





to send plants to Oregon and Montana and Maine. 
We can do a darn sight better by the folks in Mis- 
souri and Tennessee. . 
The disastrous divorce of plant and pot is 
only one of the things that can go wrong. There 
are, as I said before, dozens more. The point is 
that we know that some of the plants we ship 
are going to be broken up. And we don’t neces- 
sarily think you're telling a whopper when you 
write to tell us so. 
You know, many people have patronized mail 
order houses for years and still haven’t the faintest 
notion of what sort of rules govern this type of 
transaction. On the surface it would appear that 
the firm could gyp the customer and vice versa 
with no holds barred. Actually, both parties are 
protected by myriad postal rules and regulations 
which are ably enforced by postal inspectors, and 
by Interstate Commerce legislation. In other words, 
don’t just sit quietly by and get rooked via mail. 
Ask your postmaster. : 
Even the Postmaster General himself can’t do 
anything for you, though, if you ordered some- 
thing and sent cash for it. Do you know why 
mail order firms ask for “remittance by check 
or money order’? If your letter with cash en- 
closed went astray before it got to the packer and 
you never received the merchandise you ordered, 
you couldn’t prove that you ever ordered it, could 
you? The company would be faced with the alter- 
native of an irate customer or a financial loss, and 
would probably wind up with both. On the other 
hand, records are kept of checks and money orders. 
If your endorsed check comes in at your bank at 
the end of the month and still no merchandise, 
you have a record that the firm has your money. 
If the firm is in good faith, this fact can be of 
tremendous help in tracking down an incompleted 
transaction. Or if the company is trying to ‘do” 
you, your mention of the endorsed check should be 
enough to bring about a little action. 
I don’t think you all real- 
ize what a chance you take 
when you send cash through 
the mail. We’re real flatter- 
ed that you trust us but, my 
gosh, we lose things, too, ya 
know!!! 

This might seem like a weird place to launch 
into a discussion of mail order do’s and don’ts. 
Actually, however, there’s a better-than-average 
chance that everyone who receives this letter is, 
or has at some time been, a mail order customer. 
it’s important for you to know these things. Mail 
order firms catering to specialized groups have 
mushroomed all over the country, particularly 
since the war. Some are in business to stay and 
are eager to establish a reputation of honest deal- 
ing and reliability. Others are out to make a fast 
buck and will be long gone by the time the postal 
inspector comes around to investigate. It’s too 
bad that there isn’t a way to tell from an ad in a 
magazine just which firm belongs in which cate- 
gory. 

