Managing your on-line expectations

Managing your on-line expectations

During my research of on-line sellers I found a lot of angry reviews posted on line, some of these are very valid complaints, about quality and non delivery, but some are caused by misunderstanding the actual product size.

Strawberries for instance are always sold with pictures of succulent almost seductive fruit but in reality you are buying a promise. So when your strawberry runners eventually turn up, it is a bit of a disappointment. If you had looked carefully in the description, it would have mentioned, probably in very small writing the size of plant you where buying.

Was there anything wrong with the runners, probably not but the buyer was left confused.

This seems to be a common problem with on line plant retailers, they seem to be frightened to show the actual product.
Imagine if you bought a dress on line, ready for a party next week, and when it turned up it was just a length of material, with some thread and buttons you would be a bit mad.
Plant retailers are not dishonest but perhaps they over embellish the description and forget about the customer.

Plug plants are also a problem, looking at the picture you imagine a lovely pot of colourful begonia plants

What you actually get are some small plug plants 1 cm x 1 cm that you need to grow on.

The worst are the photo-shopped plants that show what your purchase might look like in the future, but are ashamed to show you what they are actually selling. Anybody else think that this standard rose looks too perfect, it looks like a load of cut flower roses have been carefully arranged. When the lovely rose you ordered turns up as bare root standard you could be a bit miffed.

I also think collections of bargain plants can be a bit of a gamble, if its a bargain there has to be a reason, often they are cheap or easy to grow and sometimes they use lucky dip collections to clear up stock that is not selling.

In summary, always read the description, look for the actual plant size and ignore the before sale price just work out the actual cost price per plant delivered. You might be surprised.

I would always compare the prices with garden centre or supermarket stock.
For example
On line 12 bare root strawberry plants would cost £9.99 plus £4.99 delivery = £1.25 per plant.
In a garden centre fully grown they would be £1.50-£1.99
On line 40 begonia organdy plugs £9.99 plus £6.99 delivery = 42p per plant.
In a garden centre a 10 pack bedding pack in flower would be £2.99-£3.99 30 to 40p per plant