I have ordered multiple thousands of dollars of plants from them over a several year period, so I am more than qualified to share experiences here.
The reality is, they are hit or miss. I now only order from them when I have absolutely no other choice, when there is literally no other shipper in the contiguous US who has the item I am looking for. Because their variety is so extreme, that happens a fair bit of the time.
What They're Good At:
1. Variety - the best variety of tropical fruit shipping I've seen inside the mainland US
2. Ordering - the online ordering process is easy
What They're Bad At:
1. Customer Service - on a shocking level a majority of times, if they happen to mess up. Even though I order from them multiple times a year with large orders, they still treat me like a nobody every single time, and with utter disdain if I happen to notice anything wrong with the order, no matter how polite I am about it. They have sent plants that were grossly mislabeled, nearly dead, clearly diseased, and yet treat me with an amazing amount of disrespect and make my life as hard as possible, rather than simply owning up to the mistake and putting it right without much investment of time and money on my part. I did swear off them completely several times, but my addiction to plants keeps me coming back for things I can't get, especially when I am too ill to travel locally to buy plants in SFL. Fortunately, a majority of their plants do not cause these problems, but a good 10% of them do. The 3 day window for filing a claim is unreasonable, particularly with dormant plants. For instance, they shipped me bulbs that were not described as bulbs but as full plants when I bought them. The bulbs appeared rotted. They refused to acknowledge that anything was amiss because they said the bulbs were deciduous and dormant - but they were shipped in the middle of summer in FL (and has clearly had their tops cut off)! So how did they manage to arrive with no leaves, 6 months after the last frost?? They insisted that the plants were fine, and if kept consistently moist and warm, should put up new sprouts a FULL YEAR LATER... um, what? I don't even live in an area that ever reaches freezing. So there is no way to dispute that if in fact the bulbs do NOT sprout and are in fact rotted, because the window is only 3 days and they are saying it will take a year to get even a leaf on it (which would mean the bulbs were dormant for a full 1.5 years). Whatever.
I could list a LOT of customer service incidents, but another one was the fact that my order once arrived missing 4 out of 20 items. The plants were listed on my invoice though. Top Tropicals is difficult to get ahold of, because they refuse to answer the phone. So when we finally managed a series of emails back and forth, I at last got the answer that they had run out and decided not to ship the plants to me. No email, no warning, no notice, no explanation. No sorry. No discount. No refund. They charged my credit card anyway. They said that as soon as they got replacement plants in, they would send them, but no clue as to how many months that would take - and they seemed very annoyed that I would ask them WHEN. I had to write the question multiple times before they responded to it, and even then only with a very vague answer of 'we don't know when.' I could have wasted less time if I had been able to call, but they refuse to use the phone. When I leave phone messages, they don't reply. I had to ask them if they could please email me when they DO send them on, so I at least know they're coming, because they do not necessarily let you know. Their communication is terrible. I did not bother to put up much of a fight that time, because the price was a good deal and at least they would still honor it.But it's not much of a deal if it shows up a year late, perhaps when I'm out of town and they don't bother to notify me.
2. Price - they overcharge for nearly everything they sell, and some things are WAY overcharged. They also do not make their handling and shipping prices transparent, and it often costs far far more than what it should when you try to break it down via the cart.
3. Seeds - in my experience, the vast majority of their seeds are shipped dead. Having said that, the ones that actually sprouted, grew well - but that was maybe 5% of the hundreds I bought. Even during their Fall seed sale, the price for the seeds is often high, and the shipping cost is far more than it costs them to send them in the cheap envelope via USPS they do.
4. Consistency - Consistency is poor. I have a lot of plants that I bought 3 years ago that are still doing well. But by and large, the "clearance" items, while the most reasonably priced, should be bought with the understanding that they either will be great or a total loss. Probably 3/4 of clearance items are usually in terrible health, not marked clearance because no one wants them or they just felt like being generous. A number have been sent to me basically already dead. The prices on the site are changing a lot, and they don't care if you just ordered something 2 days ago and it hasn't arrived to you yet, but now is suddenly being sold for half price - they charge whatever it was when you bought it. One item I bought at 1 gal size that cost $40, not including shipping which was another $25 tacked on. I thought the price was outrageous, but I really wanted that item, which was rare in the US. I received a healthy but tiny plant with only a single stalk on it and about 4 leaves - but it did well in my yard and tasted delicious, so I wanted more. 6 months later they had it back in stock again, same size, but only $20 plus the $25 shipping this time. I thought at least that's better, so I tried again. Weirdly, this time the plant was easily a size that could have been classified as a 3g, and had maybe 12 stalks and more leaves than I could count. So I got like 4 times the plant, for half the list price. Experiences like this make up for some of the other money I wasted with them. It is common that if you buy more than one of the same thing, especially if spaced out over months or years, you will get vastly different quality, size, or shape. This works out in your favor as much as it works against you. If you buy multiples all in the same order, they usually are close to the same size and quality as each other.
Some Good Some Bad:
Their shipping has improved over the past few years. They used to use hordes of non-biodegradable styrofoam peanuts, and they always strapped their trunks so tight to the poles and to the root balls that they damaged them and cutting them was nearly impossible without causing further damage to the trees. That has much improved, and now they use airbags and a more loose wrapping style, which serves the plants much better (as well as the environment).
I notice too that they seem to have hired a few new people lately for customer service, and while they still usually take the stance that "the customer is always wrong," the new people seem far more polite and better at dealing with the public and at least ATTEMPTING to resolve issues in a timely and respectful way. Hopefully they will keep working on this.
Their labeling is wrong more than it should be - perhaps 10-15% of the time, from what I've seen. It's not gross mislabeling, like the wrong species, but frequently is the wrong color by far, or the wrong variety. They also give frequently incorrect info and instructions on their website for individual plants.
I learned the hard way, to avoid problems with them, always pay via PayPal, and if there is a problem, if they don't correct it immediately, escalate it as a dispute with PayPal. They utterly ignored me for 4 consecutive weeks of repeated contact until I did this, and then, knowing they would lose with PayPal because my issue was clearcut and they were in the wrong, and it would affect their rating, they refunded me promptly for the amount I was owed within 24 hrs of my escalating it within Paypal. It's too bad I had to go that far, because I wanted to work it out with them directly, and the amount they owed me wasn't that much. But it was an obvious issue that time where they had charged me for something they never had in stock in the first place, due to an inventory error with their computer that time (separate from the incident I mentioned above where a similar thing happened).
I think they run their business terribly. But they have plants that no one else in this country has who can take credit card via an online ordering form and ship to you. They're not scammers. But whenever I have any other option besides them, I take it.
Consumers deserve to see honest reviews like this before they order. I wanted to love them. But they mess up on the same few issues over and over again, and are defiantly unapologetic. Sometimes they send good plants, that are correctly labeled, and impossible to get elsewhere. I'm glad they exist - I certainly don't want them to go out of business. I just wish they would make an effort to improve the things they suck at, so good customers like myself could wholeheartedly recommend them. They have never once apologized to me, or refunded me without hassle, or given me a discount for my troubles, even on the multiple times when they were clearly in the wrong and I was being extremely polite and patient with their mistakes. Sometimes their reps were outright rude. They generally act like I, as their customer, am a hassle to them and that all they value is my credit card number, not our business relationship. So if this review steers business away from them, they fully deserve it. If they had competition rather than a monopoly, I would go to the competition.
