Meadows Farms Garden Centers - Warrenton Nursery

After extensive shopping and hauling a large cart full of plants to checkout (while employees just walked on past with no offer to help pull the cart through the gravel), I asked for senior discount. Senior discount, they told me, is only Wednesday; I shopped on Thursday. Even though I'm a repeat customer and also did not know senior discount was only Wednesday, they would not do the senior discount. OK. I told them I wouldn't be back to Meadows Farms. Then, none of the 3 employees near checkout offered to assist getting the cart to my car. As I pulled the cart through the gravel, several plants fell off, unbeknownst to me. At least one of the employees retrieved them for me.  Then I had to ask about paper to line my car trunk.  She cut it and put it in the trunk, but walked away leaving me to unload the entire large cart full of plants myself. They were not busy; there were maybe one or two cars parked in the customer lot.

Clearly, customer service is not on their radar screen, even when they aren't busy. As a senior with a mobility disability, I would have expected at least an offer to assist pulling the loaded cart through the gravel to my car. 

They are down the street from me and it is convenient for me to use them. I think there are others that are better but they are acceptable. I don't think their staff is as knowledgeable as some other garden centers. The staff out in the open yard wasn't very knowledgeable with the plants for under what conditions they could be used, when planted and what the care was. What alternatives were, how big the plants would grow. There were a number of reasons that I prefer to go to other places. They have a large selection.

The mulch was of very poor quality and it didn’t last, breaking down too fast and then we had lots and lots of weeds.  The employees there are not good about answering your questions and there is not enough supervision.  It would help for them to get a trained staff.  Their customer service  is lacking. When we made them aware of the issues with the quality of the mulch they didn’t really have a response.

First, I asked one salesperson several questions. That person was not really helpful and he did not seem to really care what I need to know. I was very discouraged and disappointed by the service and went back to my car.  Since I drove 70 miles from my house to just to get there, I decided to at least get more questions answered from another sales person. I was not planning to purchase anything there as I was not happy.
 Then I found another sales person, named Michael and asked several questions. He was very kind and  polite. He was very patient and answered all my question very professionally. I decided to purchases the roses. He helped me to bring them to my car and make sure to spread paper in the trunk so that they will not make a mess.
I will go back to this store as long as sales persons like Michael works there.