Never heard that before, but I am a believer that all synthetic fertilizers are eventually bad for all plants. Organics all the way!

I've never heard of that either, as long as he didn't put too much fertilizer, the Arecas should be ok. Make sure you water it plenty. I agree with bradleyo, organics is much better.

what climate are you in and how much will you be watering? Was it slow release fertilizer? Fertilizer should be ideally slow release for palms (or water-based), and applied at or near the surface of the palm, perferably not touching any roots or plant parts. but I don't think it is necessarily certain death. If it is hot fertilizer (not slow release) and a lot of it was put in, your palms might be in for a struggle, but if you water the hell out of them, that might dilute the fertilizer enough to push most of it into the soil (if you have good draining soil aside from what was put in the hole).

I am in the SE Florida (Broward) area. The areca's are being water every other day with a soaker hose about 1-2 inch on either side of the plant for 2.5 hours.

The fertilizer says "The granules contain slow-release nitrogen for extended feeding up to 2 months and potassium to help palms resist stress."

I don't notice any sign of impending doom after 2 weeks, although many of the plants have many to nearly all yellow-bronze leaves (they came this way, the guy went to a different nursery and bought them because the one I specified wasn't open for another 15 minutes, the plants are inferior and look like crap)