Wth is witht he mail order comapnies

[tnpeppers]

Over the past few years, the ONLY seeds I have purchased have been from vendors listed here at Tomatoville, and I have been quite pleased with the service and quality of the seed in every single case. Heck, I even get quality seed from the folks involved in the seed swaps. :-)

[MikeInCypress]

Also a couple of the large seed vendors have had ownership changes with the prior owners doing a bad job of customer service or even shipping numerous erroneous seeds, New owners take over and have to climb that mountain. I think Totally Tomatoes and, yes, Park have done a good job of that.
I first bought from Park in 1979 and had my difficulties with them starting about 10 years ago, but I gave them a try last year and all was good so I have ordered from them twice this year with no problems.
I do buy from many of the small vendors and appreciate the efforts they put out to please their customers.

MikeInCypress

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by drew51

OK, well good we made that clear, yes, I can definitely see that happening! It doesn't work as I tend to focus on the negatives anyway!
I'm often on the Fruit and Orchard forum of GW, and we have caught people doing that too. When you post a positive review the day you joined, it kinda gives it away

I'm the same way. I tend to assume that positives have some inflation going on, so I look to the negatives to see the known issues.

Stacy

[Doug9345]

The other give away is that self reviews tend to read like ad copy.

[epsilon]

Tl;Dr / In a nut shell Version

1. Debles I'm jelly that you were able to get invited to the vine program.

2. I normally use three and four star reviews for product evaluation, I find them to be more objective

3. The amount of increasing "user error" that's occurring today is horrifying.

4. IMO I find that smaller business are more able to satisfy the needs of most end tier consumers. Also I think that smaller business are much better for economic infrastructure. I've written a few papers on the subject. Minus some exceptions

5. Drew I completely under stand your wanting to support a grower who is and expert in their field that is going out of their way to help and bestow knowledge on to you.


Debles, I'm kind of jealous of you. That vine program is so hard to get into, and I've tried for I don't know how long.

I've had that same feeling for a long, long time. Normally I tend to read the 3/4 star ratings as I feel that they tend to be the most objective of the bunch normally 1 and two stars I have found in the past tend to be as Worth stated a result of user error. In my experience five star reviews are the polar opposite with people who are either brand champions (I really hate those types) and people who were satisfied with the bare minimal of their orders being filled properly and arriving on time with all or most of the pieces in working order or at least working long enough until they move on to their next big purchase. if you give me enough two star I'll probably avoid it like the plague.

I'm pretty young, but some of the stuff that I've seen coming out the younger generations and my own scare me, and make me wonder wth happened to common sense? I mean really? I can't go into this at length but it's become horribly prevalent in society, that and lack of respect for tools of any kind.



On the rant about big companies.(and these last few years I've been more critical on their logistics, inventory and customer service agents) I found that they tend to go against what they teach as best practices in general in the Business arts classes at the universities . So in my little rat brain I started to think. Well, if you have had time to develop your sales and supplier arms Then you must have spent some amount of your income on a nice inventory system as well. (I think Amazons is pretty cool.) In the case of seed companies. Park being one of them I'm surprised that it takes more than a week to fill a seed order since they're not really zone determined unlike living plants which are. and since they have something of a uniform packaging protocol I would think that they would have found a way to quickly and efficiently said seeds with minimal error and processing time.( you know what, I think amazon has spoiled me rotten with their gosh darnoodley practices)

I think I might also be a little biased being that I did a lot of research for my marketing classes that showed that smaller business tend to be able to offer better selections backed by experience. And prices both goods and postage and actual order filling times considering the fact that they have fewer available options to economically priced inventory systems at their company stage, than say, a retailer who employs somewhere around 500-1500 people. on top of that normally not always the smaller companies also have happier employees who care about what they're doing. which in the end also make for a smoother running company overall.
My point was that even though the big retailers have some pretty neat exclusive items, said exclusivity quickly outruns itself in comparison to overall preformance. this is of course exclusionary of a few groups here and there that really screw it up for others, I think the people/businesses I'm referring to are well know here and on other forums.

Drew

From experience I know how you feel about wanting to support others who are working in fields of culture that you're passionate in. I especially know how you feel when you're putting blood and sweat into developing your own hybrids.

The way you feel about raspberries is the same way I pursued orchid culture and I especially got a lot of advice from a specific grower who was working on a perfectly black orchid at the time. And I went out of my way to purchase from his breeding lines, not so much to make a black orchid myself, but because I set a goal in breeding an orchid other than those reed stemmed epidendrums that would grow like a weed in southern CA without requiring any special growing environments.

[debles]

Originally Posted by epsilon

Tl;Dr / In a nut shell Version

1. Debles I'm jelly that you were able to get invited to the vine program.

I was invited to join several years ago. At the time I got the invitation, I knew nothing about the Vine program. I like to read, even though it's usually in spurts. I often wrote reviews on books I'd read or products I'd purchased, even if they weren't purchased from Amazon. No ulterior motives. I knew that I appreciated honest reviews and other people's opinions when considering a purchase.

I feel very fortunate to have been invited. Most months when I get the email, most of the big ticket items are already gone, but I've received some pretty nice things and quite a few great books over the years.

