Comments regarding Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com)

This company may be worth a shot for some, but I did not have good luck with them.

On the positive side, their prices are quite good. I, however, had extremely high failure rates with their plants. I ordered 180 hardy gladiolus. I recall about only about two dozen coming up in the first year and perhaps only half a dozen flowering. Not a single one made an appearance the second year. I also ordered Echinacea, Achillea and Anemone from them. 1 of 9 achillea thrived, but I ended up tearing it out after realizing that it was a seeding variety. The anemone started to grow, but did not survive through the summer (though I think they may have with a bit more care from me). The echinacea never even made an appearance.

Out of over 200 plants purchased I had none by the second summer.

I ordered 3 iris bulbs. The first shipment was encouraging as the bulbs seemed of normal size and had "eyes" from which I expected sprouts to appear. When this did not happen, I contacted Bulbs Directed and they replaced the order, but with small unhealthy looking bulbs that I did not expect to germinate. I was right. None of them did. When I contacted Bulbs Direct they said that they had already replaced my order once and that is all they could (would) do. I was very disappointed as I expected them to see this transaction through to where I had healthy growing plants.

Dishonest to the core! I ordered 3 collections of their plants. As they arrived I was disappointed- the bulbs and roots were small and wilted, but I planted them anyway. Nothing (!) performed at all! I contacted the company for the refund, as they give money back guarantee, but in the SECOND letter they wanted me to take photos of the soil and plans. I bought something from them a couple of years ago and frankly I was not paying attention if anything grew back then. But now the markers next to two agapantus plants that never did anything have been a constant reminder. I was appalled at the audacity to request more work from me - as I planted the poor quality bulbs and cared for them all this time. They refused to honor my complaint. They were also trying to prolong the process, as I paid with pay-pal and paypal stands by their users for 180 days. I am reading now about people who actually took photos of their soil and whatever was left of the plants , and were still refused the refund on the basis of their soil being bad!!! Everything else is growing! This is a horrible company and I wish I read the reviews before I ordered anything at all!

I had a very difficult time with customer service with this company. Their website says, " MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
Not happy with your order? - FREE replacement or money back. You decide." I ordered ranunculus and gladiolus from them. The gladiolus did fine. The ranunculus were poor, weak performers in the garden. (I babied them but still was not successful.) When I requested a $17 refund for the ranunculus, I was required to email a picture of the soil. After looking at the photo, the customer service representative determined that I had a soil problem and denied me the requested refund. I had had the soil tested by UGA extension service before I planted! After going back and forth, I called and spoke with Rebecca. She again argued that I needed more proof. I couldn't believe it. After I complained about what a hassle trying to get a refund was and also quoting their website, she agreed to issue a refund. I did receive a refund, but I will NEVER use this company again.

Posted on May 31, 2017, updated June 29, 2017
I ordered some bare-root plants from them this spring - geraniums, columbine and astrantia. I've ordered from a number of different suppliers this year so I can make a direct comparison on each of these products. The astrantia I received was the size of a quarter, dried/dead and starting to mold. When I received bare-root astrantia from others I got a budding plant with 4-6" roots. The geraniums were disappointing but not dead. If they grow then fine, but these were sold as bare roots and what I got was a bare root - singular - as in 1 root per "plant". I wish I could post a picture, but these were slightly thinner than a pencil and 4-5 inches in length - more of a tuber than a root ball. It looked as if someone had taken 1 plant and sliced each individual root off of it and sold it as 5 plants. If these don't grow I'll ask for a refund but I'm likely stuck with a small/struggling plant all season. These were slightly cheaper than what I found elsewhere (9 for $14 vs 3 for $7) but I got more "plant" with my order of 3 than I did with these 9. The columbine was very healthy - 6" roots and starting to bud, no complaints there. Maybe I just had bad luck and chose 2 plants that they don't have a good supply of. I've asked for a refund on the astrantia and I have no reason to expect the customer service won't be satisfactory but I wouldn't order from them again.

I placed my first (and last) order with this UK company. Plants arrived relatively fast, most were barefoot, packed in plastic bags with peat moss, and some completely barefoot with no protection. The plant quality was mediocre, to say the least, with most being very very small and half-dried out. Three of the plants were dead on arrival. The customer service of that company puts you through a ringer to prove that the plants are dead! I had to send them photos and multiple emails, and even then they recommend that I should just plant the dead stuff and wait! It's a crappy company that doesn't stand for it's crappy products. Do yourself a favor and don't buy from them! Waste of time and money.

I've received all 7 boxes of my order in a very speedy shipment. I was very excited in getting the dahlias but the excitement becomes disappointment as soon I open the boxes and find dried, shriveled dahlia tubers. I'm so sad for spending almost $500 to get such poor tubers. I wish I could post the photos here for all of you to see.

