Plant purchasing mistakes

[Timbogrow]

First off there have only been great people offering products and everything on the forum has been amazing and consistently easy/friendly. Ebay has been good to me, not 1 bad experience over years and years. But there really is a bad egg out there and it stinks of bad ethics. Let me introduce to you my worst purchase ever. (Let me know if I'm wrong, that plant doesn't have the opposit leaf growth as a maprang should have)
 Persea Americana Puerto Rico-etsy
Sells mango trees labeled as "gandaria" mango.
The definition of gandaria is a bouea macrophylla. I tried using translate from Spanish but it kept telling me the bouea macrophylla was gandaria. I tried giving the benefit of the doubt but now the small price for me will hopefully make everyone aware of the scam. The seller responds to my accusation of the plant not being a "gandaria" by saying "what did you expect, its a small mango".......it's not very funny but for f-s sake I expected a gandaria lol not a small mango. Grrrrrrr, this shop has to be the most despicable place to purchase a plant. That was my rookie mistake about 8 months ago.
Got any plant purchasing mistakes?? Go ahead and spill the beans........
Have a great day everyone and don't make these mistakes.

[Ognin525]

Wow!!!! Iv been looking at these plants from them too! Theres another seller on ebay with the same exact post just under another name also from pr. I might avoid that thank you for posting and saving others from the scam! That really is a bad egg.

[Timbogrow]

You are welcome, glad to have helped someone save frustration/money.

[Nick C]

I got burned in the same scenario. Purchased a "maprang" from a seller out of PR. Definitely got a mango.

[Timbogrow]

😞 sorry to hear that, I'm sure the # of us that got burned is quite high.......

[tru]

can confirm lmao the same thing happened in the christmas exchange ; (

[brian]

Ebay will let you return anything, and if they don't your credit card company will

[Jaboticaba45]

can confirm lmao the same thing happened in the christmas exchange ; (

Who did that?

If you know where to buy plants, chances of getting scammed is extremely low. People who sell on here and ebay are almost always legit. When in doubt, get the forum out...they'll tell you if its good or not.

[tru]

Yeah etsy support will fully refund you, imo NEVER trust an etsy account that uses paypal as their only way to pay. Never used ebay much so IDK but I know they have some sort of seller guarantee

It's been handled and I think they already got their money back! (speculating I haven't asked for an update but I assume etsy would give back) I had never heard of the maprang as mango scam until then, but to suddenly see it happen to everyone... very sad : (

[Iceman716238]

Sounds like that scumbag kid "Guavaking" as well. He's also a scam artist. It's sad that people like this exist....

[Timbogrow]

I had to contact etsy support. I tried the easy way but the seller was so stubborn on ripping me off, treating me like an idiot, and keeping the money that he didn't want to refund me when I asked the first time. It was worse than pulling teeth. I'd love for him to have to refund everyone that purchased these "scamangos".

[Honest Abe]

My personal Plant purchasing mistakes had nothing to do with scams.

-I didn’t do enough research.
-i purchased for my favorite Tasting fruits and not things that mattered like ease of blooming, disease resistance AND flavor in my particular climate.
-i have purchased large potted plants thinking I could skip years and then realized that the root systems had been contained too long/root bound and they would never be as healthy as a 1,3 or even 7 gallon that was chomping at the bit to alternate root and leaf flushes in ground.

[Timbogrow]

Yea that's a good one honestabe. I would compare that to me buying a guava tree cause they grow good......if the white flies don't fly them away while you wait for it to grow. There was a cloud of those things so big you didn't want to breathe. Lesson learned.

[Honest Abe]

Timbogrow that’s a damn shame I don’t even waste my time with guava anymore which is unfortunate because the ruby x supreme cultivar is amazing producer and flavor for me BUT terrible with whitefly basically needed  to spray it weekly and even then they get ravaged. I gave up on my guavas after producing some quality fruits and then losing all trees after whitefly got too bad.

[tru]

can't wait for ai robots that go around bagging fruit

[Timbogrow]

Or some kind of genetically modified squirrels that protect the fruit from birds.

[Orkine]

Abe, common rookie mistake.  I made it as well.

Picking the biggest plant in a little pot thinking you are getting more for less. It was a lesson quickly learned though. 

I have since picked up some pot-bound plants (and made one or two myself) but it was eyes-wide-open and realizing I had work to do fixing the roots before I could plant it.

[CeeJey]

When I started it was purchasing really old seeds from those big exotic seed outfits on etsy; some of them are legit and some of them are sending you stuff that was collected years ago. Or not doing my research like Abe says (although out here in the desert you gotta try and push sometimes and not rely on what supposedly will or won't work...)