LONG wait for delivery. Dead plants received, all complaints ignored. AVOID this company! SCAMMERS!

It is said that the definition of a fool is someone who does not learn by his or her mistakes. It also says that a fool and his money are easily parted. I therefore have to put my hand up to being a fool. There have been a number times when I have done things and bought things without looking at the reviews, 3 different hotel stays instantly spring to mind, each one would have made Fawlty Towers look like the Ritz. Unfortunately, fool that I am, I did not look at the reviews for Garden Express before spending £124.93 on three very poor quality plants, oh dear!

I have three large empty ceramic pots and wanted to quickly (sic) fill them with some established, fairly mature plants before the end of the summer. Garden Express was offering £10 off orders. I spent some time doing a bit of research on their website (not looking at reviews) and was seduced by their description of the hard work of Chris Bonnett, the ‘company', their ethos and mission statement with phrases like:

‘… the business has become a force to be reckoned with in mail order Gardening'
‘…we now ship thousands of plants every week'
‘Everything we sell is guaranteed - we don't send out anything we would not be delighted to receive ourselves'
‘…we tell you exactly how large or small they are. We were fed up of ordering expensive plants and being sent spindly twigs'

Mitigation for making the decisions I did? I don't think so; I am old enough (but not wiser) to know better! The irony of these statements, for me personally, is brought into sharp focus when I consider the atrocious quality of the plants I received.
Here is part of the email I sent to Garden Express within hours of receiving my plants:

This is my first foray into ordering plants online and I am disappointed with the quality of the plants that I have been sent; there is little resemblance to the description on your website. I understand there have been issues due to Covid 19 and maybe to some extent the recent hot weather, but I feel that I have been sent the 'runts' of the 'carefully selected plants'. They are not of the standard I would select myself:
Hibiscus - Described as: Extra Large Tricolour 5 - 5.5 feet as you can see from the photos it is barely 4 feet 4 inches; I could have bought one this size for £29.99 from a different website! The plant does look healthy but some of the bark on the stem has been scraped off (photo) not sure if this will affect the plant.
Corkscrew Hazel - Described as: Fresh green foliage through out the year. The photos show that it is not very healthy, all the leaves are curled and yellowing some with brown edges. The pot was crumpled as it was forced in to the same box as the Korean lilac.
Dwarf Korean Lilac - Described as: with a bushy head on a stem... covered with buds and blooms in season, second part of the season being August - September. As you can see from the photos it is straggly with not a bud in sight.
I paid a lot of money for these 3 plants; more money than I have ever paid for three plants, which makes my disappointment even greater. Based on your descriptions I expected great plants that I would be able to put straight into 3 large pots. None of the plants came with any planting or care information.

I uploaded 10 photos to support my claims.
I received an email from Garden Express that essentially said

‘This ticket is now awaiting review from our Horticultural Manager'

Five working days later I emailed Garden Express to find out where I was with a resolution. No reply, in fact I have not heard anything since. I have emailed on numerous occasions, they have now blocked my email address. Nobody answers the one phone number I can find.

It was then I read the reviews, oh dear! 48% giving 1 star and such scathing (deservedly) comments you would not believe. I am not sure how this company is still trading. The comments I have read are real expressions of the misery this company is causing to so many people.

I don't hold out much hope for a resolution to my plight; or at least not anytime soon.

I have just seen this on the side panel of Trust Pilot feedback page:

Gardening Express is 194 out of 194 ranked companies in the category Garden centre on Trustpilot.

All of this makes an absolute mockery of the flowery (pun intended) descriptions on the their website.

Please don't be a fool like me and buy from this company. I would urge anybody who have had poor experiences with garden Express to complete a Money Saving Expert (MSE) Resolver form and if ever the BBC bring back Watchdog then contact them with your story as I will do.