Instead of huge order, I received a piece of packing paper with my address! I would not recommend to by abroad as the US has lots of restrictions to the import of plants

I made an order a month ago and never recived it. When i emailed the people they kept saysing wait paciently and i did but the order never came. A month later the they tell me i gave them a diffrrent address and i webt online to check and i admit i gave the wrong address. They said it was up to me to let them know but how was I supposed to know when none of the emails i recived had the address i sent it to? If i had seen the address in the email i would have contacted them right away. Upon saying this the lady i spoke to over the phone was very rude. She did not care about me as a custumer. I asked her what they were going to to. I did not want my money back i wanted the bulbs sent to my mother. They said that i have to wait 8 months for them to get their order sent back to them so they can resend it. If it was alive! That they were going to lose money too. I orderd a huge number of bulbs from them. When i asked to speak to the supervisor she said to call back later that i cant speak to them. How am I supposed to know when to call? I said i want to hear back right away and she said she cant do that. I am thuroughly disappointed by this company and suggest that everyone who wants to order from this company to please go somewhere else becouse they dont care about the custumer at all. I have never delt with such horrible custumer service.

I recently called Bulb's Direct because I have not received my order. I spoke with Nicky and she was extremely rude. She spoke in a very nasty tone. After speaking with her I have no idea how my issue will be handled. She said in order to get my money back I had to refuse the shipment when it came. I explained the the problem was the shipment never came. She said to call back at the end of the week and she would "decide" if she was going to refund my money.

I believe Nicky is Nicola; the same person that HappyGardener NY spoke with in 2012. M. Jansen, Managing Director, rudely replied to HappyGardener by saying...

"This person was taken care of by Nicola who has been working with us for many years, and is not inexperienced.

I have no problem with people not being happy with our service, I do have a problem with people directly attacking one of our employees (see username created).

We are a family owned company and I would hate to see that we have to use nicknames for our employees in the future because of responses like this."

Apparently you can't say anything about the rudeness of Nicky/Nicola even if she is rude. You will simply be given a rude reply.

In the meantime I'm out $75 and I have to continue to "deal" with customer service until my issue is resolved.

the minute i logged on to their site, i was hit by a serious virus which completely knocked out my machine - within 12 hours, my bank account was hit for over $1100 and the vendor, of course, was from somewhere in Europe - strange I'd say. I'll never log on to their website again.

on May 8th 2013 I placed $230.+ order with bulbsdirect.com=
Papaver, Rudbeckia,Dahlia,Amaryllis, Anemone, Astilbe, Ranunculus and more.
on or around memorial weekend I had NOT received my order & emailed bulbsdirect.com . Their response was timely. They would reship what they could, they verified my address. An email came approximately a week later that they were reshipping some items, but not all. No refund for the difference? so far I emailed again 2 weeks later. still no plants. My planting season is getting shorter still NO ORDER. Well it's now JULY 8th= 60 days no plants no refund yet. I am hugely disappointed my growing/planting season window for perennials has ended as well as my patience. I will have to say I definitely did NOT do my homework. Had I read the posts here I would have NEVER Placed this order. So, if you are like me, you will get burned too. Then you will come to this forum & post your headache. SAD very SAD I live for my Flower Gardens

"On Sep 4, 2013 12:15 PM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

Dear Customer,

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience.

Your initial shipment went wrong because the address provided was wrong.

We reshipped your order asap.

The fact that this second shipment did not arrive despite the corrected address is very bad luck, we send out thousands of parcels, and very few do not arrive.

We stop shipping at the start of June because planting season ends for our products, they would fail.

We were therefore unable to reship your full order.
Some products were no longer available and new crop is not available for shipping until the end of August or even next Spring (Dahlias are not shipped in Autumn since they are not hardy).

We should have communicated this clearly and have given you the option to get the remainder in Autumn or have given a refund straightaway. Now the system assumed the remainder would be shipped in Autumn and next Spring automatically

In the mean time you have received a full refund for your order, but we understand that you are disappointed that you did not receive the actual plants.

Regards,

Customer Service





"

I ordered $100 worth of ranunculus, bearded iris, and nanus gladiolus from this company because they had the best prices. You get what you pay for...the bulbs arrived and were all very small, and some of the gladiolus had rot holes. The iris rhizomes looked very, very dried out - not like other rhizomes I have planted. What's more, the planting directions given on the package were inappropriate for my zone (Zone 9A) and so the iris all rotted in the ground - not a single one sprouted. The iris were sold as being appropriate for Zone 9, but little did I know that they must be planted at the soil surface and not 4" deep as recommended on the package. The ranunculus sprouted and were weak at best, still waiting for the glads to bloom. Only bright side is that the company finally refunded me for the iris after sending 3 emails. They said they had responded twice before, but I never received their emails (from the sounds of other reviewers, this doesn't seem like an isolated occurrence). I won't order from them again as I would rather pay extra money for top-size bulbs and more informed growing information.

