My girlfriend was having a particularly shitty week, culminating in a vast river of crap she had to wade through yesterday. So I went over to Pro Flowers, saw they had a “same day delivery” option on a number of arrangements (it was 2:15pm, I was just as surprised as you - in fact, the flowers I wanted didn’t have that option, so I figured it must be a thing), and made an order.
Two hours later I get a call that they cannot make the delivery, but can do it “as soon as possible tomorrow”. They include either an apology letter to the recipient explaining why it was late, or an upgrade to a larger arrangement. I took the upgrade.
So all day today, I’ve been eagerly awaiting confirmation. I even met my girlfriend for lunch, and still no fucking news on the damned flowers. I call up when I get back, “Oh, sorry Munch - the florist said these are getting on the truck right now.” An hour later - STILL nothing. So I call up at 3:30, ask what the fuck is going on.
Call Center: “We’re so sorry for the delay. Can we offer you a $25…er…$10 gift card to make up for the lateness of this deliver?”
Munch: “You know, I don’t think that $10 is going to be enough to make me come back to Pro Flowers any time soon. So no - you can’t. What you CAN do is call up the delivery guy, have him stop delivery, and deliver them on Tuesday.”
Call Center: “Tuesday? Why Tuesday?”
Munch: “Uh - because the point of sending people flowers at work is so that they have flowers at work, not so that they can get them at 3:30 on a friggin Friday and have to take them home!”
Call Center: “Oh, I see. Having flowers at work is…nice? Let’s see if we can do that…”
[5 minutes later, we find out that we can]
Holy fuck - I won’t be going to Pro Flowers any time soon. I need to find a damn florist near her building.
This is where you should have started. Those big companies mostly use local people anyway, but you get none of the personal attention that a local florist will give you, and the arrangements that local florists do for their direct clients are often better then the ones they do for the subcontracting work.
The other advantage of calling the local florist directly is that they get all of your money, instead of ProFlowers or FTD taking a cut. So presumably, the arrangement can be a little nicer.
But as for the OP, I don’t think that a ten-dollar discount (and an upgraded arrangement) make up for this mess. Maybe they shouldn’t have offered same-day delivery at 2:15pm, but given that they did, they should have made the delivery.
Sorry, I just noticed. ProFlowers didn’t even offer a ten-dollar discount but instead a ten-dollar gift card, which, of course, requires you to use their company again and spend more than ten bucks to get something.
This is weird. When did ProFlowers start using local florists? For me they’ve always FedExed flowers from their centralized warehouse. FTD.com uses local florists and they’ve screwed me over more than once. Once they (FTD) held up my order and didn’t deliver it on the scheduled date because the local florist didn’t have the exact free vase that was featured on the website. It’s a free vase, idiots, I don’t care if it’s slightly different, I’d rather have flowers delivered on time.
Anyway, that’s always been the trade-off for me; FTD will deliver your flowers in a vase but use local business, ProFlowers will send you an assemble yourself box of flowers.
Did they give an excuse for the delays? I’m just curious because I work for a company that delivers a different product and there’s absolutely no excuse for something that doesn’t make it at the specified time unless there’s some unavoidable catastrophe- and if it did happen for some reason, it certainly wouldn’t happen twice.
Grrrrrr… Don’t remind me.
The first (and last) time I used ProFlowers they did that.
Sent some to my wife on Valentine’s Day. Not only did they screw up delivery and bring them the next day (every girl’s dream to get flowers the day after) they arrived in a wax coated cardboard box, sealed with industrial staples and metal straps. What female in business attire working in a professional office setting doesn’t have a metal band cutter? Once she was able to get a maintenance staff guy to open the box for her she was left with the task of cutting the stems of the roses with office scissors without stabbing herself with the thorns and then arranging them herself in the seperately packed vase. Good times.
