What's your experience in mail-ordering orchids?

[JanS]

I own several fragrant orchids and got into the "sticky-note" Fragrant Orchid List thread on this site...and decided it would be cool to increase my fragrant orchid collection. So right before the holidays I surfed the net and found a (seemingly) very large mail-order orchid seller from the Los Angeles area who has a very thorough web site where you can actually limit your search to fragrant species.

I went a bit nuts and ended up ordering a bunch of plants in the $25-40 range for a total (with Fed-Ex shipping) of well over $300. The plants showed up in a few days, very well packaged....but:

On several of them the web site has a choice of different ages/stages of the plant including "in flower/spike" - for which you pay $10 extra. Oh heck! it was Xmas and I figured me and my wife would enjoy the instant gratification fragrances.

A Cattleya that was supposed to be in bloom or bud (?) arrived with one bud the size of a small peanut...which turned yellow and died in a matter of 3 days. A Phal. arrived with a stalk that must have earlier held some 6 or so flowers with nothing but the last very aged flower with no scent, which fell off a week or so later. A Paph. that arrived with a relatively well-formed bud had the bud die off within 2 weeks. The only success from the "flowering/budding" plants that I paid $10 each extra for is a Phal. that came with a nice stalk of flowers and buds and continues to bloom and open its new flowers...although it has no scent (a mislabel??)! All the plants continue to look good but turned out to be a very expensive purchase.

I feel ripped off and disappointed. I live in San Diego so it was a short, no-freezing shipment. I believe much of the bud drop had to do with just the usual shock of transporting plants to a new environment, but they should know better than to send either an almost out of bloom plant or one where the bud is just starting and charge extra 10 bucks. This was my first mail order and is likely the last - I would very much like to hear others' experiences.

Thanks!!