I just added a photo to a listing for a nursery and thought it odd that there was no place for a negative review. Thinking I must be nuts, I looked at a company that I KNOW would have lots of negative reviews if they are allowed, and there was nothing but positive recommendations listed for it. How can this be? What is the purpose of the tool if only nice things are allowed to be said? I have ordered from this company a half a dozen times over the years and the very frequently send incorrectly labeled plants, refuse to honor their replacement guarantee and their plants need life support for maybe 2 seasons before they perform-they are so scrawny. If negative reviews are no longer allowed, I will not be able to use this feature anymore. I'm very not happy about this!

If I'm remembering correctly, the green pages were created for Recommendations only, a place for members to express their positive experiences with a company. If a vendor/business is not listed in the green pages, it has not yet been recommended.

Before ordering from a (new to me) company, I always try to do a google search to see if I can find reviews before placing an order. If I find three or more bad reviews, I usually will not place an order with them. If I don't find any reviews, good or bad, I might place a small order for one or two items so that I can personally see the quality and health of that vendors plants for myself. If my first experience is not up to my standards or what was advertised, I just don't patronize that company again.

I can see both sides of this. I read @Frillylily post and wondered if I ordered from the same company. Their catalog is great, but their customer service was a big fat 0. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble had I known about this in advance, and I wish I had, But I also thought "well perhaps SOMEDAY they will get the customer service act together and live up to their catalog". But once burned, twice shy, and I will not buy from them again.

Frillylily said:I looked at a company that I KNOW would have lots of negative reviews if they are allowed, and there was nothing but positive recommendations listed for it.I have ordered from this company a half a dozen times over the years and the very frequently send incorrectly labeled plants, refuse to honor their replacement guarantee and their plants need life support for maybe 2 seasons before they perform-they are so scrawny.

Apparently those members who left positive reviews must have had a positive experience with the particular vendor.

LOL, if I'd ordered from a company a half dozen times and frequently received mislabeled plants, that company name would be placed in my "Bad Vendor File".

I don't rely on this web site for recommendations. Since only positive reviews are allowed, it is artificially skewed which I don't find useful. If a vendor is not listed, how would I know if (a) members have had poor experiences, or (b) no one has yet reviewed them. Shrug.

Bonehead said:I don't rely on this web site for recommendations. Since only positive reviews are allowed, it is artificially skewed.

The Green Pages are specifically for Recommendations .

Maybe we need a Brown Pages specifically for critical reviews. It could be called the "Compost Pages".

okay well I guess I misunderstood the feature altogether. I thought it was a place for members to share their experience with a company--giving positive, negative or neutral reviews. I think Dave's Garden was like that? I just assumed it was that way here, I have to admit-noticeably- I haven't used the feature here much, so didn't realize. A few times I did look up a couple of places and seen only good reviews, so I ordered from them (small daylily nurseries). Had no idea all the reviews WOULD be positive, cause no negative reviews are allowed.

To me the purpose of the feature is to recommend, OR warn others, so they can make an informed choice. Not just trick people into thinking a place is good, by omitting the opposing views.

I realize that many people order from these places and have great experiences, but there are also many that don't. When you wait for weeks and there is no communication, your check was cashed but you didn't get your stuff, if the plants are mislabeled without being corrected-guarantees not honored ect, people should be able to report that about a company. I realize that anyone can have an 'off' experience or a bad day ect, but if you start noticing a pattern of those reviews--that is a red flag.

I agree that the feature would be much more useful as a place to leave reviews of vendors, whether positive or negative. I personally have had good experiences with iffy suppliers one time, only to be disappointed when I placed a second order. This is all useful information to prospective buyers, but sadly, our green pages are not the place to find this out.

At the time the Green Pages was created, I think many members thought that it was going to be similar to the old DG Watchdog where people could post both good and bad reviews, recommending a good business, or warning against a bad one. I may be wrong but I think I recall Dave saying that the Green Pages were only for us to list vendors/companies/ books/products that we had good experience with, those that we would recommend to others ... perhaps to keep negativity off site.

I always check our Green Pages as well as do a Google Search, to read about a business before making on line purchases. I figure that when I purchase something like live plants that have to be packaged and shipped through the mail, I'm taking a chance on how they will be upon arrival. I've been fortunate because the few times over the last 10 years that I've purchased plants/seeds on line, I've only had one instance where the plants weren't what I expected in size or health and I hadn't checked them out before placing the order. Since I hadn't spent a lot of money, I didn't bother contacting them, I just chalked it up to lesson learned and never ordered from them again.

@Frillylily I don't understand your comment about recommendations tricking people into thinking a place is good. I'd hope that our members wouldn't be dishonest by leaving a recommendation for a business if they'd had a bad experience. I've left a few recommendations for vendors over the past couple of years and would never have done so if I hadn't been completely happy with my purchases.

Maybe I'm not understanding the proper usage of the Green Pages? Perhaps Admin. will pop in here when they get a chance, to better clarify. @Dave @Jon @Trish

Actually, at the top of the page, it states pretty clearly that the feature is only intended to be a place for positive endorsements of vendors that you have had a good experience with.

