what do you think?

[Renegayde]

I have decided I will keep them since I have been unable to find any Paph Grassau for sale anywhere else......as far as feedback since I am keeping them and they did offer to refund all my money if I sent them back.....I will not leave negative feedback....though I will leave neutrel feedback and just move on....I guess even when dealing with a vendor with very high feedback and one who says they are a pillar of the e-bay community you still have to watch out....lesson learned...as far as the shipping what you run into is ppl charging shipping and HANDLING so the excuse is of course the excess you pay is the handling charge....I have bought lots of plants off of e-bay and I pay very close attention to the shipping charges and determine whether the plant is worth the cost after winning with the shipping charges added in....there have been several auctions I have backed away from because the combined shipping charges are way to much....though sometimes what is advertised as the combined shipping is much less when the seller sends the actual invoice....case in point Orchids of Los Osos.....I recently won 5 of their auctions on e-bay and the advertised combined shipping was going to be I believe between $23-$25....when they actually invoiced me the shipping was only $10 so there are some vendors out there who charge acutal shipping charges and not inflated shipping charges.

Todd

 

[goldenrose]

Good choice Todd! Candace pretty much wraps it up - leave feedback regarding outrageous shipping costs, they also have a question in regards of how the item was portrayed, so you could rate accordingly.

 

[Renegayde]

You know I was just thinking about this....on e-bay we all insist on seeing a pic of the plant we are buying but when we buy from vendors we seldom if ever see a pic of the plant and usually trust the vendor to be honest and upfront about what they are selling us......sort of a double standard LOL

Todd

 

[Candace]

Orchid vendors have usually proven themselves(or not). Any crack-pot with a computer can sell their crap on ebay...and the old feedback system made it easy for retaliation over negative complaints. I suspect the newer feedback is more accurate.

 

[gonewild]

You know I was just thinking about this....on e-bay we all insist on seeing a pic of the plant we are buying but when we buy from vendors we seldom if ever see a pic of the plant and usually trust the vendor to be honest and upfront about what they are selling us......sort of a double standard LOL

Todd

I agree with you but there is a big BUT to consider.....

One thing to remember is the cost of the photo. It takes time to photograph the plant. It takes time to remember which photo belongs to which plant when the listing is being created. It takes time to get the photo from the camera to the ebay listing. Ebay charges an additional fee to use more than one picture. In reality it probably consumes about $5 wort of time to show a photo in a listing. If a grower (or seller) can use one photo as a representative to sell a group of plants one at a time the cost is averaged out and is OK.
BUT Sell a single plant for $5 on Ebay and you start out loosing money on just the time it took to make the photo.

How much do you suppose the plants cost the seller? At least $2 even if the grower started with a flask. If this grower bought the plants from Oak Hills he most likely paid a lot more?
Ebay and Paypal fees amount to about 12% of a sale assuming everything you list sells. (And if you sold a plant for $1.00 that is less than the ebay fees)
It takes time to deal with buyers, collect payment, create invoices and prepare the plant for shipment. Then it takes time to pack the plant. ( At least another couple dollars even to do a crappy job). Packing materials cost money also and can easily run $1 per plant.

Now add in the unhappy buyer that wanted something in a larger size and wants his money back. Or just the buyer who is a crook and habitually gets things for free under the threat of negative feedback. And I assure you there are more bad buyers than there are bad sellers.

Keeping all this in mind it should be easy to see why sellers try to make a few dollars on the shipping side. Often that is all the profit there is and often it is not even profit. Any plant (except tiny seedlings) that sells for less than $10 is a complete loss to the seller.

It costs someone a lot of money to raise orchids to blooming size. Even the huge growers like Matsui get more than $5 for their plants wholesale.

In my opinion buyers are expecting more than serious growers can sustain. As such one day soon there will be no more true commercial growers to provide us with plants. But that will be good because there will spring up a lot of small backyard growers to provide the (small) new hybrids we will be eager to pay $100 to get into our collections. When that day comes we can reflect on those two great plants Todd got for only $15 each. Those were the days!

Do you like to fish? How many times have you gone fishing and caught only a couple fingerling perch? I bet you still remember those days? I bet you went expecting to to catch a couple big uns? I bet you still enjoyed the day? In concept of acquisition how exactly do the two fingerling paphs differ from the two small seedling perch? I bet that fishing trip cost you more than $30?

Enjoy your two new plants and be thankful they have not flowered yet because now you get to be the first to see them.

