My experience of GE not good 13 May – Lockdown luckily with a small garden, decided to order plants in the nice – browse some sites and find a month delivery times, but then find GE, only 3-5 days, in very exceptional circs 10-15 days. Ok, looks good, I can wait 15 days if I absolutely have to but maybe it will only be 3 and I’ll be lucky. 14th May - £97 taken from my credit card. 15th May – Get an automated email saying delivery times are extended – it may be 2-4 weeks now. That’s too long, I decide to cancel. Go onto my order, cancel button removed, can’t cancel. Look for a phone number, doesn’t exist, look for an address to see if they are local, postcode only, seems to be the middle of an empty field in Essex. Can’t see an email. Bit annoyed really. 16th May – decide to browse reviews of GE – OH MY GOSH! Boy should I have read them before. Seems people are waiting 2 months, no I’m not waiting that long. I try and contact them again, find the owner’s name, also find he is due to be on Radio 4 to answer questions about bad service, also find he owns another nursery as well as the online only one somewhere in Essex, and I read an itnerview saying as a garden centre owner thinks they should stay closed during lockdown for everybody’s safety – putting safety over profits and all that – doesn’t mention he also has an online version. 17th May – still angry. Read more reviews. One directs me to Companies House, where I see the registered address is a snooker in some town in Essex. The reviewer also gives the owners home address, which I won’t give here as that’s totally inappropriate and harassing, but it’s no small pad, let me tell you. 18th May – I go onto their site again, ticket system in operation, the only way you can contact them. I raise a ticket saying, politely, as you have changed your delivery terms since I ordered and blocked the refund option on my order, please would you cancel it at your end and refund me. No answer beyond the automated email that I’ve already got 19th May – a real reply from a real person, but all they’ve done is cut and pasted one of the FAQs about not getting a refund after 24 hours, no answer to my other questions about why they took the money when they knew they couldn’t deliver. I was polite still, I said as the terms had been changed it was an idea to, at that point, offer customers an option – continue waiting or have a refund. That may stop some of the angry reviews and bring a few people back on board, give them a choice, a fair one, and they may appreciate it. May even have been willing to wait if you gave them a choice. No response. 20th May – no response 21st May – no response 22nd May – no response 23rd May – no response Are you getting the idea?? I keep writing, getting more and more angry. It’s the lack of communication more than anything. 17th June – FIVE weeks, multiple unanswered messages, no cancellation, no plants, by now I’ve got steam coming out of my ears, five weeks is a perfectly reasonably time to give them when it was originally 3-5 days. I call my bank and ask them to process a refund based on non-delivery after 30 days, a perfectly legal thing for me to do and the bank confirmed that. I should get my money in a month. I post a message on as many review sites as I can find as that is the only way to vent my frustration, I don’t like to do it, but I feel they forced me by their ‘hands over hears singing’ approach to this. But there are some good reviews, not nearly as many, but they all have the ‘invited’ stamp on them, seemingly they are prompted by GE to write, sounds a bit strange.. But maybe some people do get their plants and they alive, I’d like to think so. But not me… I’m still furious 18th June – I add another note to my unanswered and now very angry tickets, saying I have started the process of a refund via my bank for non delivery. I copy them the confirmation from Barclays. Lo and behold a few hours later I get a message saying it’s too late to cancel now, the plants are being packed. I see similar has happened to other customers when I read the reviews. No response until evidence of money being refunded. I reply to say sorry too late, I’ve already contacted my bank and I cancelled my order in writing 4 weeks ago via the ticket system as that is the only method you offer. If you choose not to read the messages when they are the only way we can contact you, that’s your choice. I say if they put out my delivery I will refuse it. 19th – No reply but get an automated email saying ‘good news! Your delivery is on it’s way!’. The reference they give for tracking doesn’t work, so I can’t do anything to stop it. However I find the delivery company number and talk to them, they find my order and say it is only at their central unit not far from Essex and they can return it to sender. I send a final message to GE to say, refund underway, delivery cancelled, I never want to hear from you again. 20th – tomorrow, I am looking forward to going to my lovely little garden centre to buy some beautiful plants, 15 mins away, owned genuinely by a local, and I will have them the same day. Then I am going to put this GE experience well behind me and learn from it, next time I will check reviews before I order! I feel so bad about the companies that were honest about their delivery times, as I didn’t buy with them, as I was fed the lies from GE, more fool me. Please don’t let this happen to you