I rely on the Reddit community to help me steer clear of questionable businesses while encouraging my various hobbies, plants in this case. I wish I had consulted the kind folks here before ordering from FGMN Nursery in New Jersey. It would have saved me time, money, and headache.
SUMMARY: I ordered predatory mites on a Monday that were shipped 2nd day air on a Friday arriving dead on a Tuesday. When the replacement shipment appeared poised to also ship over the weekend, I asked if they could wait until Monday. The company canceled the replacement and sarcastically described my request as too much for their team. When I attempted to alert the owner to this snafu, she doubled down, engaged in similar condescension, failed to initiate a refund, and forbade me from future orders.
If you're considering FGMN Nursery for any reason especially as a cheaper alternative to Nature's Good Guys or Arbico Organics here's my recent experience.
Ordered N californicus sachets. Despite ordering on a Monday, they shipped via 2nd-day air on a Friday - I bet you can see where this is heading. The package sat over the weekend and arrived Tuesday: nearly five days in transit. All mites arrived dead and desiccated, confirmed under magnification.
I emailed customer service the same day and politely asked for a replacement under their guarantee. The rep, Mia, kindly agreed and generated a new label. By Wednesday evening, the replacement shipment still hadn't been received by UPS, and the timing looked set to repeat the original failure. I asked, delicately, whether the replacement would also sit over the weekend (since having this happen twice seemed like an odd move) and suggested shipping Monday instead if need be.
Within 30 minutes my replacement was canceled. The cancellation email characterized my logistics suggestion as a "personalized request" beyond their team's capacity to accommodate along with not so subtle sarcasm and defensiveness.
I wrote to the owner directly since the person who both shipped the first time and fielded my request were one in the same. She stood behind the rep, dismissed my use of magnification as inadequate (I have worked 3+ decades in biology) suggesting I couldn’t determine live mites with just a dissection scope because they “are only 0.5mm.” While I know the metric system is foreign to many Americans, you can see a half a millimeter with the naked eye and can demonstrate this to yourself by looking at a metric ruler. Moreover, the owner stated she would not have offered any replacement at all had it been up to her. She then banned me from future orders and claimed my refund had been processed when no such refund was initiated, leaving me to further prolong my agony trying to get them to initiate the refund.
Competitors charge for expedited shipping because 2nd-day air for live perishables only works when it actually takes two days. Defending a practice of shipping biologics on a Friday via 2nd day air is both wasteful and nonsensical. FGMN’s "free shipping" model offloads the cost onto the cargo. When the cargo died, they canceled the customer and washed their hands of responsibility. Truly one of the most shockingly adversarial customer service interactions I have ever had.