Advice for dealing with vendors
 

Hi everyone, I'm at a bit of a loss really and need some tips. I recently had to switch from buying locally to ordering online (my local place stopped selling orchids) and I've been having a difficult time with vendors not shipping things in a timely manner. Sometimes it's the vendors fault, sometimes it's the shipper, but either way my plants are dead on arrival. I try to be polite and helpful, but it isn't like I can show up and make a fuss so it seems like I'm not much of a priority.

So what is your favorite way of dealing with unresponsive or unhelpful sellers?

I have ordered very few plants sight unseen until the pandemic hit. Before that, I always bought at a show so I saw what I was paying for.

Since pandemic, I have only ordered online from my favorite vendors or from vendors that were recommended to me by other growers I am friendly with. This board is also a great source and there are threads on virtually every active vendor with boardmembers reviews.

Be careful on ebay, etc online marketplace type sites. Know who you are dealing with before you buy.

If after all that I have a bad experience????? I can assure you it will be the one and only time with that vendor.

One approach is to try cut down on chances of encountering sellers that have issues with them. This can mean looking at their rating/review etc.

Another consideration is - during these covid times, where mail services might not be as efficient or effective as more 'normal' times ------ it might not be a great time to purchase orchids online for some places around the world.

Or - if a particular seller (on ebay) didn't provide responses at all, or they appear to be impolite even though you are being nice and polite - then don't purchase from them again. I know that different people have different behaviour of course. This includes both sellers and buyers. But if we genuinely just send 1 or 2 messages after the seller seemingly hasn't done anything (for shipping etc) ----- then they most likely have issues. Also could consider giving a negative feedback - especially if you see a significant number of other people giving negative feedback.

Use a credit card, utilize the credit card function to protest, then back away and don't deal with them again.

There are plenty of places to get good shipping, etc. Look around on the Vendor list.

PayPal is also a good choice. They tend to side with the buyer in a dispute.

The best method is just to buy from the bet dealers. Odom's, Hausermann, Sunset Valley Orchids, Akatsuka, OrchidWeb (although their prices are high), and I'm sure there are others. Those are just the first ones I think about. I'm sure others can add their feedback. Those are great vendors, and you are highly unlikely to have a problem, but if you do, they will make it right or you immediately.

A quick search around here will also bring your attention to some to avoid. Is there like a new rule or something about making negative comments about vendors? Most comments I've seen lately about bad doers have been kind of cryptic, and I have one vendor in particular to avoid, but I'm afraid to say the name now.

Oh, and to actually answer your question, open a dispute with your credit card company.

Here is the guidance, from the Vendor Feedback forum, it applies throughout...
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...uncements.html
Comments should be in the Vendor Feedback forum, also are easier to find in a search.

That makes more sense keeping all vendor feedback in one place, instead of the previous wild west days when we talked about vendors we didn't like whenever we felt like it.

---------- Post added at 08:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:17 PM ----------

Also, be real careful about eBay. You can get some great stuff on eBay, but there are a lot of dishonest people on there too. Always check the feedback rating, and check how many sales they make. a 98% positive feedback rating doesn't look bad at all, until you read the details that you see that he's sold three thousand plants this year, and 2% negative feedback is like sixty people who were displeased. So check the feedback percentage, but also look at how much product the vendor is moving.

The guidance comes from the owner of Orchid Board and makes total sense... people can't join just to trash a business.

Yes, I understand now.

Another tip to getting healthy orchids is to avoid buying during extreme weather and to always be on hand to collect the box when it arrives.

Absolutely ------ to avoid the FIT issue (frozen in transit), it's a really good idea to avoid (if possible) shipping during snow periods, or periods where the temperature can get down to ice forming levels.

In the tropics here ----- even though the conditions are generally good, I always ask the sender to put 'leave in a safe place'. That's to avoid having the package go back to the mail centre if they think that nobody is at home. Saves the plant making the extra trip back to the depot and spend more time in the box.

The problem is I've been trying to stick to well-regarded companies, but it doesn't seem to matter. I even pay extra for 2day or next day shipping and end up with dead plants arriving a week later. I don't even live in some far flung frontier town, I live in the Dallas metroplex. I even try to be home on the scheduled delivery day so there's no chance of my plants sitting outside.

I'd be really surprised if an orchid died completely from shipping. I've had orchids dry a bit in the post and lose leaves but never has it killed one except arguably an angraecum once.
Flower shops on the other hand (especially the ones that post flowers), they are always in bad condition, I'm thinking the zygopetalums, the sharry babies (if it comes from a flower shop), the cambria's like Nelly Isler, the Miltoniopsis and the multiphals that develop root rot because the flower shop didn't water them correctly.

That can be avoided in my experience by buying from places that specialise "only" in orchids. But this can vary from place to place too of course and I have a shop I myself would never use again because they also do not water correctly.

One of their plants took a whole year to develop stem rot - now you might argue after 1 year it isn't really their fault anymore but I disagree, I bought two identical plants at the same time, after 1 year the good one is flowering, the bad one has developed stem rot - It is still alive and has prduced 6 keikis but the overall health of both orchids was very different to start with even though they looked identical when I bought them.