Piping Hot: I’ve Been Blacklisted

I’m not one to spill my tea unless there is a very good reason. Well, now I have one. Buckle up, kids, I’m about to rock your socks off with this one. Pictures as proof because mama didn’t raise no liar.

On Friday, February 5th, I placed an order with Aroid Greenhouses for a Variegated Anthurium Vittarifolium. Excited is an understatement.

As you can see, in my excitement, I forgot to order a heat pack! A major no-no when having plants shipped to chilly Oregon. I had ordered a Paraiso Verde from them previously that arrived dead due to my not including a heat pack. They were more than generous and offered me 50% of the plant’s cost back in store credit, and I was grateful. So this time, I immediately emailed them to add a heat pack!

Their customer service responsiveness was immediate and very helpful! I was told to add a heat pack and select the local pick up shipping option and the heat pack would be added to my plant. COOL!

Until I realized…. suddenly the money was back in my account and my order says “Cancelled” when I check the status. Weird, but maybe there was a mishap and they cancelled my order instead of making a note about the heat pack being added.

I got no response for a while and figured they were busy and couldn’t answer me right away, but I know how hot their plants are and didn’t want to lose my opportunity to buy this guy from them, so I just simply reordered.

I placed the order (correctly this time!) again, and again….. money was back in my account and the order was cancelled. Now this is suspicious! Maybe it sold twice on accident. Maybe it was actually out of stock before I got to it. Let me just shoot them another email, it’s the only way to know what happened! So on February 8, 2021 I sent them the following:

Again, no response. I reached out on Instagram when they were active, I reached out to Perfect Choice Nursery’s instagram since they own Aroid Greenhouses. I reached out and reached out and reached out. Eventually, I got them to respond after creating a group thread between the two accounts. This whole time, I have had no idea what happened to my order, and my Aroid Greenhouses account had to be re-activated when I went in to check the order history a few days later. They had deactivated my whole account. Curious, veryyyyy curious and lowkey I’m freaking out because now something is definitely off. Fast forward to March 3, 2021, nearly a month after my cancelled order and I get this response:

As you can see, I am not accusing them of anything and even ask if I’d done something to cause this! I had a sneaking suspicion that it’s due to the refund I’d received for the Paraiso Verde, which would be odd since partial refunds for dead plants are pretty common practice. Again, to my question about this vague “incident” they are referring to, I got no response. I haven’t heard from them again. THEN TODAY, just right now, I placed another order as a test. I wanted to see if I would get the same results. My hunch was correct.

And then when I click “view your order” I see this…

So here are the fact, laid out before you. I’ve been blacklisted by this company and will no longer be allowed to purchase from them…… because I complained about a dead plant. I have never bad mouthed them, have always promoted and supported them and the work they do, and yet here I am, on the Naught List for life. Normally, I’m one to keep things to myself and let things slide, but I will not be shunned for an “incident” that they won’t even describe. They are a family run business, my own family runs our own business and would never in a million years ignore a customer or blacklist them with no explanation. We are a company that believes in honesty and transparency, and that is how we survive. Maybe I’m a small fry compared to some of their other customers, but my money is just as good as anyone else’s. The lack of response, the lack of clarification, the lack of any opportunity to learn what it is, exactly, that I did to make them so upset with me is all very suspect and unprofessional.

I am deeply disappointed in a company that I was very excited to support. I loved them almost as much as I love Arium, and that’s saying a lot.

I’m not calling out to cancel them, I’m calling out for anyone else to be aware that this company isn’t as picture perfect as they seem (or as their name would imply). You complain and you are punished. Be careful where you spend your money, be careful what practices you support, be careful.

I will not be supporting this company, anymore. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I will tell you to be cautious. Lesson learned, over here! Watch me spend my cash elsewhere and weep.

And that’s on shady business practices.