Comments regarding Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants

I ordered some tomato plants from Laurel in January I believe. My wife and I are going on vacation April 30. According to Laurel's delivery schedule, I should receive the tomato plants and plant them by May 2. I emailed her today to say that my wife and are leaving on a vacation on April 30. I asked her to deliver the plants by April 30 which is a Saturday. She would not guarantee that the plants would be delivered before April 30. May 2 is on on a Monday. She wanted $9.50 to expedite the delivery of the plants which are expensive without a delivery charge. She would not do so. I canceled my order with her. You should consider canceling your order with her as well. She is not business friendly. I'm not sure how I could plant the tomato plants by May 2 which is a Monday if I did not receive them before May 30 which is a Friday. Perhaps Laurel can explain how it was possible for me to do so.

"On Apr 16, 2016 8:57 PM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

Dear Mr.Turnbow.

You ordered your plants on March 2nd, not in January. (And you loved your plants last year.)

According to our scheduled shipping periods your plants were to ship in Period E, April 18th to May 2nd. That is the shipping period you chose -- it not a delivery schedule -- it's a shipping period.

There are more than 300 lovely customers ahead of you in that period who ordered before you. First orders in are the first orders out. To expedite your order, get it out earlier, would mean one of my crew stays late or comes in early to get your order out and stay on deadline for all our other wonderful long-time customers -- an extra $9.50 cost to you for 4 plants to be shipped right away. I understand you were frustrated about needing to pay the $9.50 and wanted me to send them early at no extra charge. That would not be fair to our customers who choose the expedite fee.

You chose not to pay the $9.50, cancelled your order and threatened to leave feedback to expose my 'conduct' So here we are.

But you are right -- I cannot see how it is possible for plants shipped May 30th to reach you by May 2nd.

So we are celebrating 18 successful years in business and Happy Gardening to all our wonderful customers!


~ Laurel

"

Early this week I placed an order directly with Laurel for a number of tomato plants. Rather than having them shipped to me I decided this time to go to her place of business to pick the plants up myself. She and I settled on Friday of this week for me to pick the plants up. I cancelled some other things I was scheduled to do on Friday so I could pick up the plants. I called today (Thursday, the day before I was to pick up the plants) to confirm the order would be ready. Not only would the order NOT be ready, but she had decided to substitute several (more than three) varieties I had no intention of getting for the ones I had ordered. Had I not called some plants would not be ready at all, others would be substituted for plants that were, in my book, much less desirable varieties, and to top it off, Laurel found my frustration to be upsetting to her. All of this could have been avoided if three days ago, when I ordered the plants directly with Laurel and she checked with her growers while I waited on the phone to make certain the plants were available, she had been honest with me. I have cancelled my order and urge others who are doing business with her company to make certain you are getting what you are paying for. She did agree to cancel the order.

"On Apr 14, 2016 6:05 PM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

Mr. Moers has purchased and picked up plants from us for several years -- a total of 45 plants. We have never shipped to him. He chose Friday to come by. Today he called to confirm his pick-up of 13 plants for Friday. I told him the majority of order, 11 of them, would be ready but unfortunately his 2 Pink Brandywine were too small and offered a rare and lovely alternate, Todd County Amish or another big pink of his choice -- certainly not a lesser variety.

I did not 'decide to substitute more than 3 varieties' -- not true, David, wow...you're made that up. Why? We had everything else in stock. Only 2 of your plants, the Pink Brandywine, were too small and you acknowledged this. Everything else was ready.

I was calm and kind -- at first.

I also offered an option for David to pick up all 13 plants the following weekend when Pink Brandywine was ready. He chose that option but threatened that if anything was not available he would cancel his order. Mr. Moers was abusive and demeaning. Frustration is one thing, I understand that, but this was far more. After he questioned my honesty and integrity and again threatened to cancel his order because one variety was not ready, I told him I could not allow him or anyone else to talk to me that way, it would be best for me to cancel his order. So I cancelled his order and refunded his payment.

48 other very gracious, fun, wonderful customers have called to confirm their weekend pick-ups and are still calling this evening. 17 came and got their plants today and the others will be here throughout the weekend to get their beautiful plants! Every Sunday we will have at least 75 bodacious varieties for sale from 11:00 to 1:00 ( no Pink Brandywine until next week though....)

Happy Gardening! :) ~ Laurel
"

I am UTTERLY DISAPPONTED with the plants I received this year from Laurel. Last year more than half of the plants I got died very soon after planting because they had arrived so stressed. I blamed our Mississippi Hot Sun and did not bother Laurel with it. So this year I had the plants arrive sooner, so they would not be received in the 100+ degree heat. I was not home the day the plants arrived (Saturday), so when I got home on Monday night and the poor plants were all nearly dead... it was not hot out at all... in fact it was cool and had been cloudy and rainy for two days prior to my opening the box. The PLANTS ALL DIED now, a week later. Laurel maintains that this is all my fault, and will not even offer a discount or anything to help ease my pain. I WAY OVERPAID for these plants to begin with, but I was intrigued with the heirloom varieties.... not worth it if what is received is a box of death.