@plantladylin

Sorry, Maybe I wasn't clear in what I was trying to say

As I was leaving a recommendation for Homestead Farms in Owensville Mo, which I have ordered from many times over 10 years and highly recommend, I realized there was not a place to add a negative review. This puzzled me. So I looked up a nursery here in MO that sells mostly daylilies but also some other plants, which I have also ordered from multiple times in the past and been very disappointed with. I KNOW if negative reviews were allowed, they would have several. I then realized that negative reviews are not allowed at all.

This means that when people search the green pages, they see only positive reviews (some people have ordered and had a good experience, but it is a toss up w this company). Seeing only positive reviews in my opinion is a trick of sorts, because if negative reviews were allowed, the company would not necessarily be portrayed in a positive light. Which means a potential buyer may proceed with more caution or not order at all from them. If I wanted to order from a company and seen only good reviews-I would feel safer in ordering. If I wanted to order from a company and seen that some people had a bad experience, I may call and speak to the company on the phone first-place only a small order to see how it goes, or use paypal as a go between for payment if I didn't trust them with my card number, ect. We are denying people the chance to make that choice, by only allowing positive reviews. They have no reason to think a company may be an issue if we omit other's negative experiences.

I think a neutral or negative review is good for everyone - including the vendor. They have a chance to make up for a poor shipment, review and change their practices, or explain their side of the story. All good information. Only allowing positive recommendations makes no sense to me. As Lauribob pointed out, sometimes a person may have a great experience (positive review) and another time a not so great experience (neutral or negative review). Ordering live plants is chancy to begin with, and more information is certainly better than less.

I think that feature is still available without being a registered member on Dave's Garden, although I haven't checked in there for quite some time so things may have changed.

I do think that many members would like to have a place to share and read both the positive, as well as the negative experiences regarding vendors but it's up to the owners/administrators of this site to decide whether to make changes to the Green Pages feature. I'm sure one of the Whitinger's will pop in sometime after the weekend has passed to comment on the subject.

I believe that the issue with allowing negative reviews is that it would open up Dave and Trish's company (Dash Works) to possible lawsuits filed by the discredited companies. Smaller companies, like Dash Works, usually can't afford a big legal team for protection or the costs of going to court.

If memory serves (I could be wrong,) it was that exact set of circumstances, involving negative reviews on the Garden Watchdog, that forced Dave and Trish to sell Dave's Garden to a big company that had a big legal team for protection. I imagine that they aren't eager to repeat that experience.

I don't know the reason or legalities behind the Whitinger's original sale of DG but I'd just hate to see our Green Pages end up with a lot of negativity and hateful remarks.

I do understand that when we spend our hard earned money, we want what we feel we are paying for but some people that have bad experiences with vendors seem to get nasty with their words and accusations and try to get others to add fuel to the fire. I recall reading a review somewhere once (don't recall the website) but the original complainer (who did seem to have a legitimate complaint to begin wit) could not be pacified or placated, no matter how much the vendor apologized and tried to make it right! I remember one vendor even reimbursing the complainant but that person kept posting very negative comments.

I enjoy having the Green Pages to post my recommendations when I have good experiences with companies. If I'm considering purchasing from a company that is not listed in the GP's, I can (and have) asked on a Forum if anyone has ever ordered from said company and if so, could they please send me a tree mail and let me know their experience. Last year, I asked on a thread about a Vendor that I was thinking of purchasing a particular plant from and another member sent me a tree-mail letting me know that they had lots of extra of the plant in question and was willing to share with me!

I'm not sure what further clarification I can give: the Green Pages very clearly states its purpose in giving *recommendations* for companies our members have had positive experiences with and wish to share with others. There's really no other way to state it's intended purpose

Trish, I see your point, but is there a way to edit/remove a recommendation? I gave one to a company that was great in most respects, but I've found them not appropriate for my zone. Their seedlings aren't ready when I need them. I don't want to see a bunch of negativity, but a word of caution would be appropriate in this case.

Since that is the case, I will no longer be adding any information to the Green Pages or using the feature. It is sad really that this site would allow that kind of deception. Very disappointing to me.

I have just looked up Dave's Garden and yes they do have an extensive listing of businesses with both positive and negative reviews, even for non-paying users.

There's no deception here. The Green Pages are for recommendations. We recommend the nurseries we like and we don't recommend the nurseries we don't like.

The type of system you want could be fraught with deception, on the other hand. A single disgruntled customer could skew the statistics by leaving a dozen negative reviews under a dozen different names. I see this on Amazon all the time. The negative comment is slightly paraphrased each time, but the presence of the same errors in spelling and punctuation indicate that the dozen different names belong to the same person. In other cases, an honest vendor can be targeted by unscrupulous competitors, who post negative reviews in the hope of driving customers away from the honest vendor. Our system is straightforward and precludes those types of deception.

Trish said:I'm not sure what further clarification I can give: the Green Pages very clearly states its purpose in giving *recommendations* for companies our members have had positive experiences with and wish to share with others. There's really no other way to state it's intended purpose

I did not see you post ANY clarification on this thread prior to this comment, so I have no idea what you mean by 'further'.

I'm not sure what further clarification I can give: Only allowing positive reviews of businesses is deception by omission and falsely allows users of this site to feel safe ordering from companies that may be swindling their customers. This is very disappointing to me. I have really lost alot of respect for this site.
Shameful.