tree never arrived

[rita1]

hi i have been waiting for my apple tree to arrive from garden bargains it's been 20 days so i rang today and they said that it was delivered on the 18 April and signed for by a person who i have never heard of, so someone has my tree.
i am not happy i was hoping to have it in the ground by now.
any way they said that they would refund me my money, but i want my apple tree, it was two different apples on one graft.
i am going to ring again tomorrow and see if they will send out another.
i am not happy.

[veggiechicken]

Has your replacement peach tree arrived Rita?

[FB.]

signed for by a person who i have never heard of, so someone has my tree.

One of your neighbours? Did you authorise for someone else to sign for it? Have you asked to see the tracking number of the shipment?

any way they said that they would refund me my money, but i want my apple tree, it was two different apples on one graft.

Maybe they never had such a tree. Maybe - being "bargains" - they were just whatever unwanted sub-standard stock they scrounged off nurseries who had a surplus. Maybe your tree wouldn't have been true to type; many cheap trees turn out not to be what they should have - I've even seen some labelled as M7 rootstock in a DIY chain recently, yet about half of them clearly had interstocks even with identical labels with those that didn't have interstocks, so would not have been "true to type".

i am going to ring again tomorrow and see if they will send out another.

Given your experience with them, I would prefer to take a refund.
In any case, it's getting extremely late in the season for bare-root trees - too late for most to be happy with being pulled out of the ground.
Normally bare-root ends at the end of March; this year being so cold kept the trees dormant for longer and allowed a few weeks extra time.
But most of my fruit trees are now opening their first leaves and blossoms - any such tree will die of dehydration very quickly if lifted bare-root. Worse still: the burst of spring root growth occurs just before the leaves open - any trees lifted now will lose all the soft roots which were set to power this season's growth and as a result could be slow to establish or even fail to establish.

If you must plant something now, my suggestion would be to buy a container-grown tree from a garden centre - but "bare-root" the tree in the minutes before planting by shaking off the compost from the rootball (some breakage of "pot-bound" circling roots won't do any harm).

[Veggielot]

Who delivered it? Have they provided any proof of who/when it was signed for?

I only ask because we had a similar problem last year, nothing to do with gardening. when we asked where it was we were told that we had received it and that the delivery company had confirmed that we had signed for it. When we pointed out that we were away when we were supposed to have signed for it they went back to their delivery company who all of a sudden didn't have proof of delivery.

[MarkHackwell]

It was probably yodel who delivered it -sigh- from what I have heard about them make sure it's not hidden somewhere

As for Garden Bargains I had exactly the same problem with some 'framberries' last year and they never turned up and yet they said they had been dispatched so I had to get my money back after a lot of ho-ha :/ just seems like a difficult company to deal with in my opinion.

Also be careful with the explanations they give you there part of the 'Ideal World Group' who I used before and one person will say one thing and another person will say another thing :/

[Alison]

If it is Yodel then I'm not remotely surprised. They lied to me several times (I know they lied because the story kept changing so whilst I didn't know which was the truth I knew it couldn't all be!) and if you google you'll find loads of problems. That said, it might not be them so I shouldn't tar them without knowing in this case. Personally though I'd agree with FB's comments, you keep a fruit tree for a long time and bargains often turn out not to be bargains at all.....

[rita1]

well so far my replacement peach tree has not arrived, my other peach tree the one that did not have hardly any roots is still alive but only just, had to cut it right back and i have noticed some buds on it lower down.
the apple tree they are replacing, i am going to risk it i know it is late for them but hopefully it will survive. my strawberry plants that went missing with my apple tree, they can't replace so they are refunding my money back.
i have found the girls on the phone really helpful, i had to fill in a form saying that my items never arrived, i hope they can trace where the tree and plants went too, as someone has got a free tree and strawberry plant and that is theft.

[salome2001]

Don't get me started on couriers. Last year I ordered myself a birthday present- a bit of a splurge, a Kenwood Major Titanium mixer... a good £600 worth from Amazon. The courier delivered it to the completely wrong address across the road- despite the shipping address on the label being correct. If my neighbour hadn't been honest/ not realised what it was worth, I never would have got it. VERY NOT HAPPY about that one.