OLYMPIC ORCHIDS

Recently a number of customers have had issues with payment. I am trying to work with the various entities involved with running the components of this website to troubleshoot, but more often than not I end up having to fix things myself. Right now I have two versions of the PayPal payment system set up, and will be trying to set up some others to see what works best. In the meantime, I will be contacting customers whose orders have failed to arrange for offline payment so that we can move ahead and process orders.

The increased continuous “updating” and increasing layers of complications in all software systems are frustrating for me and for you, so please be patient as I try to be my own IT tech.

Winter shipping has become problematic due to very long transit times for USPS Priority Mail, which is no longer faster than ground. This means that it could take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks to arrive at the destination. For destinations with a 10-day forecast with lows below freezing, this means that it is not safe to ship with a 72-hour heat pack even by priority mail. This also applies to any destination that may involve transfer at a hub in the midwest, i.e., anywhere on the east coast including the southeast, even Florida. Other methods with pricing comparable to USPS take just as long. Currently we are only shipping to West Coast destinations where temperatures are above freezing. I am sorry, but we are not responsible for the progressive degradation of USPS “services”.

It is unfortunate that those of you who in the past would have reliably received your plants even though you have cold temperatures will, thanks to changes in USPS shipping, now have to wait for warmer weather. Spring will be here soon!

We will no longer be including the old hard-copy care sheets with your shipments. All of them are online in a page called “Care Sheets“. That way shipping becomes more efficient for us and, best of all, you will not be receiving a lot of extra paper that you probably don’t want. These are the same care sheets that we always used to send, just in pdf form. Over time we will update them, but for now they are the same as ever. They are in more or less alphabetical order.