Banner Flower Farm

Posted on October 24, 2014, updated October 24, 2014 I had a similar experience to the other reviewer here with Banner Flower Farm. I am a small cut flower grower in Canada and I found out about the company's dahlia tuber offerings through a Facebook posting by the company owner on the "Flower Farmer's" Facebook group in February of this year. I thought the pricing was reasonable and we lost all of our tubers over the harsh winter last year when they got a bit of frost so was looking to replace. I placed an order for the dahlias via a link to paypal that was posted on Facebook in February. After placing the order I noticed on the company website that they do not ship to Canada. When I emailed to cancel my order, they emailed back saying that it was no problem for them to ship to me. I figured since I was getting the 50 ct shipped that I would increase the order to the 100 ct mix tuber offering. At which point they invoiced me through paypal and I paid again (at this point I have paid them close to $250 via paypal). On April 30th I had not received my dahlia order. I inquired and was told that my order was on it's way. On May 23rd I had not received my order still and inquired via Facebook message (privately) to the owner about the order. I received no response back, but was promptly banned from the Flower Farmers Facebook group. After several emails to the company to try to determine what happened to the order on June 30th they indicated that the order had been lost at customs they would refund my order via Paypal. On July 1st I received an email stating that they could not refund my order via paypal as it was past 60 days after the purchase date and that they would send a cheque. I have not received a refund to date (Oct 24th) and have inquired twice since then and received no reply. I am not the type to post negative reviews about companies as I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I do however see that they are already posting links to purchase dahlia tubers for next spring which would require people to prepay via paypal. Unfortunately there is no way to dispute the paypal claim past 45 days from the date of purchase if you are the purchaser. I am inclined to think that this company is a scam…but can't find out much information about them. I don't want anyone else to lose their money and end up disappointed. There communication was always polite, although often delayed…I am just not sure what happened, and for $250 I figured it is worth not just forgetting about. I would caution others to think twice before prepaying for dahlia tubers via paypal from this company (be aware that they are also listing items for sale via a blog as well as Facebook). I fortunately ended up ordering from another brilliant Canadian company just in the nick of time and we had a fantastic growing season with beautiful dahlias.

Posted on October 6, 2010, updated October 17, 2010 In March I ordered over $50 worth of tubers from these folks. I was impressed with how easy it was to use their website, and the cost of their tubers seemed reasonable. Their website said that they ship the tubers in mid-April, so I patiently waited. And waited, and waited. Finally I emailed them in mid-May saying I had not received the tubers, and got no response. I emailed again, 10 days later, and did get a response; they said they were behind shipments due to a farm incident and would ship them that week (a month behind in shipments?!). When I still had not received the tubers several weeks later, I emailed again. No response. I emailed again another week later, and they said I should have received them, that they had been shipped in late May. I emailed again saying I had not received the tubers. Finally they said they would refund the money. However, it has been another three months, and my credit card has not been refunded. Don't try to contact them by phone either, they just have an answering machine and don't return calls. I would not bother wasting your time and money with this company. They have extremely poor customer service, and I am left to wonder if they are really a business at all, or just an internet front set up to scam people from their hard earned money. Even if they did actually ship the tubers, they could have put some kind of delivery confirmation scan on the package, that way I would know that they had actually been shipped, and it would be obvious that it was a problem with delivery, and not on their end. However, seeing as how they couldn't even respond to my emails in a timely manner and have still not refunded my money, I have no reason to believe that they actually did ship the tubers. I am glad I also ordered dahlias at the same time from Arrowhead, who shipped their dahlias exactly when they said they would, so luckily I have been able to grow some dahlias this year.