Feefo, the gold standard of customer review platforms, has awarded us their Platinum Trusted Service Award (again, naturally)
Thank you very much to everyone who gave us a nice Feefo review. I should be giving you all the attention right now, you deserve it. I hope that your plants are settling in nicely. If anything goes wrong with them, please contact us, and we will do our best to fix it: terms and conditions apply, your mileage may vary.
The Platinum Trusted Service Award is effectively Feefo’s highest award: they only give their Exceptional Award to 8 businesses in total, worldwide, which doesn’t mean we aren’t trying for it!
So, in the last year, at time of writing, we
Got 322 service reviews, averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars
Got 496 product reviews, averaging 4.6 out of 5 stars
Got 17 bad service reviews, which means we stuffed up fewer than 1.5 orders per month. Four or five of those bad reviews were by people who did not contact us first and give us a chance to provide good service…
Delivered over 29,382 orders, which means a whopping 29,060 orders did not get a review, that’s 98.9%!
You will decide for yourself what that response rate means. For me, when I’m busy, I often fail to leave a positive review, especially if it was an order that simply went smoothly and required no interaction with the company’s support team. But when I have a bad experience, I will find the time to leave that bad review!
It’s invariably the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, so let’s have a look at our 3-star or worse reviews.
There are 17 bad service reviews, which I will share grouped by type of complaint, followed by an explanation, which is not the reply that we sent to the customer, it’s written specially for your edification and amusement.
Wherever humanly possible, I will take full responsibility for blaming the long-suffering courier companies that we use to deliver your plants.
Once an order goes out our door, it’s in the couriers’ hands, and all we can do is make it right when they squish it beyond recognition.
Ashridge Bad Reviews Review
We Can’t Fix Our Mistakes if You Don’t Contact Us!
Review: “Plants were not of the quality I expected. I was brought up in a strawberry field, My father grew over twenty acres at Tiptree so I know a LOT about strawberries. The roots were dried out, a setback for the plants.”
Explanation: This customer got in touch with us by email 3 weeks after their Elsanta strawberry plants were delivered. We replied to that email, they did not reply, but subsequently left a negative Feefo review. We would have fixed it on the spot if they had contacted us when they arrived, and we’re still happy to sort it out.
Review: “Poor customer service. No ability to speak directly to staff. Order was missing items and them when replacements sent they were not of the same size as supposed to be.”
Explanation: Missing plants is always a weird one: how can anyone prove that plants were missing? We have a triple check process at our end, using two people, to ensure we get the order right, so we just have to trust people when they say plants were missing. We sent replacements immediately, then heard nothing from the customer until they gave use this bad review. We’ve fixed our phones now, see below.
Review: Plants in poor condition, roses have dead black branch ends, two branches only. No answers on email. Very sad, not recommend
Explanation: We dropped the ball on this one, those roses should not have been sent out. We’ll take their word for it that they emailed us, but it didn’t appear to be through our contact form: it’s likely that they replied to a “do not reply” notification email.
Hapless Herbs
Review: “Some of the plants I received were very poor quality sadly, they did respond & refund me, so customer service is fairly good, just a shame to send out plants that are poor quality/half dead in the first place.”
Explanation: This was an order of small, fragile herb plants in late June, when the weather was hot. The couriers did not deliver them within 24 hours as they should have, so the sensitive plants were pretty sad looking on arrival.
Top tip: If you have a semi-wilted, soft plant like this cilantro, you can usually rapidly revive it by submerging the whole plant in a bucket of cool but not cold rainwater for an hour or two. Then hang it upside down while it dries, which reduces stress on the stems, and finally trim off the tired tips to reduce the height and weight a little, and encourage bushy regrowth.
Review: “Lemon Verbena: I bought 2 plants. One I gave to my friend. The other I kept. Both ended up with brown spots, which I used an app to confirm as diseased. I’ve tried to remove all the bad bits, but it’s not a big plant so there is pretty much nothing left. My friend has the same result. I’ve written to Ashridge. They want photos of the location etc. I had sent a pic of my plant, but it’s so annoying to have to submit everything. I’ve ordered plants online from other companies and never had a problem. I’d just like my money back”
Explanation: Our replacement guarantee T’s & C’s are clear about us needing a photo of the plants. This was the only report we had all year about disease on Lemon Verbena. One other person left a review and was happy with them.