[drew51]

Epsilon,

Nice and long post! Well you mention the smaller guy, but then go on to soon praise the big boys, or should I say boy and that is Amazon. A major player no doubt! From an investor point of view if always surprised and how poor Amazon was at making money, always a stone's throw away from bankruptcy. Unable to really bring it home, always trying to position themselves ahead at the cost of being able to make a profit. One major mistake and bye bye Amazon. One thing the big boys can do is offer huge discounts. I just noticed on Amazon some peppers are 40 cent plus a buck postage. OK, not some super rare types, but many decent great peppers, and many I want to grow. Now I feel silly paying 5 bucks with the little guy!

[Hermitian]

The pricing, selection, service, and timeliness of Johnny's Selected Seeds and Tomato Growers Supply has been excellent in my experience.

[epsilon]

Drew,

I only mention amazon as an example, and as an example that most people have more or less have had experience with.

Speaking of variety and the little guy, normally I would go to home depot and lowes for my gardening supplies but then the hydroponic stores sprouted up giving me access to some very prime nutrients that happen to work extra nice with my orchids, Especially since I was trying to see If it was possible to move them to hydro culture, or at least cut back on the growing medium because decayed medium and root mass was always a no no.

Also The black orchid in question is Fredclakeara after dark "black pearl"

http://www.sunsetvalleyorchids.com/h..._specials.html

The flower is so light absorptive that auto focusing lenses can't get a proper fix on it.


My Seed suppliers.

Kitazawa has always been my go to for most of my veggies and I've never had problems with them, the seeds take about a week to arrive, give or take a weekend and their selection of asian varietals is quite amazing.

I used to buy from Seeds of Change before they partnered with the box stores, I don't know why I stopped, I assume I just haven't thought about them.

Also locally in CA. There's Red wood seeds, Same as kitazawa on shipping prices, times and communication. Instead of asian veggies they carry some neat herbs, tobacco and squash heirlooms.

My favorite source on euro peppers the last two years has been Secret seed cartel
in fact they're really nice and quick when it comes to communication and have also had some nice variety to boot.

Also from reviews on comments from this site I have been planning on buying from but not made any purchases from Ohio heirlooms and Double helix, though I've been hesitant with double helix as I have a hard time committing to buying a large variety of seeds or seeds in large numbers.

The bad part of my hesitancy is that I really like the variety that double helix has is amazing and I know that I wouldn't regret the purchase. So I should just commit to it and share the spare seeds.


Like I posted originally this was more a non sensible rant than a factual discussion, though this discussion has given me the notion to check out Johnny's select seed seeing as that this is the fourth or fifth reference to them that I've seen in a week

Gaston

[parah]

Originally Posted by Hermitian

The pricing, selection, service, and timeliness of Johnny's Selected Seeds and Tomato Growers Supply has been excellent in my experience.

I had a different experience, and I will never buy from either of them again. Maybe I am over sensitive to unsolicited mail and killing trees for junk mail. I feel like they treated me like a cheap commodity, selling my address and passing it around to their friends. I was very offended that I sent them my business and they sell me out. Maybe their policies have improved since my bad experience.

On a positive note, I have had a GREAT experience with smaller seed sellers like
http://heritagetomatoseed.com/
http://caseysheirloomtomatoes.ca
http://www.dianeseeds.com

They set the gold standard for great website, easy ordering, and good service.
They make shopping for seeds fun! Maybe that is why I have more seed than I can grow again this year, Oops.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by parah

I had a different experience, and I will never buy from either of them again. Maybe I am over sensitive to unsolicited mail and killing trees for junk mail. I feel like they treated me like a cheap commodity, selling my address and passing it around to their friends. I was very offended that I sent them my business and they sell me out. Maybe their policies have improved since my bad experience.

On a positive note, I have had a GREAT experience with smaller seed sellers like
http://heritagetomatoseed.com/
http://caseysheirloomtomatoes.ca
http://www.dianeseeds.com

They set the gold standard for great website, easy ordering, and good service.
They make shopping for seeds fun! Maybe that is why I have more seed than I can grow again this year, Oops.

What you say about Johnny's and TGS really surrpises me b'c I've known Rob Johnston at Johnny's since the second year he was in business, with a thin wee catalog back in the 70's and have known Linda Sapp at TGS since about 1990, and never once in all of those years have I been solicited by either company.

Yes,I get a catalog each year and that's about it.

What kind of unsolicited mail have you been getting and if you use the website of each for your needs no trees are killed.

Finally, I have NEVER been aware that either company sells addresses to anyone, but I can check with Linda about that and she's one of the most honest persons I know of and also check with Johnny's, thatis, if you wantmeto, and maybeIwilldoitanywaysince I am somewhat shocked by what you say. The integrity of both companies is very high in the opinion of everyone I know, but obviously not for you/

What kind of proof do you have that it's they who are selling your address? I get sent stuff all the time, including garden catalogs that I've never dealt with and have no idea where they got my address. It's not hard to find addresses on the net, so I just forget about it and cannot and do not blame anyone.

Carolyn

[Worth1]

TGS has never sold my address to anyone in all the years they have done business with me and I have never gotten any junk mail from them.
Some years not even their catalog.
They just dont do this at all.

I get zero junk mail from anyone regarding gardening.

Worth

[kath]

I never noticed getting any junk after ordering from TGS or from Johnny's. Johnny's did start sending a second catalog, with a different cover but same interior; I alerted them and they thanked me for letting them know.

kath

[Labradors2]

It's Reader's Digest that is the culprit! My goodness, the junk you get after signing on with them. The only way to stop the flood of junk mail is to move!!!!

Linda

[Worth1]

I ordered some stuff fro a race car some time ago.
it literally took years for the junk mail to stop coming in.

I called them and told them I would never order from them again.

Worth