Comments regarding Heartland Blueberries

This company takes your money and runs. I've called emailed all to no avail. I lived only 30 miles from them when i lived in Louisville, KY 9 months ago. Trust me I would have gotten in my car and made a trip down to this "so called" business and had it out with these thieves. NEVER ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY!

I ordered 10 blueberry plants from Heartland Blueberries in June of 2011 and scheduled delivery for the first week of October. My credit card was billed immediately and I patiently waited for my delivery. I emailed a week before my scheduled delivery to confirm and did not get a response. October passed and I emailed again...and again...and again. I called the number and left a message on 2 separate occasions. No response. I contact the BBB in Kentucky and they told me that Heartland is NOT BBB accredited contrary to the claim on their website. I filed a complaint and received an email a month later stating the company did not respond to their complaint. This company is a scam. They will take your money and won't return emails or phone calls. DO NOT make the same mistake that I made. Order from a reputable company and don't give these thieves any of your money!

Their web site starts with a lie "We are an BBB accredited... business" (the BBB website specifically states they -with 11 negatives- are NOT accredited) and my experience ends in theft. Where I come from, when you take money from someone you are obligated to give that person a service or product of equal value. If you do not, that is my definition of theft.

Again, they do not answer any phone calls or emails or send you a product. They just take your money and hope you will go away. At least that has been my experience.

And another thing. Making excuses for your own incompetence and then hiding behind the Cross is simply pathetic. I understand that being a Christian does not make you perfect (I am one), but this just wrong. If you cannot run a business, stop taking money from people.

Now off the the BBB, Google, and then the credit card company.

In July 2011 I contacted Heartland Blueberries inquiring about the availability of Berkley Blueberry bushes for fall delivery by email. Having been told that that was not a problem as well as responses from them regarding other questions I sent an order by mail with a check. On August 1st after inquiring if they had received my order, I received an email informing me that they had and my order was scheduled for fall delivery. I did not receive the plants and tried calling and sending follow-up emails with no response. Since the advertise that they are members of the Better Business Bureau I contacted the Kentucky branch. That was Nov. 7th. I filed a complaint at that time and was also informed that Heartland Blueberries was not registered with the BBB. On Dec. 6th, I was contacted by the Kentucky BBB and informed that they had done as much as they could, but were unable to even make contact with this "company". I had also prepared the ground for these plants and had to fill in the holes before winter and will have to order elsewhere in the Spring. I'm only out $60, but I don't appreciate their carelessness in taking my money without any explanation nor their use of BBB when they aren't members. I have saved their emails as well as the ones from BBB.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!!! I bought 300 blueberry plants a year ago. They where to be 2 year old plants and sent in the dormant stage. The plants were sent out over a period of about 3 weeks in November,a couple of boxes one day a couple of boxes a few days later,streached out over about a 3 week period. They were planted as they came in. We felt that it was very late in the season to be planting non dormant plants. We tried to contact them to express our concern. Tried phone messeges,emails recieved no reply! Come spring when our other BB plants were putting on leaves these new plants were doing nothing. Eventually we started seeing some new sprouts coming from the base of some the plants. As it turned out these plants had frozen and were starting over as new plants. (I paid for 2year old plants) Out of the 300 plants about 50 did not come up at all! Once again we tried to contact them to no avail. After several attemts I recieved an email stating that they would see what they had in their invetory. That was the last I heard from them! That was back in May! So we are out the extra money we paid for the older plants and the 50 dead plants! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ordered 10, 6 inch pot plants for $60.00 and free shipping, sounded to good to be true and I guess it was.
I emailed them 5 times called 5 times and no response. thank God I used Pay-Pal I will get my money back soon. but I will not order anything from them again...

I ordered blueberries and respberries from Heartland back in fall of 2010. I recieved the the berry order that fall minus the 6 red raspberries I orderd with no explanation why. I emailed them a few times and finally recieved a explanation that they were back ordered and I would recieve them in the spring with a few extra. That never happened. I email him in May and no answer and again in Sept with still no answer.
Here is the emails.

