Comments regarding Las Pilitas Nursery

Rude and unprofessional. I have had two experiences with Las Pilitas. The first was about 10 years ago. I drove out to the Escondido location to buy some ceanothus plants that my garden designer had specified for my yard. This place is not exactly close or easy to find, and i live in North San Diego county. I needed 8 of the plants and I checked their web site to make sure they were in stock. Their web site said they had 30 that day. But when I got there, they had 3, and no, someone had not rushed in to buy 27 plants earlier that day. They were just too unscrupulous to update their web site to accurately reflect their current stock except maybe once every 6 months or so..The sales staff told me that they often mentioned this fact to the manager, but he felt that getting people out to the site was more important than being truthful so they deliberately showed more stock than they had, and that they could sell you something suitable once you were there, even if it wasn't what you wanted or drove out of your way to find.
I bought the three plants (if you can call them plants) they had. They were poorly rooted sticks about 6 inches long in a 1 gallon nursery can, and died the first season without ever being planted in the ground.
Having vowed never to return to the Escondido location, i was pleased to find out they started shipping a few years ago. I have been watching for several years now for Paeonia californica, the native California peony, to become available. They are always sold out online and usually show being sold out in both retail locations. Their web site says that there is a high demand for the plant and they have shipped it as far as Switzerland. So i emailed them to ask how I could get one - whether I could get on a waiting list or pre- order, and why couldn't I buy one of the 6 listed as available in the Santa Margarita location. Three days later I got a curt reply that they are never sell them mail order (despite the web site saying their worker bees are working on propagation) because they don't form a strong enough root ball to ship, and I would have to come into the SM nursery because they don't sell them in Escondido despite listing 10 as "in production" for Escondido. I replied that that was funny since their web site says they have shipped them to Europe. So what, do i need the right code word to get any service from these people or do they just not care?
It really is a shame because they are one of the few sources for CA native plants and in this drought, that's what we need to be replacing our lawns with. Their business should be booming but they are probably still limping along selling sticks stuck in a pot out of the same trailer on an obscure plot of rubble up in Escondido!

I received several plants from this company, most of which looked like they were on their last legs. The plants arrived sloppily packaged. Only a few survived. Would not order from them again.