Comments regarding Burpee (W. Atlee Burpee)

This is a mixed review, so I felt that it was necessary to write two comments.
I recieved my order for plants today that had been placed in early March. I never recieved a confirmation of my order via email which was important to me. When I called to find out more information, they said it was really busy and promiced to send a confirmation and never did.
The 12 Gaillardia Sundance Bicolor plants were awful. All the tops were off leaving only the bottom seedly leaves. Of the 12 plants, I really have only 4. The Helichrysum Silver Mist plants were so young, I could have planted my own more succesfully. The roots system is fragile and tiny.
The Vinca Berriwinkle mix was okay.
It was really a major dissapointment when I called the company and they said that they would refund my money, but the Gaillardia were no longer available. Our home is on a Garden Tour and I was really counting on quality plants from Burpee.
I will not order flowering plants again from this company.

Well I never got to order from them as I have made 5 seperate attempts to request a print catalog from them over 6 months and have yet to receive one. So far, my experience with them has been negative. If it is this difficult to get a catalog shipped to me, I'm not about to trust them with my money.

My grandmother always ordered from Burpee's. However, I don't think I'll be continueing the tradition. Why? High prices, poor service, and that mystery shipping date. Bleah, I'd rather support a smaller nursery with quality service.

I used to order almost all my seeds from Burpee, but I had such a bad experience with the company in the winter/spring of 2001, that I will never do business with them again. I start most of my annuals indoors under lights, so prompt delivery is important to me. After I ordered from Burpee, I waited and waited, but no seeds. I finally called the company and was told there was an unspecified "problem" with my credit card. The next person I spoke to said the first person shouldn't have told me that, that the problem was something else (I suspect their new computer system). I got the runaround for days from "customer service" before I finally got part of my order. Some of the seeds I ordered I never received because they were out of stock by the time Burpee got my order straightened out. And of the ones I did receive, the germination rate was unusually low for things (rose form impatiens & double petunias) that I had grown successfully in prior years. Never again! I can live without fancy impatiens and white marigolds.

*sigh*
All in all very dissapointed. I expected more intelligence from such a long standing and large company.
The seeds came on time as well as the plants. Everything was what I had ordered.
My beef is with the 'packaging'. They need to use some kind of cover over the dirt in the plant cells. My hollyhocks had exposed roots as did my tomatoes. One tomato is looking really dead(maybe 1 tblspoon of dirt in cell). It looks like they started out with great plants and then didn't think ahead to allow for the mail people tossing them around. Too bad. Never again, they are too expensive for this mess.

I order 90% of my seeds and supplies from Parks, but when I can't get something from them, I usually turn to Burpee. This year was totally different. I placed an order with Burpee and it took two weeks for them to tell me that six of the nine items I ordered were not available. I finally received the three packets of seeds and they charged me the original amount to ship the entire order. I finally called them rather than chalk it off to a loss. The customer service rep was downright surly with me. I ended up telling her to do something downright nasty to herself (that's unusual for me). That in itself was worth the two bucks they ripped me off for. Never again!

I've been buying Burpee seed for probably 25 years or more, always by catalog in the past, but more recently from local stores. Several local hardware and home improvement type stores have carried Burpee seeds and not only could you get them instantly and take them from the store but they also offered them at a significant discount. Well, my complaint is that Burpee seeds are no longer available at these stores. Seems as though something bad must have happened between the buyers and Burpee. Perhaps I should be complaining to the stores (which I did), but I can't help but feel that Burpee is at least somewhat responsible for the stores' dropping of their excellent product.

I have no complaints about Burpee's offerings -- just their ordering procedure. I've been a customer for 25-30 years, so I'm (if anything) biased *in favor* of Burpee's. However, when I tried to place my seed order tonight (2/1/03), I was appalled at the lack of customer service.

First, the order dept. is only open M-F 9:00 am - 7:00 pm, Sat. 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.!! (These hours are printed on the order form, but I haven't recently encountered *any* catalogue retailer with such limited hours.)

So, I went to the website (despite having had trouble with it last year). I dutifully entered all the SKU (item numbers) for seeds I wanted to order (including the "Veggie Bargains" listed on the order page), except for the last item, as I had one more item than the website had fields for ordering. After figuring out which item I would have to do without, I proceeded to "Checkout" -- whereupon I was informed that the "quantities I ordered were not available" -- no hint whatsoever *which* items, however (all quantities were 1)! After much toil & trouble, I determined that the culprits were the "bargains," once they were eliminated and all the other items were re-entered, the order went through -- I think!