We have stopped selling small herb plants.
Perennial Problems
Review: “Lychnis coronaria Alba: Plants arrived very root bound and with yellow leaves. They looked unpromising. However, after three weeks they are doing fine and look healthy I know there was a guarantee and I could have returned them, but I really wanted these particulars plants this summer.”
Explanation: Perennial plants suffer when the couriers don’t deliver them within 24 hours in hot summer weather, that’s why the leaves looked sad. Being root bound is not great for woody plants, but it’s much less of an issue for herbaceous plants, especially vigorous, short-lived ones like Lychnis. Their roots grow like Billy-O, so they fill their nursery pots before the season is even halfway done. Repotting them twice a year would be pointless and expensive.
Review: “The plants were entirely pot-bound. The response was inadequate, and I am unlikely to use Ashridge again.”
Explanation: The plants on the left and in the middle are in the early stages of being pot bound, but the plant on the right is great: filling the pot without being pot-bound at all, loads of dark soil clearly visible down to the bottom. In all three cases, the roots are healthy as can be, because the plants were properly watered and fed on the nursery. They just need teasing out or slicing, and this level of pot-bound is typical for vigorous perennials bought in garden centres: they go from not filling the pot to being slightly pot-bound in a matter of weeks. For those reasons, we did not refund this customer, but we should have sent them a gift voucher.
Being pot-bound is much worse for woody plants than it is for herbaceous plants like these. A couple of minutes work to tease them out, maybe a little slicing as shown in the video below, and they will grow away beautifully.
We have simplified our range of herbaceous perennials to ensure higher quality.
Rose of Regret
Review: “The purchase price was refunded as they recognized and apologized for the [climbing rose] being dead/dying on delivery.”
Explanation 5: The rose was damaged in transit, and we refunded right them away.
Delayed Delivery
Review: “Delivery far too slow. Plants were mostly dead”
Explanation 6: The three people who reviewed oak, and five who reviewed hawthorn saplings were happy with their plants. We deliver many thousands of both of those plants, with no complaints, but however they died, they were covered by our bareroot guarantee. This customer did not contact us before leaving a review.
Review: “These [sweet pea] seeds are far too late for sowing this year.”
Explanation 7: This customer ordered their seeds on the last day of May, and we emailed them right away to let them know that they would be despatched within 10 days. They chose not to cancel the order, so there was nothing we could have done. The RHS says “Sow sweet peas in pots of seed compost in autumn or spring then plant them out in April, or sow them directly into the soil in April”, so ordering them at the end of May was leaving it late anyway.
Review: “Hidcote Lavender: Too expensive for the size and slow delivery!”
Explanation 8: This customer decided to buy that size Lavender at that price, so no comment there. The complaint about the delivery time is valid: a handful of deliveries take much longer than we all would like. On this occasion, the Lavender plant about to be sent out failed final inspection. It was the last one on the nursery, so we scrambled to find a replacement. We should have communicated better with this customer to explain the delay, giving them the opportunity to remove the Lavender from their order.
We have since updated our Customer Service message system to prevent this lack of clarity
Phone Woes
Our phones lines need to “talk” to our computer system, which went through several upgrades last year, which broke the phones each time. We were fuming about how long it took to sort everything out, and we weren’t alone.
Review: “Generally, the service with Ashridge Trees is relatively good. Sadly, you are not able to contact them by phone any more to discuss issues – advice. The only means of contact is via email. This is a big step backwards in customer service”
Explanation: Couldn’t agree more. We were at the mercy of the merciless machine elves, and apologise to everyone who was inconvenienced.
The phone lines are back on for sales calls, and support calls on orders that have already been placed online.
Damaged Dahlias & Bashed Bulbs
Review: “Bora Bora Dahlias: The main shoot was broken off when the dahlia tubers arrived, I have planted but, not sure if it will grow okay.”
