I feel your pain, Julia! One of my first ever eBay transactions (many years ago) was with someone that gypped us out of a little over $400. We only got a smidgen of the money back, but we did press charges (along with several other people), and the guy was even arrested. Since then, I've tried to be much more careful, but just a few weeks ago, I won a _Diplodocus_ skeleton model (a good Japanese one, not one of the crappy ones that are all over the place on eBay!) for a bit less thatn $80, but it never showed. I sent the seller several e-mails, each of which was ignored. Finally, I lodged a claim via PayPal (with whom I paid), and they looked in to it; less than 2 weeks later, they found in my favor and my money was reimbursed...no muss, no fuss. If you paid by PayPal (or some equivalent), lodge a complaint through them -- they may well do all the work and you might just get your money back!
This is EXACTLY why I do not shop at eBay.
I got this monkey off ebay.
Lucky for me, the seller was not a complete moron.
I've done the dispute thing, and it took me straight through to PayPal. Nothing has appeared on my eBay account to say there's a dispute active, but it's on my PayPal account. It got better though - the seller's reply to me overnight was:
Where on earth are you getting your ideas from re. basic law of sale of goods. Totally rubbish. If i were you i should approach Royal Mail and enquire as to why you have so many items go missing.
I can prove i sent the item can you prove you didnt receive it ?
So I got Paul on the job again, and he found me all the legislation:
I suggest you consult s32(2) of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended), which states that:
"Unless otherwise authorised by the buyer, the seller must make such contact with the carrier on behalf of the buyer as may be reasonable having regard to the nature of the goods and the other circumstances of the case; and if the seller omits to do so, and the goods are lost or damaged in course of transit, the buyer may decline to treat the delivery to the carrier as a delivery to himself or may hold the seller responsible in damages."
And then s48B(1)&(2) of the same. And then the Distance Selling Regulations. There's a document from the OFT explaining your obligations at http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft...eral/
oft698.pdf. Go to page 22 and read sections 3.35 and 3.36.
You should also note eBay's policy on seller non-performance: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/
pol...erformance.html.
Can I make it any clearer? I will be escalating the dispute.
Ho hum. I think my willingness to buy off eBay will very much be determined by whether they find in my favour or not!! It's a shame this is so common, Jerry. It's so often an excellent place to get unusual items (I couldn't find a Metasequoia for sale anywhere else!), but it does seem to attract a fair few nutjobs.
Couldn't find metasequoia anywhere else Julia? Unless somethings gone very wrong with UK plantsmen since I left 2 years ago you must be looking in the wrong places. They were everywhere when I left (including the rather spectacular if a little twee "goldrush" form)
They're not in fashion anymore. There are a coupld of sites selling more mature trees for £40 or so, and some of them would have sold me one the same size or smaller for £20, but in the end it was an absolute bargain on eBay for £5. I've never seen one in our local garden centre, and not even in the Plant Centre at Wisley!
Having said that, the whole sorry experience with this seller has left me reluctant to go near eBay again (even though the Metasequoia seller was brilliant). I'm more tempted to go straight to the RHS plant finder to search for a mail-order company.
OH. How disappointing. I don't suppose they are out of fashion because something awesome like Cunninghamia has replaced them in the public affections?
Sadly not, TH - the plants I'm seeing mostly in people's front gardens are palms - mainly Trachycarpus or Washingtonia but often Phoenix canariensis. People are going nuts for palms, which may be a fashion thing or it may be an availability/climate thing.
Magnolia is still popular - M. x soulangeana is ubiquitous, but there's a gorgeous M. stellata down the road. As far as more derived angiosperms go it's hellebores and hydrangeas all the way (how very suburban). And cordylines. In fact, add a couple of miserable-looking roses and I have described almost every front garden on my way to the train station. Which is really sad. Except the ones that have been paved or concreted over. Which is even worse!
I'm not seeing this big push towards gardening that all the journalists are talking about. I have never seen another "domestic" Wollemia either. Only in garden centres and at Kew.
"the plants I'm seeing mostly in people's front gardens are palms - mainly Trachycarpus or Washingtonia but often Phoenix canariensis."
yawn. the really sad thing about that is that the Palm Centre offers so many exciting hardy palms compared to these.
I know - I'm guilty of having them because they're available and really cheap (4ft Phoenix canariensis for £7.95!), but the Palm Centre is somewhere I'd love to visit with £200 of someone else's money! All the Butia genera look lovely, and there's a bit of me (the sucker for punishment) eyeing up the Jubea chilensis - I know, it would probably be unworkable!
If you asked nicely someone at Kew Temperate House might possibly let you have a little bag of jubea seeds from their monster J. chilensis. There used to be loads under it all the time. I know when I was about 14 I sent them a letter and the curator of the palm house sent me a little jiffy bag loaded with different palms that I germinated in our airing cupboard.
There's a thought! Not having great success with seeds at the moment - i.e. almost nothing has grown. The chillis failed to sprout and I screwed up the radishes totally - they all got really gangly and died. Hopefully palm seeds are a little easier to cope with!
I have no clue how old any of my plants are, I realised. My guess is that none of them are more than two years old (well, maybe the cycad because it's massive, and the tree fern).
WIth palms and cycads I usually throw them in the airing cupboard in a plastic freezer bag of moist compost and check on 'em once a week. Take em out and pot em on when you see roots. job done. Because they are generally big seeds they are pretty robust.
Excellent - maybe (touch wood) that's something not even I can stuff up! I'd like a few more cycads, I think. But they'd need to be hardy to Zone 8 because there's no way Paul will be happy with more and more plants in the house!
Hi from Bristol. If you are looking for ancient flowring plants I believe I am correct that Nymphaea is a very old genus. There are dwrd forms which can be grown in a tub garden or similar outside, they can be found at most garden centres. Also Chilterns seeds have mail order of a huge selection of unusual plants that most other seed companies do not stock. Like the blog by the way. Good luck
Thank you for the tips Alan - I'll check out Chilterns (have stuck rather to the brochures that come with the magazines!).
I did know that Nymphaea were very old - even older than magnoliids. But until you suggested it I thought I wouldn't be able to grow them in a container. Crocus do have a couple of dwarf forms, and I'm getting the hang of the whole mail-order thing. If you know of any good sites talking about growing them in tubs that would be great.
And thank you also for the compliment on the blog!
Hi. There are several sites on tub gardens. Try watergardenshop.co.uk/lilytub. The varieties for a tub garden would be N.pygmaea varieties. By the way, Chilterns website shows they have Metasequoia seeds (among others).
Alan
Thanks for the tip-off. All being well, I might have seven cuttings from the Metasequoia I won off eBay (for about the price of the seed packet). But I'm very excited by the five-pack of cycad seeds they're selling, and wondering if my husband will let me...
Don't get the paper chilterns catalogue whatever you do. Reading it is how I imagine a drug addiction must be. I want more! of everything in the catalogue!
I can confirm their cycads go pretty well (ditto eucalyptus which reminds me....have you considered some bonsaied nothofagus? they're kind of old school in a godwanana land stylee).
I hadn't considered Nothfagus. But they seem to be pre-Gondwana break-up, which is excellent news! I've held off getting the paper catalogue, for now. It's enough for me to search for a specific genus (and then dribble over the number of species associated with each one...).
Ooh! Ooh!! Looky here!!
http://www.edirectory.co.uk/chil...BJBAQ_+&
cid=211
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