For better service and much healthier plants, I recommend tomatobabycompany.com. Alainia is much more responsive and concerned for her customer's happiness than Laurel is... Laurel saw my situation as an opportunity to bilk me for another order of overpriced plants! I should have never stopped buying my plants from Alainia at tomatobabycompany.com... she did a great job with the packing and she was very pleasant and cares about her 'babies'.

In short: avoid Laurel's unconcerned posh California overpriced plants that arrive dead and go with a nice country gal who will send you the best tomato starts you've ever seen.

And just to let you know, I did give Laurel an opportunity to settle this situation with me and told her I would probably leave a scorching review for her on Dave's Garden... but she simply DOES NOT CARE!

Spend big $$$ for DEATH-IN-A-BOX if you want to... you have been warned.

"On May 7, 2013 4:56 PM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

Dear Jerry,

I understand your frustration. It’s very sad that the plants sat in their box at your house for 3 days before you got home. Live plants need air and sunshine right away on the day they arrive.

But I am puzzled to find you blaming me. Had you been home Saturday when they arrived, they would have come out of the box healthy and beautiful just like the plants we’ve sent you for the past few years.

As you know, we shipped on Wed. You told me, when I called you yesterday, that you got the email confirming the Wednesday shipment, knew the plants were on the way to arrive Friday or Saturday and knew you wouldn’t be home until Monday night.

I don't see how I could have helped.

They arrived quickly and safely—but there was no one home to open the box. What could I have done from Los Angeles to get that box open in Mississippi where it sat, sealed tight, at your house all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday? They needed to be in the fresh air and sunshine right away. They should have come out of the box on Saturday; of course they did not survive.

Had the mistake been mine, if I had mis-addressed the package or made another error, I would have happily sent replacements immediately at no cost. I have, 3 or 4 times in the past 12 years, made a mistake like that and reshipped at no cost.

But I did not make any mistake with your plants. The plants would have been fine had they been taken out of the box on Saturday when they arrived rather than Monday night when you got home. Yet you wanted me to resend the entire order for free after your mistake.

You threatened that if I didn't send free plants you would trash me at Dave's Garden. And here we are.

Sincerely,

Laurel
"

Shipping was quoted as estimated at $10.80. Actual shipping $23.96. Since that is more than double the quote I think I should have been notifed of the increase.

"On Mar 1, 2013 11:58 AM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

With each order confirmation this phrase is included in 2 separate 'very easy to see' areas:

"Your shipping cost is an estimate. If the difference is more than $2.00 either way, we will refund or charge the difference."

This customers plants were more than 15" tall, requiring a larger carton, thus the PO charges us more to ship and we charge the customer for the difference. All of this information is covered in great detail at our website on the payment and shipping info page and as I noted, on the customer's receipt.

We also refund any over payment when actual shipping is less than our estimate.

Laurel
"

Posted on April 6, 2011, updated April 11, 2011
This is the second year that I have ordered plants from Laurel the RUDE Tomato Lady.

I was a first time customer and spent $136 on tomato starts with out shipping! I had called and emailed the first year but she kept changing when I could pick up the plants. I wanted to get my garden going and could not wait any longer.

Laurel was so rude the first year because I went there on the wrong day. I would hope that Laurel would be polite enough to give me my plants and explain her schedule. Instead she snapped at her mother (she works with Laurel) when her mom offered to help me, then she fairly threw the plants and me and hustled me to my car. And it was not the full order! Wow, what a trip. All of this abuse, just for some tomato starts.

After that encounter I wrote her an email to say that I thought that she was overworked, maybe was having a bad day. She wrote back to say that was the case and she was going to slow down a little. OK.

I tried it again...I made an order in November 2010 for pick up in spring of 2011. I ordered and paid in advance. ($88 bucks for tomatoes!) Along with the tomato starts (6-4" plants) I ordered boxes of fertilizer and a cloth pots. She emailed me and told me approx. time when I could pick up the plants.

The problem is-
1) The pick up times are useless, because you must wait for confirmation from her to proceed. And even if you go on the correct day your plants may not be ready. Calling her requires repeated calls because he phone messages are full. And it takes days to get a response from your email queries.
2) Laurel ships to the whole country so she has to consider all zones for planting. This is her issue. I don't care to line up according to her other orders. Especially since I (over) paid for them so far in advance! I'm in LA so our planting time is in late March early April. This is my issue, I just want my plants when the earth is ready for them.

Cut to- I call her in the morning, I email her. No response. This is Los Angeles, we have passed our cold snap and I would like to start my garden. So I make the trek out to Lomita. She is even ruder than the year before, if that is possible.

