What should I expect nursery to do to resolve this?

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I placed an online order on Sunday with a nursery renowned by RHS for its lovely perennial plants. P&P was £9.50 extra and their website indicated a 3 week wait for delivery. I was fine with this. The website indicated that they would combine orders provided that the initial order had not been dispatched.

The following morning I decided that I wanted to order another plant from them and emailed them asking them to add it to my existing order. I put the order number into the subject heading, ie 'Order No: Txxxx', as per their original confirmation.

At 8:30am this morning I received an email from them stating that they would be dispatching my order today unless they heard back from me that I would not be around to take delivery. I emailed them straight back and reminded them of my extra plant that I had ordered.

At 3pm I got an email from them saying that they had discovered both my amended order and my reply to their email today in their junk folder and that they were 'terribly sorry' but it was too late for them to do anything about it.

Would it be unreasonable for me to expect them now to send me the extra plant I ordered without having to pay £9.50 postage again? (Obviously I'd pay for the plant, which was an extra £10.) I think that to quote their order number in the subject heading of my email only to have it go straight into their spam folder is not my fault, but rather their responsibility for setting their spam filter incorrectly.

Or should I just suck it up? I wouldn't be interested in a voucher unless it covered the extra delivery cost as frankly £9.50 for P&P is rather higher than other nurseries, and my original order was a treat to myself. Opinions from gardeners with experience in this area would be appreciated!

I think you pay the postage. You changed your mind and ordered an extra plant.

YABU

I think you pay the extra postage.

Unreasonable.

You pay the postage for the new item.

Pay the postage or cancel the order.

You hadn't had a confirmation for the additional item. I'd have rung them when my email wasn't acknowledged after giving them 24 hours.

Practically no where allows you to change your mind and add an item within the original postage. I'm afraid YABU

Pay the bloody postage!!

Thanks for your responses, although maybe my post was rather long for some people to take in the point I was making. in that their website stated they did allow changes to the original order provided it had not been dispatched, and in fact they did not dispatch the order for a further two days.

The email I sent went into their spam folder, despite having an appropriate subject heading. As a small business owner myself I have had the same problem. However, I don't hold it the fault of my punters when this happens. It is up to me to 'talk' to my server and get this sorted.

Hence, I would have expected the nursery to take some responsibility for this.

Nevertheless, the original order arrived today, so I am going to get on with planning my new flower bed.

Practically no where allows you to change your mind and add an item within the original postage. Yes, but this place specifically said that it did allow you to add to an order.

I read and understood your original post - my reply was and still is cancel the second order or pay the postage.

What was the exact this wording on their website ?? Was it along the lines of - ‘they will do their best to combine orders’ . You should have known there was a possibility that it wouldn’t happen, especially given the current situation where online garden centres are extremely busy and working under new conditions and possibly reduced staff.

@DillyDilly - yes, the wording is along the lines of 'we will do our best to combine orders', so it would be unreasonable to 'expect' them to now send me the plant without me paying the extra postage.

However, I won't be buying the extra plant from them now, as £10 for the plant and then another £9.50 for the delivery does not make financial sense to me, and I see that I can get an identical plant from another website which I was planning to order some bulbs from in any case, so that is what I will do.

Thank you for your feedback.