Hi Bart-- I am pretty sure Charlene (suketesh) has ordered from them. I think you might be able to message her on here.

Thank you for replying,Ninkasi. But I don't know how to message peopl! I'll take a look around and see if I can figure it out...

FWIW, HMF has this nursery listed with a good review from suketesh.

A good reminder why it's important to rate nurseries we do business with- not just here at the forum, but at HMF.

I suspect that much patience is needed for international transactions, but I hope you get a response soon.

Virginia

Good luck, bart. If I get inspired, I may start a thread on good European nurseries, for those of us who live here.

That's a great idea. I know myroses is run by one person and they do have a number of rare varieties. I hope you have good luck with them- but know that German customer service is not always the best. If your communication with her was in English she may be looking for someone to translate before responding.

Actually, I've been using Google translate in my communications with MyRoses. I first wrote in English translated with Google into German. They responded in Italian, however, so this last time I wrote in Italian and Google- translated it into German. I admit that this is kind of confusing and difficult ,and definitely DO prefer nurseries who are more responsive and communicative. I did find some sign of action on the site about my account when I logged in; I hope this means that the bank payment arrived. But I do feel nervous about the fact that I'll be away for ten days at Christmas and won't be able, therefore, to recieve packages in that period,and it would be nice to recieve acknowledgement that they did indeed get my e-mail and will take this into account when it's time to ship .

Yes, I agree that is frustrating and I am sorry you are having those issues. I hope they clear it up for you soon! I certainly understand wanting to work with nurseries that are more responsive--this can be very frustrating.

Many of the smaller nurseries in Europe are family operated businesses and especially in Germany with a home market of aprox. 100 million they are not very much familiar with doing business on an international basis. This time of year not just the plants go dormant, their owners do as well and take a vacation.

If anyone here needs a translation into german or dutch, I'm happy to do it for you, just message me.

That is so generous of you, Hans; thank you. Hopefully, the Google-translate German is comprehensible enough so that they will understand to time the shipping of the order with care.It IS reassuring to hear that someone on HMF gave them a good review.I'll keep y'all posted...

I had a look at their website. They apologize for slow responses and deliveries due to the unexpected overwhelming number of orders and will temporary not take any new orders right now. They wish everybody a merry christmas.

THANK YOU HANS!!! See, now that is one of the problems with language barriers; I didn't go and Google-translate their whole site,so totally missed this comment,which ,though not as good as a direct reassurance that they did get my payment and my message,does kind of re-assure me that,in any case, they are too busy to get my order sent out until after Christmas,which works out fine for me.

Bart, glad to be if help. The statement on their website also says: "If you have any questions about your order, dial 0157-80304837. Please don't email us right now".

Calling them may give you the reassuring answer.

I guess i should try calling, but I really fear that the language issue could make communication impossible...

If I were you, I'ld give it a try. Many Germans of the younger generation speak english to some understandable level. If you are calling from Italy, replace the first 0 by 0049, the prefix for Germany.

Did it! The gentleman was very nice, and my message got through. Thank you SO much, Hans, for helping me with this. I think they were going to send my order out tommorrow, and perhaps it would have arrived before I leave for the holidays, but that would have been very risky. This way. they know to send it in January...

I'm happy this worked out so well.... it may change your thoughts about german customer service which isn't so bad when there is no language barrier. Please keep us posted in January when your shipment arrives.

I don't have enough experience with German nurseries to permit me to generalize about their customer service, lol! So far, so good; I really hope that this will be an all-around good experience, because this particular nursery has a wonderful collection and I'd like to be able to order from them again. It's always a risk the first time you order from a nursery with which you have no experience,so it's normal to be a bit antsy. Also, this year I really did screw up on my timing: I got thrown off track by an experience with another (non-rose) nursery back in October which did not go well; this nursery proved unreliable,and I lost precious time over that,so I wound up placing my rose orders late.

