The scoop on 'Carol Wright Gifts'

On April 21,2008 I ordered 6 Hibiscus plants from the catalogue,they arrived in record time and in perfect condition.They were small,looked like little twigs, but I planted each one in a little pot of potting soil and watered it everyday,they started to grow good,in about 4 or 5 weeks I transplanted them in bigger pots and they continued to grow, than came the buds and on July17 the 1st one bloomed the most beautiful pink ,Huge,flower, the next day a second one bloomed, the others are all budded out ready to bloom. I cannot thank the company enough for the beautiful plants. I have been trying to find them on the web ,I want some red ones.I could not find any of the "dish size" in my local this spring so I am thrilled with Carol Wright. I have always had good results with this company in every way,either ordering or returning if not satisfied.

BUYER BEWARE.....NEVER order anything from this company. EVER.

I ordered a glasses holder on 5-26-08 it now 6-19-08 and still haven't received it. That's almost a month. I have called customer service twice to be told that prioirty mail takes up to 3 weeks. I told them it was unacceptable and I was basically told too bad.

I sell and ship things through e-bay and other auctions all the time and I know for a fact that priority mail @ takes no longer then 5 days to get anywhere in the USA. It's, like, guaranteed.

So they not only charged me $2 to process my order quicker then they took my $$ for priority mail and I get snail mail instead. Hopefully IF I ever get the holder it won't be damaged. Can't imagine what I will have to go through if that happens.

Ordered several gardening related item. Very poor quality merchadise. Items were returned

Plants are very tiny with little root system. Don't waste your money. Still waiting to see what they will do. Last email not returned.

Will never return

I have ordered from Carol Wright, ? Drake & Starcrest in the past & have been satisfied. My last order to Starcrest never arrived & that is when I went on the website & saw a page full of complaints ... some worse than mine (I was able to put a hold on my check)! Wish I had searched on-line first before ordering. Guess it would pay to search frequently to see if these companies are still as good as they once were! These catalogs often have really neat things not found elsewhere so hope they don't go the way of Starcrest!

As for plants, I'd never order from a company that doesn't deal mostly with nursery stock as their main product.

I have ordered many products from this company and never had a problem, and Carol Wright has one of the best shipping rates. If you are not sure about a product, call and ask about it and they will be happy to look it up for you. You get what you pay for so play it smart. Don't buy the water eater if you want it to eat puddles of water, but other than that, everything has been great.

BUYER BEWARE!!! I ordered 6 of the Sonic Molechasers, CW item #19863. I've used these wonderful garden helpers for years, and needed more to add to a newly landscaped area on our property. The ones I received were cheap knockoffs with plastic bodies instead of the silver aluminum ones as pictured in the Carol Wright catalog. When they got these fakes, they even forgot to change the wording on the packaging, which describes the aluminum body of the Molechasers. Very disappointing, am sending them all back.

I will NEVER order plants through this company again! I ordered strawberry plants, tomato plants & moonflower plants. All were alive when they arrived. That's the only good thing I can say.

I immediately planted them in the areas I'd prepared for them. The moonflowers were dead the next day. (Having planted moonflowers by seed before, I knew it wasn't the soil or location.)The tomato plants were dead within a week. The strawberry plants survived but only yielded 3 berries. (3 berries out of 12 plants is ridiculous.)

I contacted Carol Wright by phone & snail mail. (Didn't know they had a website at the time.) I asked for my money to be refunded. They refused saying since the plants arrived alive, it wasn't their problem. (Their guarantee said they'd refund if the plants weren't satisfactory.) If they want to be that way, fine. I just won't order plants from them again.

OK, so Carol Wright may be best known for gadgets and chintzy gifts, but it was in the Wright catalog that my wife fell in love with a royal paulownia (empress tree) as well as "giant" tomatoes and "giant" blueberries, so despite my misgivings about mail-ordering plants, I ordered some of each. The blueberries arrived in March as dormant twigs, the tomato plants were very small and the paulownia was just a small sapling. Since it was still frosty here in southwestern North Carolina, I put all the plants in a large pot filled with enriched soil to await warmer weather.

Suddenly, the sapling withered and died, and nothing I did would nurse it back to health. A couple of weeks later, I wrote Carol Wright, not really knowing what to expect after what I read regarding other companies and knowing plants are only a part of their business. I was notified that I did not need to return the dead root but that a new tree sapling would be on the way. On May 16, I received what appeared to be a much more viable specimen at no additional cost to me.

In each case, the plant was packed loosely in its own box with enriched soil around the roots encased in plastic. No problems there, although the tomato was dry and withered, and as a result two of the three stalks died. However, the remaining stalk is healthy and growing and is nearly ready for the move to the garden, and at the price I paid, I'm not going to complain about two little tomato plants. All three blueberry stalks budded and are beautifully clustered in green now.

Hey...sometimes satisfaction comes in the most unlikely of places! I probably will try other Carol Wright plants if nothing more than for the convenience of them and for the simple fact that they shipped a replacement for the dead paulownia with absolutely no hassle or questions asked.