Explanation: We send out about 10,000 dahlia tubers each year, and this was the only report of one that got smashed in transit: hi five our couriers, we love you!
Top tip: It’s the eye of the dahlia tuber that matters. If the body of the tuber snaps off, that will slow it down, but plant the eye as normal and it will grow.
Review: “Winter Aconites: Plants arrived broken and useless as the packaging was so poor they didn’t stand a chance. To be fair Ashridge did refund the full amount once I complained”
Explanation: This was one of only two bulb orders, out of several thousand, that went wrong. We can’t blame the couriers for this one: we didn’t pack the bulbs properly. By the time this review came in, the packer responsible had already quit.
Review: “The snowdrops arrived dead, even though their emails / website said the delivery would be okay out of water / not planted for a number of days. So this was very disappointing.”
Explanation: This customer did not contact us when they received their order. This was our second and final negative review for our bulbs in the green last year.
Tree Tragedy
Review: “I bought 4 trees 1 year ago, the largest size to give them a good start. Sadly, out of the 4 trees planted in a row, 3 of them are now dead…”
Explanation: Even the best gardeners don’t have a 100% success rate, there are all sorts of reasons why trees fail despite the best care. This customer received healthy, living trees from us, so whatever killed them wasn’t on us. It is unfortunate that they were under a misapprehension: we state repeatedly on our website that smaller trees have the best establishment rates. The larger a tree is when one transplants it, the more attentive care it needs.
Sweet Pea Suffocation
Review: “The website said that plug plants would be packed to last for ten days, but whether the Courier kept them longer or not I don’t know, but I came to plant them three days after delivery and more than half the plugs were dried out and yellowed and are not progressing as well as they should.”
Explanation: We are guilty as charged for misleading this person. They received a confirmation email that contained advice about receiving dormant bareroot plants in Winter, which can indeed be left in their packaging for 10 days, unlike growing seedlings, which can’t. That distinction is obvious to us professional plant growers, but clearly needed to be clearer! Everyone else who reviewed them was happy with their sweet pea plugs.
We have updated the advice on our website & emails to clarify & stress that you must unpack your seedlings on arrival, and give them light and water if planting will be delayed
Bareroot Plant Bemusement
Review: “Looked dead on arrival..and still no signs of life?”
Explanation: Bareroot plants arrive with no leaves on them, and typically take much longer to come into leaf than other plants of the same species that are established in the area. That’s just how they are naturally. This customer did not contact us before leaving a review. Everyone else who left a review was happy with our Green Beech hedging.
Define “Standard Tree”…
Review: “Service good. Very poor product not a standard tree branches come from the bottom nothing at the top”
Explanation: This was due to teething problems with our new website: the sizes were labelled correctly in our database, but the price grid that customers saw was squashing some text into the wrong lines when viewed on certain mobiles, or when zoomed in on a desktop monitor.
This was a temporary problem with our website that only affected a handful of visitors, and has been fixed.
Review: “I ordered a 2.5 -3m tree and got one over 6 metres tall. Had to cut half of the tee off so all branches lost.”
Explanation: The largest size trees that we sell measured by height are 2m-2.5m. This customer bought a standard size Scarlet Willow tree and imagined it would be 2.5 -3m tall, but we did not advertise it as such. Standard trees are measured by their girth, not their height, and we say on our website that their height can vary a lot between species. But that aside, this complaint is illogical, captain. If they wanted to grow a normal, full size willow tree, then they got more than they thought they paid for. If they wanted to pollarded their willow, then they were going to prune it at that sort of height anyway (and still got more than they thought they paid for).
We have no idea why they had to prune it if they didn’t want to prune it in the first place.
Recap: what we are now doing differently to improve
We have already:
Stopped selling the most fragile herb plants
Simplified our range of herbaceous perennials to ensure higher quality
Adjusted our Customer Service message system to deal with orders where we run out of stock due to the last remaining plants failing inspection
Improved advice on the website & in emails for seedling plug plants
