Comments regarding California Carnivores

This man is incredibly knowledgeable. He is also incredibly experienced growing these plants with decades to his credit. To this I would also like to add that he is quite personable and always a pleasure to talk to. The man has written one of the foremost publications on carnivorous plants and I would recommend the purchase of his book to anyone interested in CPs.

He does in fact have a nice inventory rivaled by only a handful in the industry. He does in fact ship fast and he certainly does include a cute little fake fly which is a nice personalized touch. His plants were properly identified, they were healthy, they did arrive in good condition, but they were considerably more expensive and smaller than similar plants I have received from other online CP nurseries.

The reasoning behind my neutral is due to the fact that I attempted to order 6 plants and was told they were all available except one. Upon receipt of my order, only 3 of the 5 plants I had been told were available to purchase were in my box. My receipt included the amount I had paid for the purchase of the 3 plants that had been shipped as well as a $10 charge for the shipping and an additional $10 charge for handling. When I placed my order, I had been informed these charges would be applied to my total. In my opinion, these charges are considerably higher than those charged by other nurseries however I figured it was worth it to place the order as he had a few plants I wanted that I was having difficulty locating elsewhere at this time of year. Needless to say the two plants that I wanted the most were not shipped to me. Figures. Not a problem as I assumed the plants were temporarily unavailable and would be shipped at another time. I got to thinking about this and called a friend who had ordered from him in the past and was told that it might be prudent for me to give him a call for “clarification”.

Sure enough, I called to make sure I wouldn’t be charged another $10 shipping and $10 handling fee for the plants that I had ordered that were not shipped and was basically told that he was very sorry but that he was out of those particular plants and didn’t know when they would be available again but if he had them he would have not charged me to ship them out separately. Hmmm. Interesting. I believe it was unprofessional to ship a partial order without calling first to let me (the purchaser) know that plants were not available and would not be shipping separately at a later date. I was extremely disappointed. I can honestly say that I would NOT have placed an order with him if I had known he was out of the two plants I really wanted. I merely tossed the other 3 plants on to my order in an attempt to rationalize the shipping and handling fees. The 3 plants I was shipped are common and can be picked up locally or traded. Those 3 plants were most certainly not worth $20 getting them to me and if you check his plant prices, I believe you will find him to have higher pricing than that of his competitors.

Would he have allowed me to return the order, probably but there would have been hard feelings and I would have ended up spending more money to ship them back so what's the point to the exercise? Would I order from him again, yes. BUT if and only if I communicated with him via e-mail to make sure it was crystal clear that I would want my order shipped in its entirety or not shipped at all.