This is a copy of my response to Bay Tropics on the thread shared by Johnb51.
BayTropics,
It's been three years since I ordered custom grafted trees from Adam. I really don't like posting anything negative about a person, but I don't want others to lose their money either, so I'm sharing my thoughts and experience.
I have received some scions I ordered from him, it's my custom grafted trees I didn't get. He told me many of the varieties I wanted would only be available to me through ordering grafted trees because he had very limited supplies of them.
In his reply #27 to the forum he explains his situation and states he offered this service for $15, this is not wholly true. For example, a one gallon tree may need more than one graft in his opinion if it has a couple of branches and then of course you have to pay for the tree itself which he also profits from. Also, he didn't have enough one gallon sizes so if I wanted them I needed to upgrade to 2 gallon size. I think I ordered around 5 trees but I paid over $700. He wanted me to prepay for all the shipping of the trees which seemed high, but he told me he would refund me the difference if shipping turned out to be less.
I have no problem with waiting for over a year if I trusted I was actually getting my order, even though credit card companies will only refund you for a 6 month period. However, he didn't respond to my emails or phone calls about when I could expect delivery. I was sympathetic to his situation, but didn't think it was right that he was still taking orders if he didn't have the time to deal with previous ones. He could have posted a statement on his Facebook page if he didn't have the time for any correspondence, but that may have stopped his current orders cash flow.
I understand why you want to give him the benefit of the doubt because of health issues, being busy, behind on orders, bad weather, employee issues, moving, wife having baby, etc. However, at some point, you stop making excuses and don't make promises you can't deliver. He had the opportunity when he came on this thread to respond and actually make amends and I don't think anyone would have held it against him. I have no ill will towards him but I would not recommend buying from him.
Janet