I received a lovely box of flowers from a ProFlowers competitor once, addressed to me at my office and everything. The card inside, however, was addressed to another name signed by someone I had never heard of. After puzzling about for a bit, I went ahead and unpacked the flowers. During this process, I discovered the real card that named the actual sender of my flowers.
So I call up the flower company and tell them that I received two cards in my box. I have to further explain that this probably means there is an arrangement out there with NO card in it at all. I have to then explain that the other sender will most likely be very upset at the flower company if they do not get credit for this (apparantly, by the card) apology arrangement. Clueless rep has no idea how to track down the arrangement until I offer to read the order ID# printed on the bottom of the card. (It is printed on the bottom of every card)
I have no idea if they followed through, but it made me feel better.
Two years ago, my boyfriend sent flowers to my office for my birthday. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a mix-up. A few months ago, my workplace had moved from one office location to another one on the same street. When he googled my office, the old address still showed up in google, so they got sent to the old address.
ANYWAYS … the person at the old location declined to accept the package since there was no one there by my name. They didn’t let my boyfriend know. My boyfriend called to find out what was going on, and they told him his package was declined but I could go to the post office and pick them up.
Getting to the post office before it closed meant sitting in traffic, so I ended up spending half an hour getting to the post office and another 15 minutes waiting in line at the post office (all on my birthday, knowing I had to go home and get ready to go out to dinner). When I finally got to the front of the line, the employee helping me spent another 15 minutes rooting around in the back room before telling me that they had thrown my flowers out because the glass in the vase broke.
My boyfriend ended up getting another flower arrangement sent to my office on the day after work. Unfortunately, to work that out he had to spend – gosh, maybe 15 minutes? – on the phone during my birthday dinner.
Moral of the story: Shove those roses up your ass, ProFlowers.com!
Honestly, in that case, what did ProFlowers do wrong? They sent the flowers to the address provided by your boyfriend; it’s not their fault that it wasn’t the right address.
My coworker is still in a fight with one of these online merchants, but I think it was 1-800-FLOWERS. She ordered a bouquet of roses to be sent to the funeral home for her son’s girlfriend’s father. She spent almost $100, including $25 for rushed delivery. She picked out a beautiful stargazer lily bouquet from the online photos.
Well, the first problem was that the flowers didn’t arrive in time for the funeral. They were an entire day late, despite the $25 charge for next day delivery. The funeral company called the family so that they could retrieve her flowers. But the worst problem was that the bouquet that was sent had no resemblance to the photo on the website. The bouquet was about 1/4 of the size. It had exactly one stargazer lily, vs. the 8 or so pictured on the website. Honestly, it can best be described as a nosegay. I’ve seen much more beautiful bouquets from Costco for $20.
As you can imagine, she was appalled. Her son took a photo of the bouquet that was sent and she used it to argue her case. The local florist who delivered it offered her a $25 credit for a future purchase. And as she was arguing with him that that was a ridiculous solution because all he was doing was crediting the $25 she paid for rushed delivery, which he owed her anyway because he didn’t rush deliver it, a 1-800 flowers email came into her inbox, which thanked her for her business and offered $25 off a future order.
In the end, she involved 1-800 Flowers, and was credited back $75. (She’s now involved the credit card company to see if she can get the rest of her money back.) Honestly, I wouldn’t have paid $10 for that bouquet. In any event, she has vowed to never use them again.
I ordered beautiful white roses for a funeral. Pro-flowers failed to tell me that the arrangement I ordered ($150) was not available until the day AFTER the funeral.
I’ve always gotten pretty good service from PF. They sent the wife (then fiancee) a mostly dead arrangement of roses one time (bad!) and delivered a replacement arrangement the same day after a phone call (good!).
I only send flowers/plants for funerals. I’ve learned to call the funeral home to be sure that I had the right info, and then ask the nice person on the phone for a phone number to the florist they recommend. They always have a number for me.
Next, I call the florist, tell them what I want and when I want it. I’ve never been disappointed with this method.