 

[gonewild]

Orchid vendors have usually proven themselves(or not). Any crack-pot with a computer can sell their crap on ebay...and the old feedback system made it easy for retaliation over negative complaints. I suspect the newer feedback is more accurate.

Not really.

All one seller has to do is buy a few cheap plants from his competitor and that gives him the opportunity to leave negative feedback. A few negs and the sellers rep is down the tubes.

How is this more accurate? Now there is no control over rouge buyers.
No checks and balances anymore.

 

[Renegayde]

Lance

perhaps I am misunderstanding you and perhaps ppl have misunderstood my complaint with this seller.....I am in no way complaining about what I paid for these plants.....my complaint is that I felt they were sort of misadvertised.....but as far as the price goes on these.....I am not the one that set the price at $5.......the seller started these at 99 cents so I guess thats all they felt like they were worth? or they assumed that starting them cheap would get lots of bids and they would end up getting more bids and the price would be higher....I realize it takes lots of $$ to raise orchids and it is hard to recoup the costs.....however don't you think the seller has a obligation to portray their product accurately and responsibly? If the seller chooses to sell plants cheap but advertises them as multi growth plants does that mean I should accept anything they send me just because they are selling them cheap and it costs lots of money to raise them? as far as the shipping charges go I knew upfront what the charges were going to be on these and I was willing to pay that......figuring that flat rate on these was going to be around 7.50-9.50<I had looked it up beforehand> so I knew they were charging me $12-$15 for handling in this case...a little steep but since I was getting a good deal on some large multi growth plants I was willing to pay it.......again my disappointment was in the fact that I felt the plants were misrepresented and perhaps that is my ignorance since I have only been growing a few years and throught multi growth large plants were going to be 3-5 growths.

reading your post you make it sound like we should take whatever a seller is willing to send us and just be quiet about it....but perhaps I am misunderstanding you....again they set the price so to speak on these not me so price is not the issue here the question I was asking of everyone at the start was basically what would you expect if some one said they were sending you large multi growth plants?......not.....do you think I got my moneys worth?

Todd

 

[gonewild]

Todd,

I'm not suggesting that you should accept misrepresentation as OK.
It never is. I was not even disagreeing with your view of the transaction.
Costs were mentioned trough out the thread and so was the requirement of having pictures or else not buying. I just wanted to point out some of the reasons buyers might consider giving sellers a little leeway when a problem or misunderstanding arises.

You gave the seller plenty of opportunity to satisfy you. They did not give you what you paid for. They charged you for professional packing and gave you a poor job. In all reality they know most buyers will not bother to return the plants, so they win. They deserve a negative feedback for the position they put you in.

Now for the size of the plants? I think they are large multi growth seedlings. When I see a plant described as a seedling I assume it has not flowered before. Once a plant flowers it becomes a mature plant and I would not call it a seedling. If the description said they were seedlings then it was fairly accurate. If the description said they were previously flowered and they are not then they mis-represented the plants. If they had previously flowered you would see an old spike in the growth.

I agree with you, the seller is wrong, obviously, because the buyer in not happy.

 

[Renegayde]

Lance sorry I misunderstood you.....and as far as pics go that is sort of what I was trying to point out in my comment E-bay sellers.....every one will say do not buy from them if there is no pic.....I understand that reasoning especially if they are a new seller....but when I purchase off of a vendors website I seldom see pics of the plants I am buying......I have to trust the vendor to send me what they are advertising.....the plants in question were listed as "Paph grassau 5" pots Large Multi growth Orchid Species" and "These are nice sized multi growth plants. Most have bloomed before and will bloom again their next cycle. They are sequential bloomers so will have a few flowers at a time. " these are direct quotes from the listing....LOL I have avoided putting a link to the auction as I do not want to ppl to avoid the seller if indeed this is all just my misunderstanding of the wording "multi-growth".......I did look them up on the Daves Garden<?> website after Candace posted the link in another thread for JK.....and on that website they had 9 posts 4 Positive 2 Neutral and 3 Negative.....would I have still bought these plants had I seen that....yes......would I have still bought these plants if they had been listed ast 2 growth plants with pics of the actual plants....yes.......do I feel like the plants I received are worth the $16 each they cost me.....yes......my orginal question like I said before was.....would you consider a 2 growth plant to be a multi growth plant......LOL I had avoided putting in the orginal post how much I paid for them because ppl automatically start saying....they were worth the money you paid for them....or you got what you paid for......thats not the issue or what I was questioning to begin with

Todd

 

[NYEric]

I stopped reading about 6 posts up - too many words!