On May 16, 2017, my wife placed an online order with NJ Plants and Trees (Burlington, NJ) for 19…read moreArborvitae Emerald Green trees, size 4-5 feet, @ $45 for a total of $913.78 with tax. The next day we sent payment by check, which was cashed on May 22. (The company does not take credit cards, so customers have no post-sale protection.)
On May 25, we received an email saying the trees would be delivered the following week. My wife emailed back to ask how much advance notice they give on deliveries (we are planting the trees ourselves and wanted to coordinate the removal of an existing hedge, the delivery of mulch and topsoil, labor time, etc.), but the company never replied.
The trees were not delivered the following week. I called three times, on June 1, 5, and 6, and left messages asking about the delivery date, but none of my calls were returned.
On June 7--more than 3 weeks after we placed our order and 1 week after the company said they would deliver--the trees showed up in our driveway with no advance notice.
The trees ranged in size from 46-49 inches, plus one at 55 inches. Almost all of them displayed significant patches of dead foliage on the outer and inner parts of the trees (see photos). Overall, the trees were at the low end of the advertised height or below it, and they were less healthy-looking than the Arborvitae Emerald Greens available at our local Home Depot, which are $10 cheaper each (i.e., we could have saved $190 and gotten bigger, healthier trees).
On June 9, I left another message asking the company to exchange our trees for healthier trees or to take them away and issue a refund. I added that I would be leaving an online review, good or bad, once the matter was settled.
Less than an hour later, I finally got my first callback from the company. At first I was glad for the call, but in the end, it only reinforced my impression of this company's incredibly poor customer service. "Frank" was hostile from the start. After assuring me of his expertise and bragging about the volume of business his company does, he said that all evergreens shed this time of year, that it was perfectly normal, and that the trees we received were fine. I said I was glad to hear it and, given that information, we would keep the trees and plant them. I also said that I had photographed the condition of the trees at the time of delivery, and that I would continue to document their progress and contact the company if there turned out to be a problem.
Frank got inexplicably defensive. He said he had photos too and that he had inspected the shipment when it went out. Then he said the company has "a legal team" that monitors all reviews "and they will file suit." I asked Frank why he was making veiled legal threats about a review I hadn't even written. Frank said, "Everybody's trying to hurt somebody with the computer these days." I assured him that I intended to present only the facts, which I laid out for him, and which he did not dispute.
But he nonetheless became increasingly belligerent. He kept pointing out that his delivery team had placed the trees in front of our garage instead of leaving them on the driveway out by the street, saying, "Wasn't that a nice place to leave them? Wasn't that nice of us?" I said that actually it would have been better if they hadn't blocked our garage and noted that we routinely receive shipments of various landscape and construction materials, and no one leaves their products at the foot of the driveway.
Frank seemed to be implying that I was ungrateful for the good service his company had provided, which I found ironic. At no point did Frank apologize for, or even acknowledge, the late delivery of the trees (which cost my wife and me a precious weekend of project time), nor did he apologize for his failure to return our calls or his failure to give us any advance notice of the delivery.
It's my impression that NJ Plants and Trees cares only about its reputation but does not care at all about customer service, which of course is how one builds a reputation. Even if the trees we purchased end up being healthy, we will obviously never do business with NJ Plants and Trees again.
Note: I will also be submitting this review on the company's website, but I doubt you will see it there, because they show only their 5-star reviews.