Rosa, yes, those online reviews are easy at times to see through the copy and paste fake ones. My worst mail orders nightmares were of Canadian dahlias received as rotted compost, the company claiming to have sent out fresh viable tubers, lol. My imports of years long ago were not always successful, roses from Kordes were simply tossed bareroot into a box without even so much as any plastic wrapping, dry as toast upon arrival, Kordes did kindly replace though! Caddick's Clematis, same thing, bareroots without any moist packing material, all roots brittle dry as spaghetti! And, a UK chap had exported to me clematis being received fine and well .... but, unfortunately, my bank draft payment sat upon his desk for an entire year and had expired, he requested repayment, though that would have meant me paying twice for the plants. Fisk's was the best experience, all 33 big husky clematis plants packaged with care to be received in excellent condition! Nowadays, I no longer import, well cause almost no one exports!

There is a large element of trust on both sides of any online transaction. I ordered some undyed yarn recently and had to contact the vendors to tell them that the order was incomplete. Obviously, they have to hope I am not just trying to get something for nothing. I am always a bit amazed that this method of commerce has proven so successful as clearly, there must be an innate honesty on both sides which allows mail order to flourish.

I certainly would not wish to be in the plant mail order business with all issues of quality and postal transit lag, weather and inept gardeners. Where as, in store nursery shopping, the seller has pulse upon product leaving the premise and its demise very often due to customer neglect. My ears at times overhearing folks seeking reimbursement of perished items and exiting in a huff when credit not granted as they wish.

Yes, a bit awkward when parcel shipments are incomplete, a dahlia order arrived short of several tubers stated to be within, no gaps in the packaging where they could have slipped out, just inattention upon seller, they did though credit my card.

Since you posted this, Canadian Tree Nursery ads are showing up on Facebook and people are falling for the pretty pictures and placing orders. i tried to warn them, but i didn’t suceed.

North, well, if folks of Facebook go and ignore the BBB info, they then can only blame themselves! The Mountain Edge Nursery / Canadian Tree Nursery advertisement first started showing a few weeks ago upon my Microsoft home page, certainly is not a good thing for the eager and unsuspecting!

I posted about this on another thread, but yes, I'm thinking this is all part of the "middle dealer" syndrome we are seeing a lot of online. As long as you can build a website with pretty photos you can do this. Buyer beware!

Here's some comments from Reddit:

"I am one of the several hundred Canadian customers who have been ripped off by Mountain Edge Nursery aka Canadian Tree Nursery as their website shows. A lot of customers have contacted their credit card company, supplied information such as confirmation of order placed and date of payment. As far as I know, quite a few have had the payment reversed. There is talk of a class action lawsuit being launched. As of today’s date, I have not heard that that action has been started."

"They are a self aware kind of evil too. On their business google reviews someone called them con artists and a fraud but accidentally gave them a 5 star review and the owners replied with "Thanks for the 5 star review haha! Looks great for our stats."

Yeah, it’s a scam big time. One of the big indicators is when they don’t have or provide a physical address. I learned some lessons early on not to be suckered in by the pretty photos.

I just saw on another forum, how someone was complaining of being scammed on the weekend by this outfit. Of course, they didn’t read any reviews before sending off their money and only checked them out after the fact. So please folks do your checks! And as a reminder, if something sounds too good to be true - it usually is.

"if something sounds too good to be true - it usually is." .... isn't that the sad case in life, so many scams out there! I learned at a very young age, I pleaded with my mother that she p-l-e-a-s-e order me up some flower bulbs from a flashy catalogue, the place claiming top sized bulbs and yet at such an inexpensive price! Mom was leery and warned I'd probably end up being disappointed, sure enough those glad bulbs and whatnot weren't much larger than a nickel or dime, and in my disappointment, I never even did plant the things, lol. Oh, the place was the notorious Rockwood Gardens, was a quick and early learning lesson for me.

Oh yes, I've had a few lessons along the way as well. Back when I was a teen and into collecting records - there was an outfit selling amazing collectible records at wonderful prices. They had huge full-page ads advertising in all the collecting magazines. Someone with big ads must be legit, right? I merrily sent my $100 money order along the way (no PayPal or online payment those days), waited a few weeks, and promptly got nothing back. I called them, and they said they had proof that everything was sent. Finally revealed my shame to mom - she said, why don't we just drive out to the place where you sent the money (it was in Mississauga, which was actually only a short distance from where we lived). So we get to this place - which was some a rental home that looked like it had been recently abandoned and they had all these labeled and empty UPS mailers just thrown in the overflowing garbage bins, along with the many envelopes of the folks who had mailed in their money orders - I guess the scam was they took the tracking on the labels as their "proof" of delivery when people first started to call and complain. Before they took the money and ran. My young and naive mind I was so shocked that there were scammers like this out there. My mom never made me feel ashamed for my foolish actions, she was very comforting - thankful for that. Later on I met someone who worked in the music industry and she said that was a big scam that even the record companies got aware of, and MANY, young and old, were stolen from.

LaLennoxa, good on you for the detective follow up work! Just too bad all too many scum scammers are allowed to get away scot free, and in the case of Mountain Edge Nursery pulling it off over the long term! I don't do a ton of online purchases and always await anxiously when dealing with a company unfamiliar to me. I once had a large seed order go astray in the mail, the seed company claiming I had received it to my Edmonton address, I told them I do NOT live in Edmonton!! ... I was promptly reissued the order. :)