Renaissancefarms.org Buyer Beware

General Gardening
#1

I want to start by saying that I have ordered several times from Renaissancefarms.org through the years and had great experiences in the past. However, in the last year or so something has gone horribly wrong there. I had recommended RF to quite a few people through the years because of the huge selection, good prices, and real life photos of tomatoes on a kitchen plate that hadn’t been photo shopped.

I ordered in February this year, which is way later than I normally do. Since I had never had any problems, I just ordered my order and went on. After a few weeks, my order status changed from payment pending to processing, and my PayPal was charged. Fast forward over a month and a half, and my order is still “processing.” Any attempt at communication has went unanswered. I looked around online and apparently for just over the last year there has been a slough of customers that haven’t ever received their orders, received empty packets, or were delayed for an unreasonable amount of time at best. Most of these were customers like me that had happily done business there in the past. RF’s most recent Facebook post was in '21, and it has become the unofficial complaint thread for customers that have had bad experiences: Redirecting...

Someone on Reddit also started a thread because of their bad experience: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/16we52w/is_renaissance_farms_some_sort_of_scam_now/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjO4YO1kcqFAxWjg4kEHbx3Aq0QFnoECAAQAg&usg=AOvVaw2YI6x_E2dliX2kI90tqQga

It is really sad to see this happen. I’ve been rooting for Curtis, the owner, ever since I first ordered from him. He seems like a guy that just loves tomatoes and was running a small mom and pop shop to help others experience that for themselves. He always provided more seeds than the minimum you ordered, and he always included a free packet of an interesting variety. They were always true to type and germinated well. There were a few comments on the FB post that said Curtis had been having health issues, but that doesn’t explain the complaints of empty seed packets and no one answering the phone, especially after there was a claim that some reliable help was being brought on to help get orders out the door on time. It’s hard to see Curtis flipping a switch from good products and service to flat out scamming people, so I don’t know what’s going on. What I do know for sure is that this place is no longer safe to order from. I hope if Curtis is still alive that he is able to salvage the business and return it back to what it used to be.

3 Likes
#2

Thanks for sharing an update.

When i was working at a healthcare clinic, I also had a job of stocking books, and other items for sale. I found someone who was also a mom and pop type business, with a very good history. However, he died and left the business to his son and daughter in law, who were not as passionate. They took the company credit card money, but didn’t send things on time, and when I finally got ahold of them and the woman’s excuses, I never did get some items. I let others know a warning to not buy from them too after that.

It is sad but it is how things are. A passionate ethical person who isn’t in it for riches will eventually no longer be the person in control of a product, and the new management will not be the same.

3 Likes
#3

I also ordered from them this year and was disappointed in the results. My seeds came, after about a month, but the germination was pretty terrible. I think I finally wound up with about 30% germination, but some seeds took over a month to germinate. Sorry to hear your didn’t even arrive.

After germination was seeming poor and finding some poor comments on Reddit, I posted on Tomato Junction to see what others were finding. Unfortunately the guy who runs it seems to have had some health problems (or maybe a friend or family member did) and nothing has ever been the same since. They had previously had a pretty good reputation.

If the seeds turn out at least true to type I’ll be happy with that since I was ordering to replace a few varieties I had earlier but had run out of saved seed without replenishing. But I’ll still never order from there again.

Delectation of Tomatoes was suggested on Tomato Junction as a better source for most of the varieties Rennaissance might have offered.

2 Likes