Homegrown Hydroponics Scam

Homegrown Hydroponics (BBB) Better Business Bureau B+ Rating

I have been in the market to buy a personal hydroponics grow box for quite some time now. I have seen many different manufacturers advertising their goods on both the Internet as well as in various trade magazines like High Times. There were three companies that looked like they made a pretty good product. Of the three companies that I initially had an interest in were Supercloset, BC Northern Lights, and Homegrown Hydroponics. I had a decision to make. What was going to be the best grow box for me, and what was the best company to deal with. I am no expert in hydroponics and I have had no previous experience with any of these companies prior to now. So I began to do my due diligence and research on the big three grow box manufactures in the industry.

I was not able to find too many reviews on BC Northern Lights or Supercloset. Essentially there was very little in what I could find on the Internet that said much about anything about these two companies which was surprising. I saw one or two reviews that said that that BC Northern Lights units run hot, but other than nothing. Supercloset I was almost able to find nothing at all. Made me a little hesitant that maybe people were not buying anything from Supercloset and hence no reviews or input of any kind.

On the other hand I found quite a bit about Homegrown Hydroponics. It seemed that quite a few people have been reviewing their products and posting their experiences on forums and video channels online. Since Homegrown Hydroponics was one of the companies that I was greatly interested, I wanted to know as much about them as possible. After all I was planning on dropping quite a load of cash and wanted to be sure that the people that I have been dealing with were on the up and up.

My heart dropped when I began to read some negative comments about Homegrown Hydroponics . Some people made claims about Homegrown Hydroponics shipping broken parts, or not shipping units at all. Obviously I have no intention to do business with a company that ships out broken parts or doesn't ship units.

However I found this information that I was reading online to be hard to believe. I am a business man too and I know what running a business is all about. You cannot exist in the USA running a business, paying taxes, and accepting credit cards if you are committing fraud as some have alleged online. The fact that they accept credit cards alone makes a company reputable in my book, because credit card accounts are verified by banks before being approved with a microscope before signing them up. If they were taking credit cards there was no way that this company was not shipping people units they ordered, and so I got quite suspicious of the claims being made against them and I looked further.
Let's be realistic. It doesn't make sense for a company to operate in the manner being described. Sending out broken parts is a ridiculous claim that was brought up several times on complaint boards. There would be no gain for a company to do something like that, and made no sense to me as a business man. You want to keep your customers happy. If a $3000 machine has just been shipped out to you and the lamp is broken, it makes sense it happened in shipping or unpacking which is common. Nobody wants to admit to breaking their own bulbs while unpacking. But just having the machine in your hands make the company reputable in my book. The rest is just following return guidelines which reputable companies do, and Homegrown Hydroponics was acting according to their policies which I read on their web site. That's called running a business right and that's how businesses operate. The arguments against Homegrown Hydroponics were falling apart…

Companies aim to please their customers not piss them off; that is common sense. That was also the claim the manufacturer made in response to what has been written against them and it is a theory that I can buy into. It is much more likely that parts were damaged when shipped as everyone knows that breakage is common with deliveries, and we're talking about a 300lb unit coming in perfect shape - assembled, from across the USA, but just the light bulb got broken! Damn fine job in my book. Ship it back and get another. The representative from Homegrown Hydroponics let me know that upon receiving the lamp back a new replacement would be shipped. No problems in that business practice, it's standard for customers to return broken parts for an exchange. This was written in their contract and they were following their own procedure. That's how businesses operate. It's looking like Homegrown Hydroponics just may be more corporate than us gardeners like to think.

I have personally spoken with a few different employees of Homework Hydroponics on the phone prior to doing my research and found that they were being quite straight with me. I tried to trick them on a few questions, but they gave me straight answers and didn't try to upsell me as both BC Northern Lights and Supercloset did. As a matter of fact one conversation with Howard lasted over an hour and a half and he really took his time to explain the differences between each of the different grow boxes they make, and which ones might be a good choice for me. At no point did I feel rushed, or pressured into purchasing a grow box. We were simply having a friendly conversation and there was no pressure as the conversations flowed smoothly.

However, after doing some research it seems that people were complaining about Howard as well as writing some pretty shady stuff about Homework Hydroponics. It certainly didn't sound like the person that I was speaking to. So I began to take a closer look at these reviews online and it looks like that about 98% of the negative reviews about Homework Hydroponics were all posted from the same person. There was a user posting with the alias buyerbewareHGH as well as Began2007 and has taken more than three months of his life to post to as many different boards as possible about his experience with Homegrown Hydroponics
The problem is that now I am having a hard time believing the claim that this company is shipping out broken parts. On one had you have a solid upstanding company that has a B+ BBB rating and accepts credit cards. I just don't see any logic in them shipping out a broken part and not replacing it. It doesn't make any sense to upset your customers. So my research continued and it turns out that pretty much every post that I found negative claim about Homework Hydroponics was by the same person using aliases like buyerbewareofhgh, or bewareofhoward. On different boards they all come from different countries. On some boards buyerbeware said he was from Columbia. Another board said he was from Afghanistan! Hmmm… So who is this person making the claims, we don't know. They enter different lies every time as they spam generic and false complaints all over the internet.

