Ann, Hortico and Rogue Valley are two nurseries I never use anymore, although I bought hundreds of roses from both in the past.
Hortico was a great nursery until about 15 years ago, when it started sending the wrong plants deliberately. Prior to that time, it would say a rose was out of stock and would put it on back order, but in 2005 or so it would slap the label of the desired rose on an overstocked rose and send it to me. I can't tell you how many Climbing Icebergs and Autumn Damasks Hortico sent me, pretending that they were the fabulous roses Hortico had listed on its website. They also left roses out of the shipping package regularly. I'd pay for 12 roses and receive 9 or 10. Customer Service was highly elusive and frankly abusive. They would promise to send the missing roses or to correct the mistake with the mislabeled roses, but no replacements were ever sent and no credits were ever applied. Things reached the point at which no one wanted to have anything to do with Hortico anymore.
A few years ago there was talk that Hortico had changed and could be trusted again. They stopped pretending to carry dozens of elusive roses. The list of offerings on their website is now only a fraction of what it was before. I gave the nursery one more chance and ordered a few Austins, but the roses they sent were too small for the price and not particularly healthy, so I wasn't impressed.
Rogue Valley Roses was another disappointing nursery. At first, the mislabeling was the only problem. At least 20-25 of the mislabeled roses in my garden came from Rogue Valley. Prices were low, however, especially for the 1-gallon roses, and the plants were quite large. This is Young Quinn when it arrived from Rogue Valley in a 1-gallon container. The garbage can is a 50-gallon can, 40 inches tall. The rose cost only $14.50, only a couple of dollars more than the band price at that time.
Then the nursery discontinued the gallons, the prices rose dramatically, and the band roses shrank dramatically. The mislabeling continued. It was bad enough to get a mislabeled rose when the rose was a decent size and didn't cost much, but I don't want to take the risk now that the roses are so small and cost so much.
