Hello,
Anyone has any dealings with this place? I bought some cuttings last fall and was told the cuttings will be shipped out in February. It is now March I have emailed them but received no response. thanks!
There is considerable drama around this on the dedicated fig forums that you can kill a few hours reading. To keep it simple, no one has gotten cuttings and there is concern he won’t be able to fill some or all of the orders. Apparently some plants may be shipping soon, but as of yet no one has received anything that was supposed to be shipped in spring 2016. Good luck, reportedly he has been quick to give refunds if asked for.
@ampersand thx for your response. Wow, spring of 2016. That is terrible.
I will give till end of March for my cuttings. If not I would be wanting my refund and if he does not I will be reporting him to PayPal. I don’t know how someone can have a business like this.
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As I said, lots of drama. 
Thanks again so much for your input
They have over a 500 orders in trees alone to deal with just this spring. I would not expect to get an email response for that reason. The seller put no cap what so ever on anything for years so he got a shocking amount of orders and some people bought a surprising amount of trees each of them. That does not count the cutting sales. I am sure he’ll ship everything promised eventually. He’s doing way better than the doubters thought was possible with all the problems he had. Me I knew he’d not do as well as he thought, he may be a nursery man with a lot of experience yet I knew no one could do as well as he thought he could, and that he was probably underestimating how many trees would sell. Some varieties will take much longer than others too. The harder to root stuff he needs every cutting he can to just fill the tree orders for 2016, and 2017 before sending the cuttings.
[quote=“ampersand, post:2, topic:9744”]There is considerable drama around this on the dedicated fig forums that you can kill a few hours reading. To keep it simple, no one has gotten cuttings and there is concern he won’t be able to fill some or all of the orders. Apparently some plants may be shipping soon, but as of yet no one has received anything that was supposed to be shipped in spring 2016. Good luck, reportedly he has been quick to give refunds if asked for
[/quote]At least one of my orders will be shipping this week, yes 2016 order. Yes although I feel sure that some people on there complaining were just trolls. Some of what happened on there by people who claimed to have not bought from him seemed very suspicious to me and this day and age no foul play could surprise me, some people seem to need drama in order to survive.
Glad that you will be getting your order. I only bought cuttings. My order is a small one. Good to know that his business is legitimate. These day and age, it is very hard to know. I am sure many of you have heard of a company call GrowQuest. I never did order from him but have read about it online. thx
I placed an order for delivery this spring. Not yet seen anything, but I was under the impression shipping would commence before the end of March. Honestly I haven’t been concerned at all (though to be honest I don’t remember all of the varieties I chose, but I could look it up)
I will say the pictures on his site look great. I’ve actually got a list of more plants and cuttings I would like to order, but I’m waiting until the last order arrives before placing another.
Scott
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OK, thx so much for your reassurance
Yes since he’s so behind even I would not order anything from him just yet. Too many people already still ordering from him making it even harder for him to catch up.
Yes he’s legitimate and had great intentions, still does, what really annoys me is the people who see his progress and still spew dooms day scenarios, the most nasty person of them all deleted his account, so far the seller has sent out the right varieties and healthy trees.
Alan, I know you will defend James til the end, but at least be honest that he hasn’t shipped anything yet. Can’t know if they are healthy.
All the photos he’s sharing of his project they are healthy.
Plus i was referring to orders he sent out before the $7 trees as what he’s sent out already.
If this fellow is so far behind, why is he allowing more orders? I think telling people not to order is not where the responsibility lies. It lies with the vendor. If he is truly behind, and swamped with orders, it should be his responsibility to put a hold on new orders, until he can get himself caught up, and re-evaluate his stock. My concern is the (way) future orders he is allowing to be placed via his web site. I am sure he’s a nice fellow, and means well, but much can happen in this very lengthy time frame to prevent him from being able to fulfill all those future orders, thus necessitating a whole lot of refunds. Which may or may not happen.
I would say with this vendor, Caveat Emptor, and not based on anything personal, but more based on his sales methodology.
For those who have placed orders, I would address any concerns you might have directly with this vendor. And for those who might be tempted to place an order, I would say, be willing to spend money, and possibly not receive product, if this person is that buried in orders, yet has not put a hold on additional new orders.
Patty S.
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My last comment on the topic, then I’ll be done. I’ve spent too much trying to protect people already, but I think it’s important for people to know. The vendor purchased at least some of his cuttings and stock on eBay to propagate and sell. I know this because he bought from me.
Given his rapid propagation scheme, it is highly possible a mistake has been made (eBay is full of scammers and honest mistakes occur) and easily possible that varieties will NOT be true to type. He simply could not have grown the varieties out to fruit in this amount of time while also continuously taking cuttings/air layers.
I hope to be wrong, but until I am I remain highly suspicious. Too many unanswered questions, missed shipping dates, and fishy details. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
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Yes although if people know he’s far behind and order anyway they know they are taking a risk, he had a limit mentioned on his website yet no limit was set on the shopping cart and I doubt that he enforced the limit mentioned.
The main problems I have is his website was set up assuming that people had seen his forum posts describing it. Also the shopping cart had no cap offs what so ever. I have no idea how anyone can do as well as he is with the actual project I could not handle rooting even 150 trees a year, I am sure. He does have hired help though. He’s getting so many contacts about his projects and the orders people have made that he’s very slow at responding. If it were not for his updates on the project I’d be very worried about everyone’s order yet he keeps doing better than he needs to in order to finish the project. I would have never dared to take on a project like this.
The fighting got so bad on another forum that a lot of people who bought from him refused to read the thread any more to see the updates. It was becoming way to much reading most of it fighting, fighting started by people who bought nothing from him.
Yes although do you know everyone he was buying from? I know he bought lots of cuttings from Harvey, Harvey said so, he bought from you which is a great idea right? When I made an order it was obvious that James is very careful who he sources his cuttings from, he keeps track of who he sources from. He told me who sourced the trees I bought when the $7 sale was still going on, and he made it clear that he is very careful who he sources from. He was buying from ebay before the 2016 orders too.
As you know ebay is full of great cutting and tree sources as well, Harvey sells on there, driveway farmer sells on there, Rafed sells on there, clearly you do, Jon does, Bass does. I forget who they are yet there are college students who are a very trustworthy source selling on there, there is George that sells on there, even Herman still does from time to time to name a few. By the sounds of it Harvey hooked up up very good and said that he was willing to again this spring.
That logic doesn’t fly, because not everybody knows how far behind this guy is, and, you cannot assume people knew what his set limits were on every cultivar, and his web site doesn’t provide an “already ordered” count, so how could a customer know if limits had been reached? Again, NOT the customer’s responsibility in any way. That is all on the seller. He alone, needs to control the supply and demand. Otherwise, he is not going to be able to control his business. And that will just continue to fuel the bad will and poor behavior I see displayed on fig forums.
There is just some very specific behaviors on fig forums - all of them - that are unpleasant. I have exited all of them due to this particular behavior. I don’t fully grasp the entire dynamics of it, but it is very specific to the fig forums. I’ve not quite seen anything like it on any other forum I participate on, gardening or otherwise.
I hope this fellow is able to honor all the sales. I’m happy his business has taken off, but hop he can manage all the expectation appropriately. I have my doubts, as well.
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