Comments regarding Fedco Trees

Fedco sent the order for 12 apple trees short 5 trees and a refund check. No notification in advance me or options for replacing. Then we discovered that the seven apple trees they did send were covered in fungus and practically dead.

Lauren from FEDCO asked for photos and then said: "We can talk about replacements once we see the photos and determine the trees are dead. Its just hard to know why they would be dead to you on arrival as that isn’t something that generally happens with a large number of trees like that."

After sending the photos she wrote: "Thank you for sending photos. It looks as though the trees did not harden off before we stored them and have some winter kill on the tops. We apologize about this. My recommendation would be to prune back the tops to where there is green again further down the tree. This won’t hurt the tree at all and it will catch up within a couple of years. Plant the trees out and if they do not bud out at all we would be happy to replace or refund them. My guess is that they are not dead all the way to the rootstock."

I found this response unacceptable and asked for a refund.

This was her response: "We will send you a refund check for the 7 trees in the mail. We apologize that you received trees with some winter kill, once in a while trees with an issue such as this slip through and we don’t realize there is a problem until we hear from our customers. Thanks for letting us know. Its unfortunate they will not be planted as it is likely only the tops that are dead. We are a small company and we do our best to work with our customers when these situations occur though it seems that in the future it may be best for you to source your trees from another nursery."

FEDCO wrote on their packing slip that "2016 has been our best year ever:" congratulations but that doesn't give anyone the right to say the above. What incredible hubris.

I have been a Fedco customer for years. For the last few years I have ordered various fruit trees incl. apples. Every year upon opening the box with my tree order from Fedco, I have been disappointed to discover that at least one variety was "out-of-stock". This year I made my order online the day before Fedco's deadline for ordering trees. The next day I received their order confirmation, including the total charges to my credit card. My order arrived last week: three (all different varieties) of the nine were "out-of-stock" according to the fulfillment form, and a check for the refund was enclosed.
This year I decided to call and, frankly, complain at how inconvenient it is to only discover at planting time that my order cannot be filled. And that they sat on my money for almost a month. I was told that they do try to update the website but that because they are such a small company, and because they "dig the plants" when they have orders for them, and because sometimes they find that the plants are damaged in the field, well, then they only know how many they have at the time of order fulfillment... And as they are such a small operation then they can't possibly call every customer whose order can't be filled. And if I had ordered earlier then I likely would have received all the trees I'd ordered. As for the refund by check, I was told that they are not allowed to keep my credit card number on file "by law" so they cannot credit my card for the refunded balance.
But here's the thing: If I had ordered my trees in the fall (as they suggested), and they went to fill my order in the spring and then found they could not fill it, they would have been sitting on my payment for months! And I, of course, would not have had a chance of finding that stock somewhere else.
I was also told that this (holding the funds until fulfillment) was standard practice in the industry.
Finally, one last comment. Many people have commented online that Fedco has good prices. These trees cost $25 each for one-, maybe, two-year-old, whips. That is NOT cheap. It is average, at best.