The packaged is being sent to me from Thailand vendor. I am the buyer.

You are taking a risk importing a plant. Many vendors from outside the US will not guarantee you'll actually get the plant. The phyto certificate may not be a legitimate one. You are in DC, an area that will receive more scrutiny than say ND. Your plant may slip through, or it may not. Either way, the vendor gets their money so what do they care?

Sweetheat, was that you who posted about the box arriving empty under a different name? Anyways, maybe the vendor will be willing to send you another plant and it may come through.

Do you mind if i ask how much the plant was?

tibean, what do you mean by posting with different name? This is the only post i made it about! I bought it from "iyares" on his ebay auction.

@hoovb, if you don't receive the plant or arrive DOD you get your money back.

Hoya australis lisa shipped from Poland as a small packet. Green sticker labeled Hoya plant. I received it in 6 days. No sign of customs forms. Curious.

I would request a refund. They need to keep their customers happy.

I mean the person with the name cb60q who responded above.

Anyways, hopefully the seller will refund. Good Luck!

I'm not sure what to do. I would either file a complaint with customs to try to sort it out or message Iyares on eBay and tell them what happened. They may be able to sort it out or offer to send you another plant. Last year, I had a similar situation. I ordered a Christmas cactus from a seller on eBay and Customs either seized it or sent it back to the seller. Three weeks later I received a letter from Customs explaining that because it didn't have a phytosanitary certificate and other necessary documents it wasn't allowed to go through customs. Also earlier this year, I ordered a Hoya Kerrii from a seller named bkinterplants and the poor plant was in transit for over a month and the poor plant was so stressed out that it died a week later from a fungal infection. The seller offered to send a replacement plant if I ordered another plant but I decided to get a refund from eBay. It took a couple weeks to get the refund after a case was opened for item not as described. You can always explain the situation to eBay and ask for a refund since eBay covers your purchases.

Liza, i did notified "Iyaris" right away as soon as i open the box and find out it was empty and why. Also, took photos ans sent to him/her too. The problem is he did put the phyto- certificate and it is tape outside the box and the customs officer clearly missed it. Iyares did offer me a deal since he/she fell bad about what happen. It was not completely 100% refund since ems is a goner though.

Thank you all for any reply.

It may be too late for this situation but just to relate an incident I had with seeds confiscated by customs which might be relevant for the future. After ordering seeds and waiting I don't know how long now, I received a letter from customs advising me they had seized a package addressed to me and were going to destroy it. With the seeds the supplier also sent soil. Phyto certificates don't cover soil. This was a supplier who claimed to have been shipping internationally for years and should have known it was illegal to send soil to another country. I rang customs and pleaded with them, explaining that I was unaware any soil was to be included. They agreed to clean the seeds and send them on to me. Only one (out of 14) of the seeds rotted, the rest germinated. But my first response was to immediately contact customs rather than the supplier. Things can often be cleared up before it's too late.

@tropicbreezent, I spoke to officer who open the box and she insist there were no phyto-certificate in my package after i told her it is outside the box and visible and i can't believe she miss it. Also, she said the plant is destroyed and proceeded to give me a name of the person to file a complaint. My husband who work at NALC as President executive assistant will be writing that complaint to the post office, and congressman. Well see what happen later.

I guess it depends on who you get on the other end of the phone. I might have been lucky. Hope you get some satisfaction out of this.

This is why I don't order anything from overseas. I had $200 worth of plants that did clear customs, but then for some reason got stuck back in a corner at a P.O. back east for a week. By the time they got to me, a lot of them were almost mush. In the end, only one of the several I ordered survived. Not worth it...

Denise in Omaha