Coblands Nursery

Stevedaylilly

Hi fellow gardeners 

As any one had any problems with Coblands Nursery sending out the wrong plants.
I ordered 4 Geranuim Blue Bloods in 1 litre pots online some 8 weeks ago. They were planted out at the beginning of this month. About a week ago, one of the Geranuims started budding up and to my surprise a few pink flowers appeared. As this Geranuim is supposed to be the darkest blue flower of any perennial Geranuim, I was not pleased.
I emailed Coblands with photos of the Geranuim and received a reply confirming that they except that it was possibly the wrong plants. Unfortunately, they added that this particular Geranuim was now out of stock and therefore would refunded me the cost of the plant.
Like most gardeners, I buy plants to compliment a particular colour scheme and folliage within my garden and being sent the one wrong plant out of the 4 does mean that my colour scheme is slightly compromised. Two options to me was either remove all the existing Geranium Blood Bloods and replace them with other plants or order an additional plant 
I decided to buy another Geranuim Blue Blood from another supplier but prior to ordering I contacted Coblands again to request if they would consider paying some or all of the delivery charge that the other supplier was charging me. I emphasised that the need to order another plants was due to their error in sending me the wrong plant. Their reponse was that they had refunded me for the plant but would not pay the delivery charge from another supplier. I informed them that I would be placing a negative customer review online and also on this Forum 
Question: Am I being unreasonable expecting Coblands to pay for an additional delivery charge due to thier error in sending me the wrong plants and compromising my garden colour scheme 

Marlorena

Just my opinion, but yes I do think you're being a bit unreasonable there, you can't expect them to do that, even though in an ideal world we'd like to think they would...
Personally, I wouldn't have dreamt of asking them to pay charges from another supplier.

I would have been happy with my refund, and as you got the Geraniums in 1 litre pots, I would, even at this stage, lift and divide one of them to make the extra plant needed.  They would soon recover, in fact I would probably have divided them up into 8 plants as soon as I got them, if I wanted that many.  1 litre is good enough to split.. just..

Richard Hodson

Did you return the pink geranium that was sent in error ?

Stevedaylilly

1. My point is that if they had sent me the correct plant I would not be incurring a new delivery charge. Possibly unreasonable I agree but it just seems I'm paying out more for their error. If I only need 3 of these plants for my garden I would have ordered that number. Division is not an option as their root ball is not large enought at present, possibly next year will be no problem

2. No, they didn't not request the other plant back as they would have incurred a return delivery charge that they seem reluctant to do. The plant will be offered to a neighbour 
 

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Marlorena

Well, I don't suppose you'll be ordering from them again, so they'll lose out that way, but unless yours is a show garden, opening to the public, I don't think I would have been too concerned personally at missing the 4th Geranium and would just have managed with the 3 good ones and put the pink one somewhere else...

I've never ordered from them, but I have a couple of others I won't be doing business with... in one case I got an almost dead plant that I've spent the last 2 years tenderly trying to revive.  It's on its way back but what a waste of my time, and they wouldn't refund me [it's in their T and C's]…

I best not say who they are, but we live and learn...

Mary370

While I agree it is a disappointing when one orders and expects a particular plant in a particular colour, and it turns out different to expectations.  People make mistakes, I also agree that you were expecting too much o expect the company to pay for a the delivery charge from another company.  I bought pom-pom dahlia seeds last year, planted lots of them, not one pom-pom plant, all standard dahlias, yes I was disappointed at the time, but I got over it.  I did contact the seed suppliers....they did not offer to replace cost of seed.  

Fire

I agree. We all make mistakes and we all learn.

Last year I used a seed company to order seeds that needed to be planted in spring. I ordered well in advance. By June they were still saying the seeds were on order but arriving soon. At various points they never contacted me to let me know the status of the order. Clearly nobody had a clue about communicating with customers. There was no apology and they eventually offered to refund.  It wasn't so much that the seeds didn't arrive, but their systems seemed hopeless and I had to call them. I just chalk it to experience.

Stevedaylilly

No my garden is not a show garden, but I am very particular how my plants are set out and like most the plant I buy are planted to allow for growth. This particular Geranium only grows 30cm in height and width so there will be a gap in the planting. I know it does not seem a major problem but to me it's particularly frustrating that a reputable supplier gets it wrong when you consider some of the extortionate cost for plants and delivery  

Dovefromabove

I know it can be frustrating but  I would just put it down to experience and move on.