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We
realize that occasionally, for some very valid reason, a plant/plants or
an entire order needs to be cancelled. We are happy to do this
however, once an order has been received and processed, there is a 10-20%
restocking/cancellation fee for canceling a plant(s) or the entire order.
This also applies to exchanging plants -- "please change my Campanula
to a Hosta", etc. We have to reprocess the entire order to do
that, reprinting all the paperwork. At this level, once the order is
'down' from the Internet and in our office, it's all done the old
fashioned way -- by hand.
This
may seem like a tough policy but here's why:
1.
We spend office time processing and printing the order, address labels,
shipping labels, special instruction labels if any -- about 15 minutes
per order. The order is then physically filed in the proper slot
according to ship week.
2.
We pay staff to pull the plants from a growing or Retail location to a
holding area for shipment.
3.
The staff member cleans the plants, removes any brown or unattractive
foliage, generally spruce's the plant up so it looks pretty, checks the
plant and it's roots to be sure it's perfect for you garden and often goes
ahead and adds soil to the bottom of the pot 'lift' it to the level of the
pot in preparation for shipping or tops the plant with sphagnum to keep it
from shipping during shipping.
4.
We fertilize if necessary.
5.
The plant(s) are often removed from the Retail Area because often those
are the prettiest, most fussed over plants. At that point, we lose
the opportunity to sell them to a Retail Customer.
6.
If by chance, your order, makes us 'sold out' of a plant, we then get on
the Internet and change the website which does take a bit of time.
Again, at that point, we lose the opportunity to sell the plant on the
Internet as well. You know how that goes. If you check a
website for something you want and it's sold out, you don't come back
repeatedly to see if it's magically reappeared because someone cancelled. You go
looking elsewhere.
7.
We spend a bit of time running the credit card.
8.
And finally and most importantly, we pay the credit card provider 2.9%
plus a transaction fee for processing
the credit card.
If
for some reason, you need to cancel your order for a plant, the reverse
happens:
1.
We have to issue a refund to your account which costs us 2.9% plus a
transaction fee and takes
staff time to do.
2.
We have to pay staff to get the canceled plant(s) and
return it to where it came from.
3.
We have to go back to the Internet and fix the website if the 'sold out'
plant is now available again.
4.
We have to go into our online and inhouse inventory software and add it back to inventory.
5.
We have to go into the accounting software, change the order and reprint
Office and Customer copies.
So,
we've paid the credit card company 5.8% total plus two transaction fees and, if close to shipping
time, paid a staff member
twice to move the plant around, twice to process and print/reprint the
order then the cancellation, twice to run the credit card and possibly
have lost the opportunity to
sell the plant to someone else.
This
doesn't happen often but it seems that when it does,
it's with a customer who makes multiple changes or from someone who
ordered very early in the season later shipment, had
our plant(s) tied up for an extended time because we guarantee that we'll hold
it. Then the customer sees it on sale somewhere and cancels their
order with us. We then have to cover processing and credit card
costs, staff costs and have often missed the best time to sell the plant.
Obviously
we have some flexibility and we not ogres! If the order has been
processed and the credit card run and the time frame isn't terribly long,
we adjust the cancellation/restocking fee to 10%. Or if the change is to switch to a different
plant(s) we can be much more flexible (and generally charge no fees unless
someone just repeatedly cancels and substitutes) because from the profit on that
replacement plant,
we can cover some of the cost of making the change. (We once had a
customer that started in January with a $300+ order, made 5 MAJOR changes/substitutions
over the next several months, adding and taking away plants, and kept
delaying sending the check for one 'good' reason or another and, at the
last possible minute, cancelled the entire order.) Unfortunately,
often it's the few customer's such as this who set the bar for a company's
policy.
If
it's been months that the plant has been unavailable to others and/or the
plants have actually physically been moved to new locations for shipping,
then we do charge the full 20% to cover ours costs.
We
realize that most customers have no idea was happens once they place an
order and felt that maybe knowing, in and of itself, might be
enlightening! In our experience, gardeners are just the nicest
of people and are, almost always, reasonable about things when they have
all the facts.
Thanks,
Debby
& Pete
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