I tell her that I called and emailed. But she is very brusque and slams the door in my face abruptly cutting off my response to her snarky remark about the being the wrong day and that she is very busy. She then barks at the poor girl that works for her to pull my order and tries to tell the girl not to give me a chair while I wait... And again I do not get my full order, Double Wow!!

Bottom line she is churlish and unbelievably rude to paying customers, her staff and family members. I (over) paid in advance and tried to make it work. Sorry that my schedule does not synch up to hers. I can only work on my garden in fits and spurts. Gardening is a hobby that should be fun. I cannot wait at Laurels leisure or be concerned with her business schedule protocol.

So I set out to find another source for heirloom tomato starts in the Los Angeles area. The LA County Arboretum Gift Shop (626-447-8751) has an heirloom tomato (4" starts $2.50 a piece) sale every March. I went April 4th and they still had a good selection. They have a wide variety of heirloom tomato plants, locally grown, with manager Mark Hall leading a knowledgeable staff. You can buy plants and organic fertilizer without going on the grounds so you don't have to pay to get in (unless you would like to donate).

I will be posting more information regarding Heirloom Tomato resources in the Southern California.

I'm sure that Laurel will try to rebut this comment.

So Laurel, please try to understand that everyone cannot be on your schedule, sorry. A customer paying almost 4 times the amount for a tomato start is plenty reason to be polite. When Mother Nature is ready for planting she is not concerned with your business schedule protocol. I will try to save the seeds this year in an effort NOT to do business with you and I am actively looking for other sources of heirloom tomato starts in Los Angeles. I will prove that you are not the only Tomato game in town.

"On Apr 11, 2011 1:58 PM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

This encounter with Ms. Morgan was very bizarre and disturbing.

I am sorry to say we had to ask her to leave the premises.

Laurel"

Laurel's site came up today when I did a google search. I see that she still refers to early ordering to reserve shipping window and varieties. My experience leads me to believe that my early order was meaningless in reserving my varieties. About three years ago I ordered between Christmas and New Years for a late, Northern Minnesota shipping date.

I got a call after Memorial Day from Laurel encouraging me to cancel my order. She mentioned heavy losses from a real bad spring and rang off some of the varieties I ordered that she didn't have. I asked about the two types that were the primary reason I let her charge my card for upward of $200 five months previously. She said that she had plenty of those types. I said to go ahead and ship those. I then agreed, on her request, to let her fill in whatever else she had to make volume. There was then this long silence followed by an evasive, "it will take three weeks to get them packed, you won't want them that late". I told her that I had a small greenhouse and could bring the pollinated plants in to finish ripening. The conversation cordially ended and I waited for weeks with no further communication. I never got a shipment, but finally a check at the end of July.

The spring in SoCal was bad that year but this did not provide adequate alibi for why a very early order for her final shipping window couldn't be met when she said she had the plants. Early shipping date plants may have been lost, but my late shipping date plants should have been started late enough to escape the weather. Did those who ordered later with an earlier shipping date end up with my plants? Did she have customers whose importance preceded my early, paid for reservation?

I requested in e-mails for her into reserve plants for me on subsequent years without charging my card until shipment. This seemed fair since she sat on money for 7 months and never shipped varieties she admitted to having in stock. I was refused this request. Laurel seems like a very nice person who gets overextended and doesn't handle the situations forthrightly.

"

Yes, 2006 was a tough year.

It was not a weather problem. We lost some plants to some weird bacterial disease we had never seen before or since, and I could not send plants to some of our customers that season.
I called each one personally and offered a full refund or lots of free plants the following year. All refunds were made timely, as promised, and many customers were thrilled in 2007 to get 12 plants instead of the 6 they had paid for in 2006. (Of course, we hold all prepaid monies from our customers in a trust account.)

I would never promise plants knowing they may not have produced fruit in a small hobby greenhouse after being completely hardened off here in California, so I expect I told this customer a refund would be the best way to go. Never a 'long silence' or 'evasive'. Not my way.

We would not have refused to take an order without pre-payment. Some folks may not want to pay in advance and that's okay and understandable. It only means we may not have the exact plants they want at shipping time.

Looks like we didn't make this customer happy 3 years ago
It really is difficult to glean the facts when we do not know who they are, making it impossible to find any information.

We have moved on since that difficult year and have thousands of very happy customers. This customer has not ordered since 2006. We sent a full and timely refund as promised so it's challenging to understand why he or she is still upset 3 years later.

I cannot imagine staying mad all this time after a full timely refund and heartfelt apology. I remember those calls I had to make. It was very difficult for everyone.

Every customer is important to me! Life is short, we must try to enjoy it!

