Comments regarding Donahue's Clematis Specialists

I ordered 13 clematis plants from the on line catalog. Although they advertise a 10 % discount over 10 items, you do not get it if you order on line because you are routed through Paypal, although I did NOT want Paypal and supplied my credit card info on the website. Be forewarned. 9 items are doing well, 3 are iffy and one died, it only had 2 withered leaves and no roots to speak of. It was replaced, but when I mentioned that the others were barely hanging on, they said that their supply of that variety was poor and none were any better. It seems to me that they should not ship out inferior plants but backorder until their stock is up to their advertised standard. I was disappointed because they have a beautiful catalog and give you good info. when you call.

I am the Coordinator for the Spring 2003 Clematis Co-op. I don't like to give a Nursery a negative rating, but it definitely was NOT positive and there were many factors that influenced my decision.

My phone, e-mail, and faxed coorespondence was NOT handled in a timely manner. They did NOT respond within 24hours, which I feel is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a potential customer placing a substantial order. Donahue's was made very aware of this fact upon my initial e-mail to them. It was re-iterated numerous times over the past two months. Basically, they just didn't care!

I ALWAYS had to request an updated list of Clematis that were "Sold Out". However, this was an on-going process and the availability that was promised one week was NOT available the next!

Plus, I had to REQUEST MY BILL! The Accounting Department was as slow, inefficent & unresponsive as their staff answering their e-mails, faxes and phone calls!!

Up to the moment that I placed my order for over 350 Clematis, I still encountered changes! The worst was when I finally received the plants, only to discover on the enclosed packing sheet that "Mrs. R. Brydon", 3.5" plants were NOT available, even though I was told that they were when I placed my order by phone!!! To say that I was very upset and disgusted with this Nursery, would be a mild under-statement!

On a more positive note, the plants I received were healthy with a well developed root system. However, I did notice that "stuck" in-between the larger 3.5" size plants were some much smaller ones of the same size!!! Yes, they will grow in time, but needless to say, they still charged me the higher price!!!

Would I use them again??? Most definitely NOT!!! I don't want to have any further dealings with this Clematis Nursery!! In the future, I hope to deal ONLY with wholesale Nurseries that are well organized, respond to the customer in a timely manner, remain in contact with me (NOT the other way around), don't change their story each time you hear from them and certainly don't pull any "last minute punches", by not shipping a certain variety of Clematis that was ordered and promised!!!