no update on the shipment so I sent an email asking for an update as I wanted to make some plans and didn't want to not be home if they were going to be delivered in the next few days. They did respond quickly, but simply informed me that my order was still in progress and emphasised the fact that their website said 10-20 days for orchid deliveries (at the 9 day mark, I assumed that the seller would have a rough eta for the shipment, but apparently not). I won't go into the back and forth here, but I offered some ways in which they could be more communicative and transparent via their website. All communications were very prompt and polite.

On 21/08, 21 days after the confirmation of my order with no shipping link received, I emailed them again. Again, I received a prompt polite reply, except this time they admitted that one of the plants was not currently in stock and they were waiting for their supplier to deliver more on Saturday. I was given the option to ship immediately without the plant, or wait until Monday 26/08 so they could include the missing plant. I agreed to wait until the Monday, but stated if the order wasn't shipped by COB that day, that I would be cancelling the order.

On Monday 26/08 I did get the tracking link, and the package was delivered very quickly the following day (27th).

Since my confidence was not very high at this point, I filmed the entire unboxing of the order. Note, the box was well packed and undamaged, but there were only 5 plants in the package - the plant that they had been waiting for from their supplier was not included. To be clear, there was no communication from them accompanying the tracking link to inform me of this, so I had to email them back to specifically ask them for a refund for the missing plant. The initial response made me think there was going to be back and forth about my refund, but in the end they simply sent a refund notice, and didn't dispute the request further. The refund was €3 more than the cost of the missing plant, but since the plant was quite expensive anyway, I'm not really sure what the €3 was about.

Now... to the condition of the plants. After unboxing the plants, I left them all, unwatered, for about 1.5/2 days on the table in my entrance hall, which has no direct sun and is a perfectly comfortable and even 20/21 degrees. After the 2 days, I moved them all onto my sheltered balcony, which is brighter and slightly warmer. My intention was to have them out during the day, and bring them in at night intially as the temp drops a good 8-10 degrees during the night.

Two plants were mounted and are in absolutely fine condition - no complaints at all about these.

One, an ascocentrum miniatum was in a sphag/bark mix, and sitting quite deep in the pot. While moving it onto the balcony, I noticed a large centipede in the pot, which I went to extract, and realised the base of the plant was very damp, with rot beginning. I pulled the plant out the pot immediately, had to remove 2 lower leaves that were rotted at the base, and treat the area very lightly. It has one good root, and is being carefully babied. I can tell by the fact that the newest leaves have grown in progressively smaller than the last that this plant has been stressed or in sub-optimal conditions, perhaps since the beginning of the season.

Next comes the ripiculous laelia, crispilabia. I watered this very lightly, just once, because some of the growths/leaves looked like they were dehydrated, but it was also potted into packed sphag and bark, so I was weary of watering. Although it was in a clear pot, and the plant was very tightly packed into the pot, I could only see roots on the surface, which I was also weary of. Since there were several new growths, though, I took the plunge and pulled it out of the pot. It was not one plant, it was three separate pieces. Roots on two of the pieces were rotted out/none existant, but all pieces were attempting new growths. I've repotted them into a compot now of mostly inorganic, free-draining media, and treating with very dilute seaweed mix to stimulate the roots on the new growths. Note, some of the growths grew bifoliate, which is also sometimes an indicator of stress in these plants. There is no evidence of any of the previous growths having bloomed.

As for the cat jillicoc x l cinnabarina, this is in bark, and appears to have a lot of growing roots on the top of the media. It looks mostly healthy, and has new growths, however, the newest mature growths are very lanky and look like they may have flopped during growth, with one bifoliate again, while the oldest growths are nice and stout with evidence of blooming. I have not pulled this out of it's pot yet, but I think I will. Overall it looks to be healthy, but not especially well grown.

To finish this post off, I wanted to add that a note comes in the package along with the plants. The note is care instructions. They instruct that you be careful with watering after delivery, which is absolutely reasonable, and also that you allow the plants to acclimate, which is also reasonable. However, they advise against repotting within the first 6 weeks, and then the note is finished with "If you do not comply with this, you can no longer call upon us".

This is where I will offer an opinion: imo, this statement allows the seller to potentially ship poor quality plants with little recourse as it gives the recipient no leeway to inspect the plant if they suspect poor roots. If you take the plant out of the pot to inspect the roots, essentially they are "voiding your warranty". I'm not sure how legal it is for them to enforce this - you should be able to inspect your purchase thoroughly on receipt.

I have therefore not made a complaint back to the seller regarding the two poor-condition plants as I feel it will just result in wasted time and energy - I will just care for the plants and hope they will recover.

Needless to say, I will not purchase from this seller again.

[Roberta]

A general suggestion... don't pay by bank transfer or debit card, use a credit card and/or a service such as PayPal. Then if you get sub-standard plants, if the vendor gives you problems, you can go to your credit card company (or PayPal, etc), they are not bound by the ridiculous conditions that prevent you from inspecting the roots. You may still not get your money back, but you improve your chances, these big companies have a lot more power than an individual does.