1st email 11/22/2010 08 :05 My order invoice 0000002995

I Received my order last week. I ordered 14 Sierra, 5 Bonus, 4 Blueray,
but i also ordered 9 total raspberries( 3 each of lantham, heritage and
blackhawk) and only received 3 of the raspberry plants. Only one of the
raspberries were labeled(black) so i don't know what the other two are.
There is no invoice in the package or explanation why the other 6 are not
in the box.
Invoice number on email is 000000xxxx
Jim

2nd EMAIL 11/22/2010
I sent this email a couple weeks ago and havent't heard anything yet. My
wife called and sent a message and no reply there either.
Just sending this in case they didnt get to you or got lost.
Thanks jim

3rd EMAIL Reply 12/08/20010
Sorry Jim for not responding. The 3 raspberry plants were Blackhawk. The other 2 varieties (6 plants) have been backordered until Spring. We will be shipping those out (plus a couple extra) the 1st part of April.

Alan McDowell
Heartland Blueberries

4th EMAIL 05/13/2011
Any news on the Red Raspberries?

5th EMAIL 09/12/2011
Any news on the back order yet? Its almost been a year since I paid for them.

Posted on September 3, 2011, updated September 3, 2011
pretty much as bad as bad gets.... I ordered 1,000 plants from this dude. yep, 1,000 for a farm startup. Did alot of checking around and felt like they were the best. Their web-site says "grown outdoors on our farm in the heat and cold so the plants are hardy" or something similar. That was the selling point for me. I paid over $1.00 more per plant to go through this company rather than the only other one comparatively priced company (hartman). Figured it would be worth the extra money to get a plant that was grown by a family outdoors on a real farm environment.... The town was about 6 hours away, so I opted to pick them up in person rather than pay for all that shipping and stress on the plants, I could go get them and bring them back quicker than anyone else could.

They wanted a deposit of $800 dollars, ok, I understand so I sent it.... Huge mistake. Came time to get my plants and uh-oh, he sold my plants, but not to worry, he was expecting a shipment to arrive soon... SHIPMENT? I thought they were grown outside by your family on your farm? My plants spent over a week in a UPS tractor trailer because the shipment got messed up, the whole time I'm waiting. At 3 weeks past the time when my plants were due, I was able to come get them. Turns out his "farm" is a bunch of plants in his driveway where he drop-ships out of his garage... Don't believe me? The address is on this site, go look for yourself. The picture on HIS site shows him and his family in front of a huge blueberry operation... Turns out he had only been in the game for a few years, I knew more than he did just from my internet research.

Guess where he gets his shipments from? Hartman blueberries... What's more is I ordered and paid for the 1 year old plants, I got the 6 inch plants from hartman... I paid him $3.50 per plant, he bought them from hartman for much much less, especially since they weren't the 1 year old plants... At this point it was nearly a month past the planting date, so rather than cut my losses and order from hartman I went ahead and paid the remainder of my bill and took my plants home. The good news is almost all survived, no thanks to him since he DIDN'T GROW THEM ON HIS FARM IN THE HEAT/COLD/ BLAH BLAH BLAH....

sorry for the long post, but this man took me for thousands of dollars because I believed his lies and never thought someone would be so blatant of a liar. Don't, I repeat don't ever buy from him... I really wish I had seen this site before hand, it would have been worth the drive to michigan to pick up from hartman myself... Now that said, I called hartman after getting the initial lie from this guy and they had the absolute worst phone manners of any company I've ever spoken to....

yes, I may be bashing this guy, but everything here is fact, not opinion. He was agreeable enough to deal with, was very apologetic and gave me a small refund of $100 dollars since the plants were late. But that does not excuse the outright blatant lies that were told. This guy does NOT own a farm, he drop ships blueberries out of his garage. He did mention working out a lease of a 3 acre tract of land when I was there so he may have that operation going in a few years... Oh yeah, he also mentioned that the reason he no longer had a farm was that he had some overspray of herbicide from a nearby farm that killed all of his plants, that may be true, but the area that I saw that was the only place he could have been doing this on was no larger than a medium size garden.

all of this happened in the spring of 2011, it is now nearing fall, hopefully I can save someone from doing the same thing I did. On the good side, my farm is doing wonderfully, all my hard work paid off, and even though I got ripped off it still turned out ok. My best advice is if you are ordering more than just a couple of plants, NEVER send a deposit, pick the plants up in person even if it means an 18 hour drive, and set your date before the optimum planting date so if something goes wrong you can call someone else.

