Kitchen Garden Forum

Sorry people I am usually a quite peacable person however I have to blow off a little steam some where some how. I have just taken delivery of some sweet potato slips from Thompson and Morgans of Ipswich. I only live 30 miles away from their ground. I placed the order in december and have been waiting for them to arrive till now. today they arrived. how dissapointing. the note with them said they were sent on the 14/04/09 and today is 23/04/09. they came in a box big enough for a fruit bush. the slips are so dehydrated they will not survive. I may get 2 if I am very very lucky. an e mail has been sent to their web site and I expect a response. I think I saw it on here about their seemingly lack of care before. I saw after I ordered. just to add insult to injury and big dissapointment they sent a variety I did not ask for. Has anyone else found their service this poor?. I do feel sorry for anyone ordering from miles away. should t & m read this then this is the last time you cross me and for all other suppliers my trust and faith is sorely dented. they are quick enough to take your money then supply shoddy goods and service. if it was animals and not plants I bet there would be a riot. I will await the reply from them and then maybe trading standards. For those interested I will post on here any further contacts

Hello Lez
I order from T&M most years and have always found their service and the quality of their stuff excellent. Once when they could not complete an order for plants because of lack of stock I was sent an apology and a £5 voucher and had the choice of a full refund or leaving the order for delivery in the following season.
So I don't think your experience is an any way typical and my guess is that they will sort things out for you pretty quickly.

John

no, you're definitely not the only one disappointed with T&M - I ordered holly trees via a tabloid newspaper offer and was expecting them to arrive as specified in the order form in time for Christmas, the idea being that they should be part of the Christmas decorations. Nothing till late January, then no info as to what variety they were, only a suggestion that if I wanted berries I would need male and female (duh - I knew that). I contacted T&M in a vain attempt to get more details, but all they could tell me was that both were female - not very helpful. Now one is dying and ok I've got a credit note by way of replacement - but I can't use that on line!

Oh dear. I also ordered sweet potatoes from T&M in Dewcember - and haven't received them yet. However, i did specify that I don't expect a delivery until May 1 at the earliest.

I also ordered my potatoes from these people at the same time, specifying that I wnted them to arrive in February. I got them in late December. That means I had a house full of chitting spuds for a whole month more than I wanted. I don't think I'll bother ordering from them again.
mike

I gave up buying anything from Thompson & Morgan many years ago. Wrong seeds in the packet, empty seed packets, poor or non-existent germination have been some of their transgressions. They're not cheap, either. I think these days they act as agents for other nurseries to do their supplying, so I suspect your sweet potato slips came in from somewhere else, not direct from their HQ.

I grew sweet potatoes a few years ago, from slips from Marshalls. They did very well in the particularly hot summer we had that year, great fun to grow but not good value for the price of the slips. On another gardening forum, someone reporting growing some from supermarket-bought tubers and they did brilliantly, far better than mine. They were the pink-tubered sort, generally considered to be not as hardy. You could save yourself a bob or two there, I reckon.

And I thought it was just me. I ordered a fig tree for mother's day - order placed March. It has still not arrived and I have emailed and phoned (be prepared to wait half an hour to get through) several times and fobbed off. Their 'customer care' service is a joke. They actually lied to me today. I finally demanded a refund and to speak to a supervisor and was told they would call me back and that I had been refunded. When I did not get a call for 2 hours, spent another 30 mins trying to get through, spoke to a 'supervisor' who told me I had not been refunded and there was no record of my call!!! I have ordered plently of plants form them in the past but I will never use them again. A disgraceful outfit. If you have to query an order -demand to speak to a supervisor and don't let them go until you speak to one or you will get nowhere. Above all get a name.

You are not alone. This is part of what I wrote last year about my potato order:

"To be fair, the Picasso were fine: reasonably sized tubers in good condition. But the Charlotte and Sarpo Axona (both organic) were a bit of a let down. At least half of them were undersized, shrivelled and damaged. They were smaller than the sized stated on the packaging. I asked around fellow allotment holders but no one seemed to be experiencing similar problems. Seed potatoes had been bought from other suppliers, potato days and even the local garden centre. It did not seem that this was a "bad year’ for potatoes.

But what has irritated me, more than the poor quality of the seed potatoes, has been the even poorer quality of T & M’s Customer Care. When I first received my potatoes, I e-mailed them, expressing my disappointment and attaching some photos of the sad little specimens. Ten days later, having heard nothing, I e-mailed again. This time I received an automated reply, promising action within six working days. Ten days later, still having heard nothing, I e-mailed again. I am not holding my breath. "

Bizarrely, I received a letter from their customer care department this year, saying how sorry they were that I was not happy with the replacement potatoes they had sent me - no they hadn't and suggesting that I pass them on to friends!!

I'll join the list too!- I am still awaiting rhubarb crowns which I ordered in December 2008.