I'm glad it seems it has worked out for you but this does not change the fact that in this internet and global commerce age there are many nurseries in continental Europe (in my experience mostly in Germany, Italy and France) that a. have not adopted proper e-commerce practices and b. do not recognise the potential of addressing an international multi-lingual market even though they are based in an EU country. The explanation provided above by Hans (family run, large home market etc) is just that, explanation and not excuse. I refrain from patronizing such establishements if I can do otherwise... I refuse to jump through loops and hoops in order to provide them with my hard earned (and increasingly scarce..) cash. Especially when I recall a fact that is at least applicable to german businesses, namely that most of their propriators (or their customers) would never think of ordering any sort of goods, through e-commerce or otherwise, from a foreign outlet unless their lives depended on it...

Nick, you are spot on. However youl'd encounter these problems in all of the large european countries, especially in France. I have tried to communicate with Meilland-Richardier in english and german, it became a real mission impossible until I changed to french, which is not my best. I guess talking to people in Wolverhampton (David Austin) in a language other than english would have a similar outcome. Unlike in 'small language' countries that depend on international trade for decades if not centuries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland and Belgium, speaking foreign languages is not a common thing. E-markets offer a big challenge to the large countries to adapt rapidly in this aspect. Otherwise the e-market stops at their national borders which may be fine for them having a large local market and leaning back on it. Could I call this national arrogance of Great Britain, France and Germany? Well, this is Europe. Time will tell who survives in the e-market and who doesn't.

The issue is not only language. I guess most if not all English nurseries would have a problem communicating in a language other than English but a. they can be excused since for better or for worse English is the current lingua franca of commerce and b. you really don't have to communicate with them too much since they have mostly fully embraced proper e-commerce systems and processes. If phoning in is the only way to communicate with a business because they don't respond to their e-mails when they are supposedly too busy, this I call wrong business practices. I have ordered tens of times from DA, Beales and Trevor White in England, the latter being more or less a family run business as I understand, and I did not have to call them once although it would have been easy (but costly..) for me to do so. Same goes for businesses which, in this day and age, do not accept payment methods other than cheques, bank tranfers or methods particular to their home country. For me, any of those methods are either impossible or too complicated and costly plus they don't offer the security e-payment methods do. You mention Dutch nurseries and I agree they are more prepared to deal with the international (or at least the EU) retail customer but please tell me why, for example, Bierkreek, not the smallest of nursery business, do not have a full functioning e-commerce site and do not accept established e-payment methods (at least they didn't last time I checked). Over here in 'backwards' Greece virtually one man businesses of any sort have fully embraced e-commerce.

All true what you said. I didn't mention Dutch nurseries specifically but was more referring to business and e-business in general. I believe that the smaller countries including Greece, much sooner recognized to do e-business the way you described than what we see in the above example of a German business, where the proprieter may consider e-business as an "extra" and may have grossly underestimated what has crossed his path.

I had a brief look at Bierkreeks website. I agree with you, don't like it much either. Within Holland companies like 'Lottum' and 'De Border' are the better known and don't operate in a niche-market as Bierkreek does going entirely organic, something most people over here don't really care about. "Organic is Okay as long as it doesn't cost more".

I agree with Nik's experience very much, and whilst Bierkreek have been helpful and in English, I also don't like their website too much. As for 'My Roses', I am wondering if there is something wrong with me, as when I check on their site, I cannot see any roses listed, just a lot of information in German. To find which roses they have, I had to look on HMF and see they have 500 or so, but I cannot see any of this on their website, which would disappoint me. Maybe I am missing something.

I think, over here, we are blessed with so many suppliers, Beales and Austin's have such a large inventory to satisfy most people, so only the collector or the curious would want to bother with ordering roses from the Continent. However, there is one that I have not tried so far, but really want to give them some of my business, because they have an excellent website, everything is clear and precise, their FAQ section tells me all I need to know, payment is simple by Paypal or Card... and their delivery charge is very small and covers the entire order for container roses. They also have a good selection of roses that I cannot get here, from all the major breeders, like Guillot, Kordes, Tantau.. etc.. They are actually a Swiss nursery that sends out from near Bremen in Germany, called Lubera.. they also supply via Amazon.

A quote from their FAQ:

''You are a Swiss nursery - where do the English texts come from on your homepage?
As mentioned, we write and speak English. But honestly not as good as the texts that are posted on our website. We work with a professional translator who specialises in horticulture and helps us with our English''.

They really deserve my business, I do hope to order something from them this season. I wonder if anyone here has already ordered from them...??

Lubera