Happy Gardening in 2009,

Laurel

Laurel Garza
Owner, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants
Los Angeles, California
310 534 8611


"

Bought about 40 (the majority) of my plants this year from Laurel and have had - BY FAR - my best tomato crop !!

Choclate Stripes
Vintage Wine
Aunt Ruby's German Green

All produced fine tomatoes but the three above were really stand outs.


Wart

"On Feb 5, 2010 11:47 AM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

This situation got weird, uncomfortable -- It was best that I not continue serving this customer.

Laurel"

This is the second time I have ordered tomatoes from Laurel. The first time was a generally satisfactory experience though 1 of 4 plants wasn't available and the plants did not ship until the 10th day of the 10 day shipping window.

This year however, 2 of 6 plants weren't available and the 10 day shipping window was changed (without warning) to a 14 day shipping window. This was presumably so that the plants could be shipped at 12 days from the requested shipping date without breaking any promises. I understand that sometimes plants/products aren't available when we want them but this seems to be a recurrent problem with Laurel. Most annoyingly, the receipt enclosed with my plants did not explain why 2 were missing from the shipment nor was the total price reflective of fewer plants. After several emails I finally have my refund, one month later!

Laurel encourages early ordering/payment so that the customer can choose the shipping date they prefer. In my experience it does very little good to order early, especially for those of us in more northerly climates who plant later in the season. By being forced to choose a later shipping date, many plants it seems, are already sold out. Though I ordered (and paid for) my plants in March, 1/3 of them failed to ship and they didn't arrive until 4 June, though the shipping window was 19 May.

I am also not pleased at having to spend $21.85 to ship 4 plants by the USPS. When shipping is added to the cost of the plant, plus its custom packaging, the total cost is approximately $11.50/plant. This significantly higher than Laurels' website explains.

Overall, my second experience ordering tomatoes from Laurel was not a satisfactory one. Gardening should be fun - this was definitely more trouble than it was worth.

"

Hi Liz,

So sorry we could not make you a happy this year.

As noted on you receipt, the plants ship within a 10 to 14 day shipping period or 'when they are big enough to travel'. We note this specifically on the receipt we send when you place your order so that you know we are taking care of the plants and not shipping plants too small to survive the trip.

Your Northern Lights and Peacevine plants were just too small to travel and we did not want to risk them being damaged. At the time you ordered, you did request we refund your cost if any of you plants were too small at shipping time.

(As noted in our email exchanges, our acct. dept issues any refunds or price adjustments at the end of each month. You told me it would be okay with you.)

Regarding shipping costs, the Post Office-- who has hired UPS to transport their priority mail packages -- is now using UPS prices so that any box even an inch taller than 12" x 12" x 12" can be an additional $10.00. So, the post office is now charging for package dimension along with package weight--since your plants were quite large, the cost was higher. Your actual shipping as I recall was $19.85 and we did refund the shipping amount you overpaid along with plant and packaging costs within 30 days per our website.

I realize shipping costs are high but we don't set those costs, it's not our idea and all that cost goes to the Post Office.

If it were up to me shipping would be free! Wouldn't that be wonderful.

I called you about the 2 plants being too small and that you would receive a refund-- which you did-- within less than 30 days of that call.

We do hope your 4 plants, Paul Robeson, Green Zebra, Sun Gold and Super Snow White are doing well in your garden and that you have a wonderful harvest.

Again, we wish we could have made you happy; we sure tried!

Sincerely,

Laurel Garza
Owner"

I too have not had any response from Laurel. In previous years I had no trouble getting my plants so I had no need to email her. This year I still have not received my plants and I have emailed her twice with no response. It's disappointing to say the least.

"On Feb 7, 2010 9:52 PM, Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants responded with:

As I recall, we had some difficulty contacting this customer regarding payment for her order. For a second year in a row, she did not want to make payment until the plants were at her door, COD.

We did not feel comfortable with this arrangemant and tried our best to make contact her via numerous telephone calls and emails.

Laurel"

After my initial purchase of tomato plants from Laurel, I have had difficulty communicating with her company. I have sent several emails in the past 6 months and have received no response. Not one! I believe that her company is quite busy, especially seasonally, but if she makes it impossible to communicate, I can no longer be a customer. I wonder if they are no longer shipping tomato plants by mail order?

"

Well, you bet we're shipping and very busy! 12 months out of the year and sending thousands of plants.

We cannot seem to find a record of this gardener anywhere in our files, no record of a purchase, but we did get one email to which I responded some months ago. Could not locate anyone in our files with the first name signed on the email or any similar name.

We received only one email to which we responded.

I have tried to contact this gentleman via Dave's Garden here with no response, it's rather challenging to reach someone without knowing their last name. Perhaps he ordered from a different company as we have not sent plants to anyone with his first name and city (noted in his profile at Dave's Garden) during the last year.

We sure did our best to find him and see what we could do to make him happy!

Laurel
310.534.8611"