Then oddly enough the same person was somehow saying that Homegrown Hydroponics was in fact spamming and accused them of such. These comments were found on contributions that Homegrown Hydroponic has made for the community and the rest were paid advertisement for their website which all companies do, and therefore they have every right to advertise. There was no spamming going on by Homegrown Hydroponics. Yet buyerbewareHGH was essentially cutting and pasting the exact same complaint on for more than 60 websites over the course of three months. Now. In my book signing up for accounts on the various web sites that Homegrown Hydroponics was on just to enter in a pre-written text complaint and offering nothing else to that web entity is not only SPAM it's spreading false information and that's not cool.

The same person has also falsely posted to over 60 websites that Homegrown Hydroponics had an F rating with the Better Business Bureau. That's simply not true. If you look you will see that Homegrown Hydroponics has a Better Business Bureau for South Florida rating of a B+! And they have 0 answered complaints, so it goes to show they have been around for a least 3 years because the report goes back 3 years, and they have been around to respond to their claims, which they always win, by the way. Sounds like a reputable company to me.

A B+ is almost a perfect score and much better than the rating that this anonymous user seems to be talking about. Things were really starting to look up for Homegrown Hydroponics and down on this anonymous poster. Seems that for whatever reason somebody had a grudge with Homegrown Hydroponics itself that would be worth three months of their life spamming as many negative comments as they could about this company, in as many different places as they could, to try to hurt the business of Homegrown Hydroponics. This person has been hiding behind an anonymous alias and making claims that cannot be backed up one way or another. The funny thing is that people will believe baseless and groundless stuff like that and that is why I have decided to write this article and speak up for a company that deserves it. Homegrown Hydroponics from what I could tell from conversations and my research looks like a good group of people who do care about making the best products they can.

I for one almost changed my mind about purchasing from Homegrown Hydroponics because of all the negative publicity. However when I took the time to do my own research I found out that all the negative publicity was in fact coming from one person with some sort of vendetta, I decided to take a chance and I ordered from Homegrown Hydroponics anyways. I thought I would rule out the anonymous poster and go with a solid company. In my book that's a sound choice. After all I know how to get ahold of Homegrown Hydroponics and I know in what country they are actually located in!

It really is true that you cannot believe everything you read. Just because it's written doesn't make it true. It's important to know where information is coming from when you read stuff online. When you have to anonymous posters hiding behind aliases you really have no idea who they are because they're hiding their identity. In fact someone is making a bunch of accusations and not backing it up with any proof and what they say makes no sense; especially considering the excellent BBB rating that Homegrown Hydroponics has. Essentially you have an anonymous person posting lies about a company in attempts to hurt their business and that just isn't cool in my book and a big part of the reason I am standing up for them. I think the anonymous poster is full of it and I banked on it. I just went with my gut and my logical brain…

Almost 3 1/2 weeks later on the day I got a call from the freight company that the product I ordered from Homegrown Hydroponics was ready to be delivered to my door. Sigh of relief came across my body, even though I knew deep down I was never really worried about it in the first place.

Homegrown Hydroponics is a true a viable company with their address and contact information like phone numbers clearly written on their website. There is also videos of several of the employees working on building the Homegrown Hydroponics machines, so I know this is just not one person some people on the internet have claimed. And I have seen that Homework Hydroponics has won of the High Times gear of the year awards three years in a row. This is a very prestigious award It would not be given out to a company that is a scammer as some people have anonymously claimed. I think it's ridiculous that there are people making the claim that Homegrown Hydroponics is run by one person, when in fact they have at least 10 to 12 employees and a clean record.

Overall Homegrown Hydroponics has turned out to be an upstanding and fantastic company to work with and I don't regret putting my faith into them. The product that was delivered was exactly the same product that was advertised on their website and the workmanship is far above average. The quality of this product as well as the function and operation is superb. I do not regret one second purchasing a grow box from Homegrown Hydroponics, and they have a high quality product.

I am very happy that I took the time to search the Better Business Bureau and find out the truth about Homework Hydroponics or I might have been fooled and ordered an inferior product from someone else…

In closing I will say that Homegrown Hydroponics is a well-run corporate company that is run by a great group of hard working people who are doing their best to sell products at reasonable price and improve their industry. I found that they have more to offer than any other hydroponics grow box manufacturer out there, and their customer service has been satisfactory. Just don't expect your hand to be held as this is not the type of service they offer.