Chris Bowers & Sons in King's Lynn

THE COMPANY FROM HELL - SPARE YOURSELF!!! PLEASE!!!
A month ago I ordered recently two super columnar fruit trees from this company, an apple and a plum. I asked the company to ensure that they arrived here by late May because I was due to be away for a few days and rightly I wanted to ensure that they were planted up at my allotment in good time. The two trees duly arrived. I took them up to the allotment, unpacked them there - only to find that one of them had clearly been unceremoniously ripped out of the ground, then more unceremoniously plonked into a floppy small plastic pot sized bag with really miserable looking damaged roots. That was all bad enough as it was, but this small undersized very runty tree was totally infested and over-run with ants - gazillions of the creatures who were clearly making mince-meat of it pdq.

I gave this small tragic little tree the full anti-ant treatment and planted it out, watered it, nourished, and had it watered for the few days I was away by my next door allotment holder (and she is very reliable).

It died, it was as dead as a dodo within days. By my return is was beyond death on the far side of eternity. It was just about dead on arrival, definitely in its death throes, shrivelled and horrible.

When I wrote to the company the response was that I hadn't planted it immediately, that I hadn't watered it, that it hadn't been watered while I was away. ie - this company has taken no responsibility for sending out a nearly dead ant-infested tree. When I sent a photograph, the same response. Unbelievably unpleasantly written, but clearly written with gusto and determination to talk to a customer in a pretty revolting, actually disgusting, manner. You just have to wonder that they consider this acceptable business practice

I hope this will give you, (as a potential customer of this company), a strong warning that if you buy from these people and you take up any issue with them, you may well find that you are given the shove off - this isn't even a brush off, it's clearly a well tested way of making sure you get lost.

Spare yourself your grief - and be under no illusion that you will receive decent respectful customer service. My experience is that you may well not. I didn't and I wouldn't want you to have to waste your money, your effort, your hope and your outrage. It's not a pretty outcome.

Go buy your trees from another company. I strongly advise you to leave this one alone.

UPDATE: FURTHER INFO: Today I noted on my credit card that this company has repaid in full the whole of the invoice. This arrived six days after I wrote again to say that I was considering writing to Trading Standards. I am enormously appreciative of their repayment, but in fact I had asked for a refund simply on the one tree which was ant-infested and which expired within days of being planted. I have now given the full refund return to justgiving.com, for a cause close to my heart.