I wish I had known about this site before I ordered! I came back from a trip to Oregon with dreams of growing my own blueberries. I ordered 10 bushes from Heartland and thought it was unusual that they said I wouldn't receive my bushes until Nov., but charged my credit card right away. I waited and November came, no bushes. We have to wait for plants to go through the Dept of Ag. here, so I waited until December. I sent emails and tried to call numerous times, no luck. When I tried to do a paypal dispute, they claimed too much time had passed. Convenient. I guess that's why they couldn't be sent until Nov. as that was enough time that I couldn't get my money back. Save your money and find someone local.

DO NOT ORDER FROM HEARTLAND BLUEBERRIES you will never receive your shipment. your credit card will be charged the next day, and you will never hear from them again. save your self a headake order from somebody else

I placed an order in Feb. 2010 for 4 blueberry bushes for delivery November 6-12, 2010. I was charged immediately for the purchase. I started trying to contact Heartland in late November. I left several voice mail and email messages requesting an update on my order. I live in western PA and had a small window before winter weather set in. I received an email response on December 1st apologizing for the late shipment and stating that I would have the plants that week. It is now December 14th. I never received a shipment notification, the plants never arrived. I have again tried calling and emailing with no response requesting a full refund. I truly try to support the small farmer but I would not recommend doing business with this company. Go to a more reputable supplier. Do Not Order from them Online!

I placed an order in early July for delivery in mid-September. One review checked was quite positive. Paid through credit card. The credit card charge was promptly passed in mid-September but no blueberry plants sent. Waited for two weeks - no news, no plants. Sent e-mail - no response. This began a series of phone calls – did get through once to a message of, "Oh, he's in the barn - will call right back". No surprise – no return call to this or any other phone message. Went the email route. Four or five emails sent over the course of two months. Two responses this time. The first informed me, a month later than promised delivery date, that the plants were sent ‘that afternoon’ – quite a coincidence. A few weeks later, still no plants. After I sent another email wondering if this business was really a scam, a second response was sent with the tracking number and an offer for a refund. Offer for the refund and return of the plants was accepted. No surprise when, a few days later, I received a letter from Customs informing me that the paperwork from Heartland Blueberries was incomplete and the plants were being refused entry into Canada. This, in spite of the claim on their website that they ship cross-continent.
So here it is, mid-December, a few emails later enquiring about the refund, with no response, no refund and no contact with this so-called ‘business’.
Question – how is this business able to operate and advertise with such poor customer relations and an apparent lack of business ethics? Their website is, in my experience, very misleading. I wonder if that positive review was from a relative or friend. The only thing that did seem to happen in a timely manner was the passing of the credit card charge. I suppose the expression “Buyer beware” applies here. Thank goodness it was only a hundred dollar order and not a much larger order. In spite of everything, is I remain optimistic this business will be concluded honorably – hope my optimism will not be misplaced

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The website states that I DO NOT ship international orders. I try to accomodate occasional small orders to Canada and the few that I have sent have not had any issues. This issue was the first. This transaction is why I DO NOT and now WILL NOT deal with international orders.

Your credit card was refunded as I promised. I can take up to 30 days for a refund to post to your account."

My main complaint about HEARTLAND BLUEBERRIES is that they do not respond to my emails, all of which have been
positive, pleasant and non complaining.

I bought 8 blueberry plants from
HEARTLAND BLUEBERRIES, all different varieties.
Well packed, small, but good price. 1 was very runty, no roots
to speak of, and I didn't expect it to live(it didn't). 5 of the plants did very well, 2 others were a little runty. All were planted in a proven blueberry mix. Many blueberry plants from various other vendors all thrived in it.
I contacted HEARTLAND BLUEBERRIES(email) about
replacing some of the plants and offered to pay for them.
They agreed to that and said they would send them "now".
I never got them.
I sent them 4 emails( from 3 weeks to 3 months later) asking
them what the status of the order was but never got a reply.
Finally I asked them to please cancel the order(credit card with order #) and confirm. Never got a reply.
Perhaps there is a good explanation ?
My advice : unless you're very poor or are buying a large quantity of blueberries, go elsewhere. HEARTLANDS are the smallest I've seen. The ones I got from Bay Laurel were giant in comparison, probably a much better value.

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During the offseason I get 5-10 emails a day. During the shipping season I get 15-20 per day. Even though you sent several I missed them. I apologized to you for the oversight on my part. I thought all the orders had been shipped. I also explained that I could not ship the plants now, because of the heat. On July 19th, I offered to ship the plants this Fall at 1/2 price, but you never responded. I am sorry you have had a bad experience."