The scoop on 'B & E Crape Myrtle Farm'

I have placed two orders with this company. 1st order was for 3ea. small crape myrtles. I was very happy with the order. Plants were the size I expected for a 2gal container even though they had grown them to that size in a 1 gal container and they were very healthy. I placed a second order for three plants and was very satisfied again. In my book they rate #1 for plants #2 for communication in email back to me and #4 for delivery time. Average time to delivery for my orders was 25 days. The orders when shipped arrive almost over night. Plants are not over priced, cost to ship to CA was as they said $10.00 per plant. No handling charges.

Apparently, everyone in the crepe myrtle mail order business is bound and determined to rip-off their customers - or at least it seems that way. I had investigated David Chopin's various crepe myrtle websites and was warned off because of numerous problems with the size and health of what was being shipped. Then I found this site and thought that I might give them a try as they offer a number of Chopin's dwarf varieties that I wanted to try.

Unfortunately, when I went to check out, I found that they wanted to charge me $23 shipping/handling for 3 one-gallon plants that cost a total of $29.85. This is 77% of the purchase price, nearly doubling the cost of the three plants. Then I found out that if I ordered 3 one-gallon plants of the SAME variety, they would only charge $2 shipping for each additional plant. So, depending upon how you ordered, shipping for 3 one-gallon plants would be either $21 (actually $23 - I don't know where the extra $2 came from, but they were going to charge me it) or $11. It costs the same to ship either order, so they are saying that it takes an additional $5 worth of effort to grab a different cultivar and package it. This works out to half the cost of their propogating and growing the plants just to grab a different cultivar for shipment.

Additionally, the most I have ever paid for shipping was 30% of the total cost of the plants. That order was from Forest Farm who delivered all the way from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast and was the best packaged shipment I have ever received from a mail order firm (it also included several 5 gallon plants).

BEWARE any company that tries to rip-off customers with outrageous shipping charges and policies.