This Fraser Fir Christmas Tree Isn't What I Expected

Update, December 3, 2019:  I’m adding an update to this post today, two years after I first published this post. I just looked at the 1-star reviews at the Balsam Hill website, and two years later they’ve still never posted my 1-star review. If you look at the 1-star reviews there, you’ll see a big gap between the years/dates of the negative reviews. Since they’ve never published my review, I am highly suspicious that they don’t publish the majority of the negative reviews they receive.

Before you spend hundreds of dollars on a tree from this company, Google “Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Complaints” and read the reviews you’ll find online at other websites. Also, check out the reviews I found HERE and HERE and HERE. The reviews on those sites are very eye-opening and are right in line with what I experienced.

End Update

After reading so many great reviews over the years about Balsam Hill Christmas trees, I decided this year to splurge and spend the $700+ to get my very own. After it arrived earlier in the week, I got it out of the box to check it over to make sure the lights worked and all was okay.

The tree I purchased for $719.74 was the Balsam Hill BH Fraser Fir. It is from Balsam Hill’s “Most Realistic” Collection. For reference, this is a photo from their website of how the tree is supposed to look when assembled.

In many of the videos I watched on YouTube before purchasing my tree, they show close-ups of the “realistic” branches of the Balsam Hill Fraser Fir. Though my tree is from their “Most Realistic” line, it has very few of those “realistic” needles that they show in the videos. The realistic needles/branches are only clustered together along the very outer edges of each branch as shown below. The rest of the tree is the typical artificial tree needles you find on much less expensive Christmas trees.

Here’s another photo showing how the “realistic” branches are only along the outer edges of the tree. I don’t know if this is how all their trees look or if it’s just their BH Fraser Fir.

For $700+, I thought the lighting would be wound around each branch with lights all along the branches, but it’s not. The majority of the lighting is right along the tips of the branches.

Here’s a closer view showing how the lighting is mostly just on the outer tips of the branches.

Large Sections With No Lighting at All: My tree had large sections/areas where there was no lighting at all. In the photo below, I gathered one of those big sections together so you could see the areas I’m talking about and how large they are. When I let go of the branches, they spread out even further, so the sections that had no lights were quite large.

Here’s another section with no lights. There are quite a few places like this on my Balsam Hill Fraser Fir tree.

On the very outer edges of the branches where there are lights, the lighting was strung so tightly together it prevented me from being able to pull the branches outward to fill in the many gaps and holes all over the tree. No matter how hard I pulled, to the point of thinking I might even damage the wiring, I found myself unable to spread out the branches very far at all.

Bare Branches with no Limbs or Needles: Another thing that bothered me about this tree that I’ve never seen on any other tree I’ve owned is how there are areas of the branches that are missing needles and are completely bare.

This area wasn’t that far back in the tree, either. It’s only a few inches past where the “realistic” branches end and is very noticeable because of all the big gaps in the tree.

Another one of the bald spots that’s bare. (Note arrow)

Big Gaps: I was so saddened and discouraged after I got this tree out of the box the day it arrived that after placing the first section in the stand and attempting to fluff out the branches (which was impossible due to the spider web of wires on the outer edges of the branches) I gave up and went to bed. The next day I tried to work on it some more and placed the next section on top. No matter how much I worked on fluffing it out, it was impossible to fill all the big empty gaps. How they ever achieved the look of the photo on the Balsam Hill website, I do not know. No matter how hard I tried to separate the branches wider to hide the large gaps in the tree, they were held fast in place by the web of wiring on the outer tips of the branches, as shown in the earlier pictures in this post.

So many gaps. 🙁

Tonight I went ahead and placed the top section on the tree just to see if the height would have been okay. I’m not going to attempt to fluff that section out since I’ll be returning the tree. I dread having to squish everything back down to get it back into its box. Update: It wasn’t that hard to get back in the box, FedEx picked it back up today.

Even the lighting was a disappointment. Compared to the trees I’ve been using over the past ten years, the lights are not very bright at all.  I wanted to share these pictures with you since I had mentioned in a previous post that I would be ordering a Balsam Hill tree. I don’t know how all their trees look, but this was definitely not what I expected after watching videos on YouTube and seeing the photos online. I left a 1-star review on this tree on the Balsam Hill website several days ago, but it still hasn’t been published. I haven’t noticed any new reviews being published on this tree in the past week, so not sure how current the reviews are that you see there. I will be Christmas tree hunting again this weekend. If I can’t find anything that I like, I’ll have to use my narrow “kitchen” tree again in the living room this year.

Wish me luck in finding a better tree for this room, and if you know of a really beautiful tree, please let me know. I saw some interesting ones in Lowe’s today in the $300 and $400 range. Will be back on the hunt for a beautiful, quality tree this weekend. Update: I found a gorgeous tree and absolutely love it! You can see/read about it in this post: It Was Worth the Hunt, Love This Christmas Tree.

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