Comments regarding Proven Winners

BEWARE! I ordered one Hosta and four ilex. The Hosta and ilex were packaged separately and in different shipments. The hosta arrived with so much damage to the leaves that I cannot use it as intended, in a front porch pot. It looks 'rough" with tears and holes in the leaves. (It will look fine next year, but it is a loss for use this year.) The Ilex had much of the tender new growth broken off and will recover... eventually.
I attribute the damage to the minimal packing protection which allowed the hosta to come in contact with sharp internal cardboard pieces.
The Ilex looked like it had thrashed around in the shipping containers. It had a fair amount of soil from the pots in the bottom of the container. Again - not adequately protected.

I communicated with Proven Winners, complete with photos, but they just gave me "crickets" and essentially told me my plants would recover. THAT'S not the point. I want them to arrive with no cosmetic damage and look good NOW. Who wants to look at a tattered plant?

BTW - there was no offer to replace the hosta. I suspect this was because they couldn't guarantee that the replacement would not be damaged either!

There are many other options for mail order that do a very good job. I'll continue to patronize those, and ditch "Proven Losers"!

I am extremely disappointed with Proven Winners from an online ordering and customer guarantee standpoint. Last year, late summer, I purchased and planted a hardy hibiscus that gave me a handful of beautiful blooms before the cold weather set in. I was pleased and very much looked forward to seeing it this year. I have several other hardy hibiscus and all are thriving right now. This one is completely dead. Customer service was absolutely of no help other than to tell me, when I inquired about their customer service guarantee, that they only guarantee that your plants will *arrive* healthy. So… after the postman delivers your order, you’re on your own. Never again, Proven Winners. I don’t appreciate paying your substantial prices just to rent a plant for part of a season.

In my experience, the customer service end of the company is somewhat lacking and complacent. I reached out to Proven Winners on Instagram after 20 plants, 3 different varieties, that I purchased bloomed and turned out to have been mislabeled. I was disappointed because these mislabeled plants did not work in the projects I had purchased them for. I explained how I chose to invest my money in their products because I believe in their quality, but was disappointed in their response. They responded that they sell plugs to independent growers who must have mislabeled the plants. They told me to simply "return all the plants to Lowes." End of story. But I feel that they missed the point. I felt they could have done a little more to rectify the situation, or at least shown a little more concern over a mistake that reflects their brand or image. Their plants are "Proven Winners," but their customer service department are "Proven Don't Carers."