"On Sep 4, 2013 9:08 AM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

Dear Customer,

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with us

All flowerbulbs you ordered are guaranteed, we are happy to send you new ones or give you a refund for the remainder that has not been refunded yet.

However I would like to state that we do not ship rotten flowerbulbs. All bulbs are pre-inspected by USDA inspectors just before we ship, we are not allowed to ship bulbs before they are inspected and approved. We do ship live products and sometimes they fail due to all sorts of circumstances, but that is why we have the guarantee.

It's true that in some rare cases people seem to not receive our emails, but you can always contact us direct thru our toll-free hotline as mentioned on our website.

Regards,

Customer Service

"

Ordered last year, one bare root plant and iris rhizomes. The plant was dead, dry, and brittle. I planted it indoors anyway, to get it started, and it never did anything but sit there nailed to the perch and pining for the fjords. Honestly, it just looked like floor sweepings. Their customer service was extremely snotty about it, said their "expert inspector would never make a mistake or send shoddy merchandise" and I had to send them a picture of that dead little bit of trash to get a refund.

The iris didn't look too good, either, but I planted them anyway. They also appeared to be whatever had fallen on the floor and the packers grabbed a handful and called it order fulfillment. There were some bonus free Dutch iris bulbs (not the type I ordered) and ironically, they did bloom last summer, but the ones I paid for never did a thing. This year no plants have appeared, not even the free ones. I am giving up on the lot of them. If you can believe the company's website, their European customers are thrilled to death with their products, so I think they should stick to that side of the pond and not bilk us Americans out of our money and give us false promises.

Also, Bulbs Direct sold my email address, so now I get all kinds of Euro Spam in my mail box.

"On Sep 3, 2013 11:18 AM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

Dear customer

Sorry to hear that you were not happy with the performance of our products.
Your order is guaranteed, we would be happy to send you new flowerbulbs free of charge this Autumn.

We do not, and never will, trade email addresses. of our customers.

Regards,

Customer Service "

Four years ago I ordered the English Cottage Inn irises, 2 of them and I got one free. All white. They bloomed this year. One is brown, one is yellow and one is dutch iris blue. I planted them among black Irises I already had, looking for a color scheme.It took them a while to get big enough and it sucks not one is white. They evidently just mailed me whatever color and type they had laying around. Very disappointed and I nor my family and friends will ever order from there. Sorry, but it's the truth.

"On May 7, 2012 7:43 AM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

First of all we can imagine the disappointment after waiting for a number of years (besides the color, they should have flowered earlier anyway).

But we do not just grab what is laying around, this must have been a human mistake. Somebody must have grabbed the wrong bag by accident (we also sell collections of different Irises). We do thousands of orders and are (fortunately) human beings, sometimes mistakes are made.

We regret this error and are willing to send a refund to this customer. We would also like to resend some new English Cottage Inn Irises to make up for the inconvenience.

Contact us thru CustomerService@Bulbsdirect.com referring to this rebuttal so we can arrange this.

Our guarantee always stands.

Regards,

Customer Service
BulbsDirect.com




"

I ordered the cana panache they arrived well packaged but what I receivied in the package was very disapointing. 3 bulbs that was very, very tiny so small that I could hardly tell the bulbs from the durt. The price I paid was not cheap. I sent an email about this to customer service justt like the other customer stated in their review. Customer service never responed to my email. I will not order from them again.

"On May 7, 2012 7:22 AM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

We did have one batch of cannas that were smaller then usual.

The plants are okay, but if Janice contacts us (customerservice@bulbsdirect.com) we are happy to refund her and/or send her new bigger cannas.

Our guarantee always stands.

Customer Service
BulbsDirect.com"

I am writing this review after having tried to resolve my situation with BulbsDirect.com's "Customer Service" department, which apparently consists of an untrained, young adult without the slightest clue of what customer service means.

Immediately after receiving my order, I emailed a question to the "Customer Service" provided on their website. This is the only way to contact them since they are located overseas, without incurring international telephone charges.

I NEVER RECEIVED A RESPONSE.
I repeat, I NEVER RECEIVED A RESPONSE.

Several months later, I tried again to contact BulbsDirect.com via the same "Customer Service" email provided on their website.

This time I received a reply, but it was too late. The plants I had ordered were most certainly dead, which I stated numerous times in emails to their "Customer Service" I was completely responsible for.

However, my point and reason for contacting BulbsDirect.com was to:

A) inform them that I never received a reply to my original email, which would have saved my plants from dying, not to mention the time and money spent.

B) inform them that BulbsDirect.com had inconsistent planting instructions on their website versus the printed packaging that accompanied my order, which caused me to spend needless time searching for a resolution to the situation.