NO PLANTS, NO COMMUNICATION
If I could give no stars I would...
Placed 2 x orders on 6/4/20 and 11/4/20.
They took money from credit card same dates.
Still no plants received 04/05/20.
I submitted a support ticket on 25/4/20 - no response whatsoever.
No contact number or email address available.
Absolutely shocking customer service.
I am now pursuing refunds.
It is frightening that they are still advertising, obviously still taking orders and therefore customers' money. They appear to be using the Covid-19 lock-down situation to their full advantage.
Absolutely shameful business practices.
I would NOT recommend purchasing anything from this company.
Update - 12/5/2020. Half of order arrived a couple of days ago. Majority of the plants (15 of 19 in total) were pretty dried out but I managed to resurrect them with some TLC. As of today - still no response to my enquiry ticket requesting an update or refund - and no update regarding the rest of my order which still shows as "processing" since 11/4/2020. I note that Gardening Express (sic) have the time and resources to make sure that Trustpilot reviews are updated/responded to - and have the time to "invite" positive reviews to keep the star ratings up. Those responsible would be better off attending to customer enquiries. I'm not changing my rating while I continue to receive this abysmal customer service. Still no response to repeated emails/ticket updates.
Update - 18/5/20 - Still no sign of 2nd order which remains as "processing" on the site. They have, however, managed to send me a request asking for a review - which I answered candidly (they don't do irony obviously) No way will they publish it. Still no response whatsoever to emails/ticket asking for any sort of update.
Update - 05/6/20 - apart from a generic email last week informing that orders made in April were being processed - still no update, order or refund. My order still shows as "processing". I now make that to be 55 days since order date. Ticket requests continue to be ignored. I'm running out of negatives for this mob...
Update - 12/6/20. Plants arrived today - 62 days later. Plants were in a terrible state and nothing like the advertised "Pair of Premium Quality Holly Trees Covered in Berries in Baskets" - trees dried out, no berries and wicker baskets broken to bits.
I don't have the energy to fight this mob any more. The plants should be saveable with some close attention.
Gardening Express obviously don't do irony as they included a £5 off £50 purchase voucher as an apology! They also included a bag of dried out Gladiolus bulbs with a pre-printed "thanks for your patience" sticker on them - which are now in the compost.
Trustpilot should allow for a NO STAR rating for companies like Gardening Express.

Do not use, plants dead.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

DO NOT BUY sent dead plants was told to send them photo which I did still waiting on replacement or refund(contacted 10th May)

This is totally a rogue trader which must be investigated by the UK authorities for its poor products, poor services and potential accounting fraud. For anyone who was a victim of this trader, you can have three ways to escalate the issue by reporting to authorities for investigation:

1) Action Fraud
Website: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud

2) Trading Standards of Essex County Council
Website: http://www.essex.gov.uk/Business-Partners/Trading-Standards/Pages/Contact-Trading-Standards.aspx

Email: *******@essex.gov.uk

3) Citizens Advice
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

If you search the owner of this company, Christopher Denis Bonnet, you can see he has 9 active directorships:
https://companycheck.co.uk/director/*******/MR-CHRISTOPHER-DENIS-BONNETT/summary

No one knows what is his purpose of registering so many different trading companies. Given the so many negative feedbacks for the way this company has operated, clearly there is suspicion of trading fraud.

In fact, I was also a victim of this trader. I placed an order of 3 flower plants on 6 May 2018 totalling £69.84. The delivery was delayed by a week. When it did arrive in the end I found the parcel only contained 2 plants and the third plant (rose) was missing. Among the 2 plants, 1 plant was very different from that described in the website: it came with a tiny 2 litre pot instead of 10 litre pot, and the price for this tiny plant was £24.95. No one can believe the original paid amount of £69.84 was exchanged only for these unacceptable items. So I decided to contact the seller for refund. Despite my hard effort, the telephone number provided was never working: instead the automated voice said their telephone has problem. Through due research, I then realised that telephone number was never going to work. This is supported by the evidence that so many customers over a long time period reported that they could not reach the seller via that telephone number. It seems that the seller intentionally keeps the telephone line faulty so that customer can never reach him. By the way, that telephone number is a special number which cost me 40p per minute when I called them. I then tried to email the trader for the refund, but I never received any response. In a nutshell, we are at this traders disposal and manipulated. Certainly we cannot tolerate this in the UK and must ask UK authorities to investigate this for the criminal offence of fraud. Indeed, I was shocked that so many customers were manipulated by this rogue trader.