Grower’s Solution

I ordered some flat trays from them a few months prior to ordering more. I have bought the same trays from multiple companies and I felt overall they were decent enough to try again. I usually go through at least a couple hundred a month but thought i’d trust my intuition and keep the order small (200 trays), I was also in a pinch for time and knew I received my order from them quickly the time before.
Well I received my order quickly but it was trays without holes when I ordered trays with holes, bummer. There goes my savior in a pinch but they honored the fact they made a mistake, had the trays picked up for exchange no cost, received another two carton of trays in about a week, great.
This time the trays had holes but were pin holes when the trays I had received and really liked before were typical slit holes, like all the other 1020 flats I’ve ever ordered from anyone including Grower’s Solution have. Still in need (my mistake for counting on them after the first mistake they made), I tried the trays. I grow micro greens in them which are delicate and sometimes temperamental… trays didn’t drain properly, soil too damp, root rot, lost product. I emailed them and let them know I wasn’t happy and tried again, this time watering less. Didn’t matter, lost more product. I requested they take the trays back for refund.
” I am sorry the trays are not up to your standards. We ordered the trays from a new supplier for Spring, but we will not be using them once they are gone. We will be back to the old style in a couple of months. You can send the trays back for a refund, or we can replace them when we get the new shipment in. Either way will work for us. Again, I am sorry for the trouble. Thank you for your business.“
followed by this for some reason:
«You can return them to us and I will refund the purchase. However, you will have to pay the return postage. As soon as we get a new shipment in, I can contact you to purchase them.»
I was pretty bummed and just ceased communications until this past week or two when I got sick of pushing the unused boxes of trays out of the way. I re-​initiated communication asking again to return them saying I don’t feel I should be responsible for paying shipping on a faulty product that i already paid shipping on. So back and forth we went until I gave up.
Point is. I ordered a product I liked, reordered the same exact thing but received something different. It’s not what I ordered. It’s not my fault you gambled with another company. That email even admitted you weren’t going to use them again but instead of cutting your loss you pass it on to me?! BS. Where’s the integrity? Where’s the consistency? I can’t trust a company that sells inconsistent product and lacks integrity to take responsibility for their gamble.

This review is a bit long: In sumary — I recieved a broken product, unfortunatly I waited till spring to use the product. By then the 30 day warranty had expired. The tech would not e-​mail me to help me. They did instruct me to return the product but because of my negative review here I had to pay to get the product shipped back without the company even opening the box I sent it in.
For the full story read on…
At first this company seemed very helpful and wonderful; I was so taken in I planned to buy many future products from them.
I purchased a component for cloning citrus and roses called a mist-​a-​matic. I did not use the device till spring (I bought it early so I could build a box to go around the unit and be ready for spring.)
When spring arrived, I turned on the unit and it failed; sometimes it would work, other times it would leave the plants to dry out. I figured I was doing something wrong. After approx a month of tweaking different settings, I contacted customer service, hoping I could alter something on my end and avoid a return.
The man I contacted was very helpful but he didn’t have technical information on the item I had bought. He gave me the e-​mail and phone of the man I needed to talk to. After sending several e-​mails and waiting a couple of weeks with no response, I decided to try another route. I sent a standard letter to the man I was supposed to get technical help from.
When I did not get a response from this, I e-​mailed the original man again and he told me that the man I was trying to contact was the boss of the company and that he would only respond to phone calls. I explained this was not an option since my work time is the same time they are open; I also do not get lunch breaks otherwise I would have called then Here us the response I received.
«I have spoke to Roger (the boss) and he basically told me if you need to speak to him, you will have to call like everyone else. I understand you have to work, but we do to. We answer around 100 emails per day and answer roughly 120 to 150 phone calls per day. This is the busiest time of year for us and he simply doesn’t have time to talk technical spec of a Mist o Matic via email. You can call him on your lunch break or call and leave him a voice mail. The phone call will not take very long. If your plants are dying, you should try to find time to call. I have done everything in my power to handle this, but I am now telling you that if you do not call, we can not help. I am sorry, but that is about as truthful as I can be. Thank you again! — Mike»
After that e-​mail I returned the unit. I waited a long time for some response (UPS stated the unit was delivered.) After several attempts at e-​mail Grower’s Solution, they responded as such.
«I am sorry for the delay, I was on vacation all last week. I just went to check on the status of your Mist-​a-​Matic and it was brought to my attention that you wrote a negative review on Unilocal about us. Needless to say we were all a little shocked, considering we were trying to help you free of charge. That being said, I can no longer help you at all with your current problem. I was trying to help you, but it is out of my hands now. The product is sold with no warranty and is well beyond the 30 return policy. If you would like to have the product shipped back to you, you will need to pay postage for it’s return. Please let me know how you would like to proceed.»
I asked that my unit be returned. After I paid for return postage I got it back in approx a week. The people at Grower’s Solution had not even opened the box I had sent them. After some rewiring and replacing the transformer that originally came with the unit I now have a working product. However to get to this point it cost me a lot in postage and months of trying to contact the people of Grower’s Solution.
In my opinion this company should be avoided.