Dear Members living in the EU,
As an extra and exclusive service we are planning a joint seed order with Silverhill seed in Cape Town (silverhillseeds.co.za) at the beginning of the New Year. This is a service to fully paid members of the Pacific Bulb Society. It was Martin's idea and he agreed to do the logistics like he does for the Bulb and Seed exchange. The new Silverhill website lists a lot of mouth watering seeds and they offer a phytosanitary certificate at an affordable price.
Please read the instructions carefully and completely.
Only fully paid members have access to this service
You must have a postal address in the EU, for legal reasons we cannot ship seed to addresses outside the EU.
Please compile a list of your seed order, INCLUDING THE PRICE OF EACH PACKET and add up the total cost of the seed you want, ALL IN US DOLLARS. You do NOT need to bother about the shipping cost at this stage, neither the cost for the phytosanitary certificate. And please, do not forget to include the delivery address.
Please send this list by email to Martin <garak@code-garak.de> or as a Private Message through the Forum. We will set a deadline to be announced. We plan to place the order with Silverhill in early January, Silverhill currently has a Christmas break for international orders.
Martin will collect the individual orders and will order the cumulated seed from Silverhill and pay for it. Silverhill will charge for postage to Europe and a phytosanitary certificate.
Once the seed has arrived, Martin will re-distribute the seed to the respective members. At this stage the price for the seed ordered, a share of the shipping cost from South Africa, a share of the cost of the phytosanitary certificate and the postage within the EU will be added up. You will receive a pay slip/invoice similar to the bulb exchanges together with the seed you ordered. In case of seed portions being out of stock they will not be billed.
This is a very streamlined and comfortable service for you, look at it as a Christmas gift. Please make sure that you do not cause unnecessary extra work for Martin by following these instructions. Martin will advance the money for the entire order, so please do not be late in refunding him once you have your seeds in hand, but please wait with your payment until you receive the invoice.
Please bear in mind that seed of South African origin will undergo a hemisphere swap. Which means, that seed for autumn sowing needs to be properly stored until OUR Northern Hemisphere Autumn. For spring sowing the seed should arrive on time.
The online seed shop of Silverhill is very big, so take your time over the holidays to browse, dream and.... order.
Please do not hesitate to contact Uli (johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de) in case of questions
Merry Christmas!
Uli and Martin
Little update: We have 7 people currently ordering. Order will be placed on January 3rd when Silverhill re-opens, so you still have the holidays to browse the website, which, sadly, can be a little stuttering at times.
Another short reminder: I'll start the ordering process on January 3rd in the morning (CET). Everyone who has sent me a mail and is registered has received an answer from me - if I didn't answer, something went wrong with the mail - such cases (and any remaining order) should be sorted out by January 2nd in the evening CET.
Talking about reminders: in case you missed it, Janis Ruksans has opened his catalogue today, that window is closing fast as he's limited by small business tax conditions, and a few species are already sold out. THIS IS NOT PART OF THE JOINT ORDER. EU-People find his catalogue here, please order on your own. https://www.rarebulbs.lv/index.php/en/
Just by way of information for anyone trying to use the Silverhill webite.
On my laptop, the only search that usually works on their new website is to search by full species name. If I search for albuca, for instance, a drop-down list appears that extends beyond the bottom of the screen/page but it will not scroll, so I cannot see the bottom of the list. If I select bulbous plant seeds, only page 1 reloads when I try to view any other page. If I select any letter, the search comes back to say Nothing Found.
It also runs mind-numbingly slow.
Has anyone mentioned these problems to Silverhill. For a commercial website these problems are very bad and need to be corrected ASAP.
I'll give them a report when I'm through with the ordering process.
for now it feels as if the server is in way over its capacity and leaves out information as some subfunctions run into timeout. The dropdown search list does offer an "Show all results" function, but it is outside the visual screen for me if I don't [CTRL-] out to 80% size, and the following search always fails.
Quote from: Robin Hansen on January 02, 2023, 09:31:43 AMHas anyone mentioned these problems to Silverhill. For a commercial website these problems are very bad and need to be corrected ASAP.
I dropped them a mail 2-3-4 days ago.
The current website is essentially unusable - you can only easily search for a particular species, not browse, and is actually worse than their previous site.
The order has been placed, all participants should have received an email with some details.
QuoteThank you for your order #83719 received on Silverhill Seeds.
Please note that our seeds are not pre-packed, so it will take us a little time to fulfil your order.
Once your order has been completed we will calculate your shipping costs and send you a final invoice with payment information and/or payment link.
Not prepacked - I feel for them :P
Another update: seems Silverhill has finally packed up our order, received their payment and are now filing the seeds for Phyto inspection. They expect 2-3 weeks time for the authorities to process this.
Thank you, Martin for the update
Thanks!
Carlos
Not pre-packed seems like a big mistake. I don't open the US SX for orders until everything is packed and organized. I don't know how you can efficiently run a seed business if you don't prepackage the seed.
Jan
They are a very niche business, offering things available nowhere else; as a result there aren't that many potential customers. Their inventory is huge and their staff is tiny. I would guess much of their inventory is never sold. How much seed can you sell of 20 different tree-like Rhus species? (It is now Searsia for some reason.) Prepackaging even very small amounts of seed is huge work, as you know. Just imagine prepackaging thousands of species with a staff numbering less than 10, then later discarding the seed when they're too old.
Well, actually everything went well on Silverhill side - currently I'm battling UPS and their customs liaison - can't remember having so much trouble contacting a human being with dhl...
Martin, you mentioned the difficulty reaching a human at UPS. Welcome to the club. Mind you I've been shipping with them for 30 years, not huge amounts, but I have an account that discounts my rates.
You mentioned previously that after this you would stick with DHL. Probably best. DHL backed off from being everything to every customer and seems to be doing well. UPS is just the opposite and their customer service has suffered because of it. However, in the US at least UPS is the only land carrier allowed to carry volatile freight, i.e. chemicals, certain batteries, etc. down to the retail level. For instance, I ordered Mace pepper spray and it had to come UPS, not through the post office.
Keep us informed. I want to know how this resolves.
Miracles happen, the package is here - it seems they did have everything they needed, but it took UPS nearly a month to do the customs routine - I've already written a notice to Silverhill that DHL seems to perform a lot better (SA Bulb Company Order in November).
I've noticed the 15+me participants via email on the costs and conditions and asked them to decide if they want their seeds now or want to wait until the EX06 distribution which will take place in about 3 weeks.
A minor sidenote: In case you wondered why we offered this service only to payed members, just keep in mind the whole transaction including postage, phyto and Seeds had the cute little volume of 1060$ - not yet counting the extra postage within Europe - you'd want to have some security for that sum ;)