I did fire off a quick email to customer service -- but I doubt that it will be much more successful than my email to Burpee's a few years ago, when I chided them because I did not receive their catalogue until several weeks after I received my *orders* from other catalogues.

Afer several years of positive experiences w/ this company,
I have to say that this year, the variety of vegetable
plants(tomatoes) available for mail order was scant and the
overall quality for both the veg. and flowering plants was
amazingly POOR. The plants arrived late for zone 6 and very
sickly as well. They also sent me the WRONG tomatoes, which
I could not see until they turned red instead of yellow! To
be absolutely fair, the herb seeds were OK. The other issue
I have w/ Burpee is that unless you can order on-line, your
choices(for plants) are limited. There are some folks out
there (like my 78 year old uncle) who do not have access
to a computer and aren't likely to get one, so it seems a bit unfair to them. Very disappointing, for such an old
and previously reliable source.

I have ordered from them a number of times. Everything I have gotten has been very good quality. The web site has helpful planting information. Their prices are reasonable. I would definitely order from them again.
The only problems I have had are items being out-of-stock and marked as in-stock. Also, they have mis-billed me twice on different orders, but they did not hesitate to correct the billing errors, although it did take some time to get it all straightened out.

I ordered over the internet and they sent me a conformation # for the order, 1 hour later, they sent me a conformation for the same order with a different conformation # . 6 minutes later, I got yet a third conformation for the same order with a different #. I e-mailed the customer service department IMMEDIATELY. requesting they cancel all orders until they got it straightened out. No response..The next morning I called them and they said ALL 3 had been shipped(sic), but they credited my account for 2 of them. I check my charges daily and they still have not removed the false charges. After a week of several people lying to me and telling me they credited the charge, they decided that they would just send me a check....I told them to CREDIT THE CHARGE CARD, once again they said they did, but still no credit applied to the card.
I love some of their products, but will never purchase over internet again, and may NEVER purchase there again if they don't do the right thing and credit the card. It is frustrating when a company jerks you around!

I took advantage of their offer to purchase a $25.00 gift certificate for $20.00. I bought two. When I tried to redeem them online, I found out that you can only redeem them via snail mail :( Next, I tried to order via phone but encountered the same answer. I went ahead and sent my order with the certificates and am anxious to see if they fulfill my order. I feel that they should have made it clear that these certificates could only be used in this way.

Didn't know about the company going bankrupt - maybe that is why their website didn't work worth beans and when I called the 800 number, all I got was music. Now I just hope my order goes through and check gets cashed properly.

I HAD A DIFFICULT TIME WITH THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPATMENT AFTER RECEIVING SOME DAMAGED PLANTS. I ALSO HAD ISSUES WITH THE ORDER NOT PROCESSED CORRECTLY.

Dissappointed that this large company won't make any effort to send seeds to Canada.....many tiny seed companies make the effort but not them....... they also have a second and very poorly promoted catalogue that specialized in Heirloom seeds...... have had to get it sent to friends in the U.S. and then on to me..... and ordered the same way! Thumbs down :(

Back in 1987 or thereabouts, I ordered a number of seed packets from them including some petunias. The contents of the seed packet were short of count, but it wasn't too bad so I didn't bother complaining. They were the weakest, most pathetic petunia seedlings you've ever seen, and every one of them died. I asked for a refund, and instead they just sent me another pack of the same failed petunia seeds! I have never ordered from Burpee since that time, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that they're in bankruptcy with such poor customer service, poor packaging and misrepresentation of products.

I've ordered off/on for many years; always reliable and good seed quality.

I have nothing but bad things to say about Burpee. In general, I make a lot of purchases via the web, so I'm familiar with that type of commerce. Burpee's web business STINKS. My transaction was unsatisfactory. Months after ordering, when I inquired about the status of my order, I was told there was a crop failure and the seeds wouldn't be sent That's fine, but why did I have to contact them to find that out? Since I paid with a credit card, why didn't they refund my money the same way, promptly, instead of sending TWO SEPARATE refund checks at different times, WEEKS after that? And currently, how do I get off of their email junk list? I've followed their instructions on the website SEVERAL times, emailed them directly DOZENS of times, and phoned. Getting junk email is not the worst thing in the world, but why would a company do this? It just seems indicative of the total lack of any structure in the web business. Boy. Thanks for listening. Burpee sure doesn't.

