How common are issues with plant shipments?

Hi everyone! I have ordered from buce plant twice. The first time, the plants arrived in good shape and on time; the second time, though it also arrived on time, half the plants were either missing or dead, and while they refunded me without fuss it was still a disappointment. How common are such incidents with plant vendors? Can even the best plant vendors be expected to make such mistakes occasionally? Thank you for your input

 

Sometimes the box of plants get left out or tossed around by the carrier and they get messed up through no fault of the vendor. Some plants just plain don't ship well too. As long as they're refunding or replacing I'd consider it just a risk of shipping plants in the mail.

 

Ah...guess I won't give up on them so soon then

 

No one's perfect. Problems do happen after the seller ships out an item, that the seller can not handle.

 

A lot of it depends upon where you live. I live in a suburb of Chicago. Here, deliveries usually arrive on time. If you are in a less populated area, deliveries are more likely to get delayed. Many of the delivery companies have struggled during the COVID crisis. More people have been ordering online to avoid exposure to the virus and employee absents due to quarantine situations has increased.

I purchased a lot of plants from Aquarium Co-op in Washington state. The plants were shipped in plastic bags wrapped in wet paper towels. They all arrived safely and on time.

 

I only ordered from buce once; i was unhappy with them. I've had problems with aquarium-coop and some stuff from dustinfishtanks but mostly good experience with those two sites. Also i've been mostly happy with several ebay sellers - in the end i think i've ordered enough that if the plants are late all bets are off but if on time and the plants are not doing well it is likely the seller. One problem is that if the seller has 'bad' stock the good seller will just not sell it but the bad seller will still try to recover $$ and you end up with bad stock.

 

I only ordered from buce once; i was unhappy with them. I've had problems with aquarium-coop and some stuff from dustinfishtanks but mostly good experience with those two sites. Also i've been mostly happy with several ebay sellers - in the end i think i've ordered enough that if the plants are late all bets are off but if on time and the plants are not doing well it is likely the seller. One problem is that if the seller has 'bad' stock the good seller will just not sell it but the bad seller will still try to recover $$ and you end up with bad stock.

Yeah, buceplant told me that they did not send me some of the plants because they were not up to their standards (the memorandum inside the package crossed those same plants out and said 'refund'). I will look into those vendors.

 

Yeah, buceplant told me that they did not send me some of the plants because they were not up to their standards (the memorandum inside the package crossed those same plants out and said 'refund'). I will look into those vendors.

An unscrupulous vendor might have sent you marginal quality plants. Your experience with Buce indicates that they would rather lose a sale than ship plants that did not meet their standards. I consider that to be a good sign.

 

When I first started my "Underwater Gardening Journey". I ordered from a few of the online suppliers. As mentioned it was "Hit or Miss".
Now, I purchase strictly from members here:
Buy, Sell, Trade, Free Forum
Quality and Pricing. Never disappointed.

 

The biggest singular problem with buy, sell, trade... is they rarely have the plants i want. They don't seem to have stuff like white nana anubia or flamingo crypt much less things myriophyllum scabratum or myriophyllum mattogrossense. So yea the buy/sell forum is great if they have what you want but if they don't ....

When I first started my "Underwater Gardening Journey". I ordered from a few of the online suppliers. As mentioned it was "Hit or Miss".
Now, I purchase strictly from members here:
Buy, Sell, Trade, Free Forum
Quality and Pricing. Never disappointed.