Comments regarding Palatine Fruit & Roses

This review is about the customer service at the Palatine and not their roses. I contacted them several weeks ago to place an order for about 20 bare root roses. I was told that I should place the order on their website starting on September 9th at 9:00am. I tried to place my order at 9am but the website was down. Over the next half an hour, I added roses to my basket and every few second, the website would crash and my basket would clear. I was finally able to place my order and get all the roses that I wanted. I got a confirmation that my roses were available and my order was received. I later got a fraud alert from my CC and asked if I authorized Palatine to charge my card for $464 which I said yes. I was then informed that I should ask Palatine to reprocess the payment. I checked the website and all the roses that I ordered was still in stock so I send an email to them to make sure that the payment has gone through. I did not get any response till a day later informing me that they just processed my order and 1/3 of the roses that I ordered were already sold out. No apology and just that I should give them the names of other roses that I may be interested in to replace the ones that were sold out. It is really unfortunate that many rose companies do not recognize how important costumer service is and they go out of business one after another. If you make a mistake, you rectify it instead of arrogantly asked me to send you a replacement list.

I have worked in horticulture for decades; and have been growing roses for about 10 years, ordering them from across Canada. An order placed in 2012, resulted in being provided 3 roses - 2 roses of obvious poor quality (both the under stock and the cultivar) which did not grow and died by fall. Palatine replaced both the following year - with surprisingly, two roses of even poorer quality (1 with one cane and a small root system, and one with 2 tiny canes and a small root system). Interestingly ... the healthy one, died during the winter (live in zone 6, so should have been fine; apparently a cultivar unsuited to our winters); the two smaller ones died back almost entirely and struggled this summer even though is has been ideal weather. Certainly would have liked to experience what others have (large roots, healthy lush growth, longevity) ... perhaps the rapid business expansion has something to do with this (new staff, etc.).

Last spring I ordered 3 climbers from them. One arrived with only one cane that lived for more than a few weeks. I called and told them I only had one cane left alive and was told to "cut it back". I did and it formed a candelabra. I called back and was told to "cut it way back in the spring and in a few years it will be beautiful." Thanks. I always want to wait a "few years" for some roses.

By the way the Rose Forum members on Gardenweb told me not to cut it back. I don't know what to do and will probably move it so I can put in something that won't take years to grow into that bare spot. The other two seem to be doing ok, but I won't know for sure until they break dormancy.

I will never buy from them again. Whatever happened to the concept of grade #1 roses?