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On Apr 24, 2008, dbsmith2 Amsterdam, NY (Zone 5a) wrote:
As they wind down operations, the customer service has taken a nose dive. I ordered 7 rose trees in February. I got them last week, and one has opened - definitely NOT Magic Carousel! It took 4 hours to get a call through, and the woman who answered was rude. All I wanted was a replacement - I'd even pay the shipping. She was unwilling to have the stock checked in person (there is obviously a labeling problem), and she told me there would be a credit issued. So I emailed and requested to use my credit toward rose trees that they told me on Saturday were available. Just got an email and they are all gone. I am now very concerned that the rest of the roses will not be the ones I ordered, and I will have no recourse. I would not order anything from them, even if they were staying in business.
I ordered three roses from Sequoia last year, at the same time I ordered six roses in two inch pots from another vendor. Sequoia's website states that their roses are in four inch pots or six inch bands, so understandably, I expected these roses to be a bit bigger than the two inch potted roses from the other vendor. When they arrived, Sequoia's roses were little sticks swimming in their four inch pots, in loose soil. They fell out of their pots to reveal the root systems of newly rooted cuttings, straight off the prop table, and not nearly as big as advertised. A call to the nursery yeilded nothing, as the receptionist was rude and talked to me as if I was someone expecting a big grafted rose. This was not the case, being someone who roots roses myself, I simply expected four inch pots of healthy roses. I took pictures of these roses and shared them with other rosarians, who agreed that this entire order was not up to Sequoia's (usually higher) standards, and it was obvious to them that someone just packed these into a box to fill an order, not caring that the roses were not ready to ship. These roses were not hardened off yet and had to spend two months in partial shade to get them used to the out-of-doors. Even with this treatment, one rose died and the other two still remain slower in growth than the two-inch potted counterparts from the other vendor.
I had a very negative experience with this nursery. The roses I ordered did not arrive for 3 to 4 weeks. They were pathetic tiny bare little sticks that had lost almost all their leaves. Shipping damage? Hardly. They were shipped in tiny little pots with only a loose thimbleful of soil in each pot. It took an entire season to nurse them back to health. For some one with a very short season (Zone 4), this was extremely upsetting, a waste of time and money. Both quality and service were very very poor.