I purchased a packet of Burpee seeds from a garden center and found no seeds in it. I e-mailed customer service and was responded to promptly, but had failed to include an address where they could mail new seeds. I sent the information back to them immediately. That was in February, and it is now August.I've e-mailed them on six different occasions, using their "feedback" form as well as replying to the e-mail that they originally sent me. I've gone from nice to concerned to ticked off and still haven't heard from them. If someone gives me a plant with a Burpee tag on it, I'll stomp it into the ground! Of course, Burpee still sends me their monthly e-newsletter! Humph!!

[Update]
The only reason that I didn't go back to the store where the seeds were purchased was that I thought that maybe there had been a bad run of seeds or some other kind of problem that Burpee might have wanted to know about. I thought that maybe I was doing them a favor. After the initial contact with them, it was more the point of the whole thing. I never did hear from them via e-mail again, but I have reached them by phone. The CS operator stated that she didn't have my seeds listed in the catalogue in front of her, so she would refund the money I spent on them (all $1.99!). She also said that they are in the process of changing banks, so the check won't be mailed out until the last week of September. She refused to comment on the issue of lack of customer service.

I ordered seeds from Burpee's this spring. Waited over 7 weeks. Sent 3 e-mails. Finally they arrived. Won't order from them again.

I ordered near $75.00 of daylilies and lilies from Burpee's and they were past living when I received them - none of them survived. I tried to get a replacement or refund for the order and after several attempts and many insults from the service there, I finally quit and took the loss. I order a lot of daylilies and have over 200 different varieties and will never order from Burpee's again.

After spending two hours trying to make sense of the Burpee Online gardening catalog, I've given up. Way too much technology, way too little usability and information. Besides that, it didn't work. My guess is, the pages are based on Microsoft's "ASP" technology, a proprietary(Microsoft only) technology that breaks wickedly on Netscape browsers. Typical commercial tactics for a technology company, but it doesn't do anything for Burpee's image. I tried to complain, and the "feedback" butten they had provided led me to a (again proprietary) special feedback form (instead of the standard mail form). So I spent 1/2 an hour carefully providing information, and submitted the form. It spits back an "ASP Error".In the chance that Burpee is listening, my criticisms of the site are:1) Navigating the site is difficult because the indexing is insufficient.There's no alphabetic index, and the tables-of-contents for the catalogs appearto be incomplete lists. 2) The search engine's response was unusable. It provided text that looked likelinks, but didn't do anything. 3) The feedback form is completely broken. 4) There is no other information for contacting or feedback via email. 5) There is no option for simplified, text-only or simplified html-onlynavigation of the site. 6) The text and pictures are too small for people with eyesight difficulty, suchas older folks. (But older folks don't garden, do they?)In short, the web site is typical big-company overkill. I won't spend my time with their web site again unless it is revamped.

I wish I knew what everyone was talking about regarding Burpee's catalog, but I just mailed off my FOURTH and last request for a catalog in two years!!! I've requested a catalog by snail mail, e-mail and phone, to no avail. It's actually Burpee's loss since I spent over $450on gardening stuff via mail this year alone.

I have one comment about Burpee, I requested a catalog online and the day after I received it, I received 5 other unrelated home decor catalogs. I will not order from them! They could have included a check box for not including my name and address in a mailing list, but they did not.

This was the first year I ordered plants from Burpee. I have been satisfied with their seeds but even though I called my order in early (February) they were not able to fill it. I ordered sets of three different perennials and they did not send any of them. Two were cancelled and they substituted on the other and one of those didn't grow. To add insult to injury it took forever for the credit to be processed. This has soured me on mail order; I'll shop at the local nurseries.

I have been very disappointed with my last two orders. Out of 5 Daylilies only three survived. On the other order they sent the wrong plants and then were unable to replace them. This caused added expense to send them back and replace them locally.

I had an unhappy experience with customer service over an oriental poppy collection that died. I had to call 3 times before they would believe that the plants were dead and the customer service rep. who finally gave in and promised to send me new plants was downright surly! I don't think I'll order plants from Burpee again.

This seemed like a good idea to me, but the actual site is a mess! There is no way to order the items on-line; if someone can figure this out they must have actually taken the time to trouble-shoot it. Ordered catalogs from 4 seed companies on the http://www.2 weeks ago; 3 of 4 responded within 4 days...Burpee has yet to do so. Tried to call to get some questions answered; I waited 20 minutes on hold. Bigger isn't always better.