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Every year for the past 11 years, Oakley Boy Scout Troop 152 has opened up a tree lot the day after Thanksgiving. It’s the troop’s biggest fundraiser, netting $50,000 or more each holiday period to pay for its activities and camps.
But the tradition didn’t get off to a smooth start this year.
Parent committee volunteer Jen Mesker said because the Scouts’ longtime tree suppliers retired, the troop searched for and found a new one listed in a national tree growers association website. However, that person turned out to be a tree broker, not a wholesaler as listed on the website.
And when the Scouts hired three trucks through a shipping company to pick up the brokered trees at a Washington tree farm several days before Thanksgiving, no one there knew about the order. “Our truck driver got to the farm at 9 a.m. and sat until 2 p.m. and drove away with zero trees,” Mesker said. Attempts to reach the next grower on the broker’s list of three were unsuccessful as well, so the shipping company cut its losses and ordered the trucks to turn around and come home, she said.
Stephen DeMarco, a Scout charter representative and co-treasurer, said several trucks commissioned by other groups that made arrangements with the same Nevada broker also went away that day without trees.
Among those groups was the PTA of a Seattle elementary school, which also runs an annual tree lot sale. The PTA eventually had to pay for a semi and u-haul at a cost of nearly $5,000 so it could retrieve the ordered trees.
“At that point, it (renting new trucks) was our only option, we had to make this happen,” said Lindsay Winter, who coordinates Greenlake Elementary PTA’s Christmas tree lot each year with husband Jess. “It was really devastating at the expense of charitable organizations.”
In Oakley, Mesker said her troop paid the broker a $5,123 deposit several weeks ago for the trees — more than 25 percent of the total order.
“Based on all of our research, she certainly talked a good game,” Mesker said about the broker. “We made an agreement to pay the rest two weeks after we open. We are Boy Scouts, we don’t just have money sitting around.”
When contacted for this story, the broker — Ellen Faiss of Heritage Trees — said she “didn’t know anything about” the snafu, adding she had just gotten out of the hospital.
A Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Growers Association spokeswoman said the organization simply lists growers, but does not know much about them beyond that.
“I am not in the business of enforcing or investigating contracts,” executive director Angie Smith said. “I don’t think they got scammed on purpose, but the timing is very, very poor, and it’s going to be a rough Christmas for some,” she said.
Mesker said finding another supplier days before Thanksgiving wasn’t easy.
“We knew there was going to be a shortage of certain sizes because of the dry years, too — 7- to 8-footers and 8- to 9-footers and above were going to be hard to come by.”
The Scouts directly called the growers Faiss had supposedly arranged to buy trees from.
“We went crying to the growers — they were getting inundated with all the other people she didn’t pay,” DeMarco said. “We got what they had left.”
Luckily, what they did get — grand firs, nobles and Douglas firs — were “fabulous,” Mesker said.
DeMarco wound up paying $2,379 to the shipping company to retrieve the trees. The shippers, PLS Logistics Services, reimbursed the Scouts for the first shipping charges, though the trucking costs went up the second time due to the weather and holiday time surcharge.
“The boys should not have to pay for something that they had nothing to do with,” DeMarco said.
In the end, the troop wound up with 396 out of 518 trees originally ordered and began their sales two days later, which at $69.95 or more a tree, will mean an estimated loss in sales of $6,800 to $10,000, he said.
Despite the setback, neither of the Scout parent volunteers is bitter and said next year they will simply deal directly with growers. The tree lot, which has been set up at Oakley’s St. Anthony Church, will continue daily through Dec. 19.
“The church has been very supportive, they’ve allowed us to use the land for free,” DeMarco said. “Father Rafael (Hinojosa) and Bishop Michael Barber have allowed us to do this. Without them, we wouldn’t have anything.”
“The bottom line is I think we are going to be OK,” Mesker added, noting the new trees were less costly than those arranged through the broker.
“In the scheme of things, you have to look at the whole picture,” DeMarco said. “The boys got the trees … We will make this into a teaching moment.”
