Hi all, Two years ago I ordered twelve Mango trees from Top Tropicals Nursery. This year when my Cushman fruited the fruits looked nothing like Cushmans. Cushman fruit is round and yellow, my fruit was oblong and green that colored up to orange and red. My Southern Blush that I received from them has Mango Malformation Disease. Reference this posting for pictures of the flower panicles
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=12129.msg155746#msg155746 . This disease causes trees to grow very slowly, set little fruit and it is very contagious. Luckily the first year I noticed the flowers looked strange so I have been very careful not to spread the disease to my other trees.
I contacted Top Tropicals almost three weeks ago and talked to Heather. She asked me to email here photos of the mislabeled Cushman tree and the diseased Southern Blush. I did. After not hearing back from her for several days I called and talked to her. She agreed that the Cushman tree was mislabeled and said they would ship me a replacement. She said that they were talking to their plant expert about the Mango Malformation Disease and they would get back to me. She told me that she had never heard of Mango Malformation Disease before. This was shocking to me as it shows how completely clueless this Nursery is or that she is willing to lie to me to.
After not hearing from Heather for a week I started calling Top Tropicals each day. For a week I called every day and every day I got a different excuse, "Heather is on the other line. She will call you right back.", "Heather is off today. I'll leave her a message and have her call you first thing in the morning.", "Heather is working in the field I'll have her call you when she gets back to the office." Needless to say I never received a return phone call. I asked the other people that I spoke to on the phone if there was someone else I could talk to about my problem. Each time I was told that I needed to talk to Heather. One of the other girls that I spoke to on the phone told me that their plant expert had told them that I must have obtained the disease from one of my other trees. I told her that this was the only tree I have with this disease and that the entire tree has the disease. To me, if every flower on a three gallon tree has Mango Malformation Disease then it probably got it from dirty equipment when it was grafted.
After almost three weeks and with unreturned phone calls to Top Tropicals I have contacted my Credit Card and I am disputing the charges. I also plan on reporting them to the appropriate California agricultural department. To let them know that Top Tropicals is shipping diseased trees into California and doesn't appear to care. I know there has been a lot of talk on this forum about different online nursery options for California. In the past I have defended Top Tropicals and told people about the large trees I received from them. With Top Tropicals poor communication and complete lack of responsibility for shipping me a diseased tree. I can no longer recommend them. For others considering ordering from them, the risk of receiving a diseased tree is simply not worth it. This is a very contagious disease that can easily be spread.
Another unhappy Top Tropicals customer,
Bill