Sarah Raven

I have to retract my recommendation for Sarah Raven. I spent around £40 worth of gift vouchers with them last year. Overall, the quality of the seed has been poor. Germination has been very erratic, if not non-existent but I really lost it over the Icelandic poppy seeds I spent £6.50 on (I know, I know, but they looked very pretty and I had a gift voucher and I expected to be able to save seed from them in future). Hardly any seeds (to be fair, I knew this when I ordered) and not a single one has germinated. Icelandic poppy seeds from Lidl sown on the same day in the same way had a fantastic germination. So, I emailed and demanded a refund. It's been almost a month and I still don't have a refund. They did agree to one fairly quickly, but actually getting the money out of them has been a nightmare and every new response from them takes five working days to arrive. They are now saying they have refunded the original gift voucher, but I don't want to buy anything else from them (especially as most of the refund will be swallowed up by P&P) and have had to email them back again to ask for the money as I won't be buying from them again. I've checked their T&Cs and it doesn't say anywhere that if you purchase with a giftcard, you'll be held hostage over any returns.

So, bad overpriced seed and very slow and useless customer services. One to avoid!