I was replied with such rude and uncaring remarks, not to mention a total lack of responsibility for not returning my first email.

BulbsDirect.com does not care to hear about any problems a customer might have with their products or services. Period. Ever.

My response from BulbsDirect.com was such that I felt compelled to warn others of my experience.

I do not usually go to such lengths to express a company's complete lack of professional courtesy to a first-time customer such as myself, but hopefully I can save others from the AWFUL experience I had with BulbsDirect.com.

"On Mar 28, 2012 5:35 AM, Bulbs Direct (bulbsdirect.com) responded with:

We try hard to do everything right, but yes, sometimes, we fail.

In this case the person emailed us, but we never received it, that's why there was no initial response. Emails are answered daily.

He tried agan several months later, now we replied but apparently it was too late...

For urgent problems we always have out TOLL FREE phone number direct to Holland as mentioned on our contact page, we can deal with any problem straight away.

This person was taken care of by Nicola who has been working with us for many years, and is not inexperienced.

I have no problem with people not being happy with our service, I do have a problem with people directly attacking one of our employees (see username created).

We are a family owned company and I would hate to see that we have to use nicknames for our employees in the future because of responses like this.

This person will get a full refund anyway.

M. Jansen
Managing Director
"

I ordered 20 tuberous begonias and only 7 came up.They are getting soft and rotting.They won't answer me when I email.The begonias from Jungs and Michigan bulb are doing fine.

I ordered some freesias, agapanthus and dahlias in April '09.
The order came as promised within 14 days and everything was planted right away. Only about half of the freesias sprouted, only 3 out of 9 dahlias and the agapanthus struggled the whole growing season to survive. I contacted the company and they quickly send me a replacement for the freesias and dahlias.
As of November none of the freesias have bloomed and all their bulbs have died. Of the dahlias not a single one has been what I had ordered. I got some nice blooms and some not so nice ones. I was very surprised how I did not get even one match out of 9 ordered dahlias. Needless to say I will not order from them again, what is the use of good prices when you don't get what you paid for.

In April I ordered a set of (6) Alstromeria Princess Lily. They arrived quickly but the tubers were tiny, about the thickness of a pencil and quite shrivelled looking. I planted them a couple to a pot but had no sign of life all summer. I contacted the company to ask for a replacement per their guarantee and they graciously replied that they would be sending replacements, I assumed at proper planting time. Then I was notified that my order had been shipped! To northwest IN where our winters get to -20 F. !! I contacted customer service to ask if the order could not be delayed till Spring and received a reply that the order was on its way and that these are hardy and can be shipped Spring or Fall. The package arrived today with a label "protect from frost" and instructions inside to lift tubers before freezing weather...... Obviously I am not very optimistic about the chances these new tubers have of surviving being stored all winter now until next Spring!

I ordered 6 Hippeastrum bulbs (2 each of 3 kinds) back in January. Of the 6, one was just complete mush with nothing left, and one was pretty badly gone. Of course they were two different types so I no longer had the bulb pairs that I wanted. The company did refund my money, but was unable to resend the bulbs I had waited for since they were no longer in stock. I've since planted the remaining good ones and they're just not performing as well as others I've purchased from other places. True, the cost was cheaper here, but I definitely got what I paid for. I think I'd rather pay more for better quality in the future.

I'd like to think this was an unusual experience, but the 5 canna bulbs sent to me a month ago were very small - really, suprisingly small considering how prolific cannas are - and worse, shrivelled and dried out. I am still trying to wake them up, but doubt at this point that they are viable.

I purchased 440 bulbs and 80 tubers. I gave bulbs direct a neutral rating only because of the problems contacing them via email or by phone. I contacted them by email to see when my order was going to ship as it was going on two weeks and I had not recieved a shipping date. The site states 14 day shipping. I recieved no response to my email. Two days later that I recieved a automated email from them stating "the order was delayed". But did not state how long. In the automated email it states it is a email that is created by the computer. I then contacted the customer service number listed on the site. The person on the phone was very nice and tried to be helpful. I explained the delayed message I recieved and was wondering how long it was delayed for? She stated that because I ordered online and not by phone she could not help me? I then explained that when I tried to contact them by email it was just never responded to and the only info I recieved from them was automated by the computer. She then stated she could email them for me to find out when they would be shipped. I recieved another automated response from them stating that the customer service agents email she had sent them had failed to be recieved more then to times, it recieved a failur notice? Two days later I recieved another automated response from them stating "my order had shipped". It had no tracking number or who it was shipped with. The bulbs arrived on 5-2-08. I ordered on 4-19-08, so they arrived exactly on the 14th day as stated on the site. The bulbs and tubers were very quality and nicely packaged. They are a good company to buy from, but if you need to contact them it is almost impossible.That is why I gave them a Neutral instead of Positive.