{"id":1625,"date":"2011-05-10T13:05:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T20:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2011-05-10T13:06:29","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T20:06:29","slug":"1-800-flowers-no-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=1625","title":{"rendered":"1-800-Flowers? No, thanks."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1800_flowers_no_thanks\"<\/a>1-800-Flowers and other online services like FTD and teleflora are at best a waste of money.\u00a0 All they do is take your order, skim a fee off the top, and call a local florist to place the order.\u00a0 The local florist loses the fee.<\/p>\n

1-800-Flowers silently cancelled my Mother’s Day order.\u00a0 They didn’t bother to tell me.\u00a0 On their web site, when I logged in and checked my order, it said something like “Due to high order volume, no status is available.”\u00a0\u00a0 Later, the status changed to cancelled, with no explanation.\u00a0 They never sent an email or text to let me know there was a problem.\u00a0 I contacted customer service, and basically got blown off.\u00a0 You can read the chat log below.<\/p>\n

Like a lot of people have said things like, “In our final analysis, we think the best value for your money\u2013 with the least frustration- is to call a local florist and order your flowers directly.<\/a>”\u00a0 Yeah, I second that.\u00a0 Better for you, better for the florist.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Thank you for choosing 1-800-flowers.com. A representative will be with you shortly.
\nYou are now chatting with CustSvc.
\nCustSvc: Hello!\u00a0 How can I help you with your order today?
\nYou: looking at <order number redacted>
\nYou: why was part of it cancelled
\nYou: ?
\nCustSvc: I apologize for the inconvenience.
\nCustSvc: I’ll be happy to help you with that!
\nCustSvc: I\u2019ll do everything possible to resolve this for you.
\nCustSvc: May I have your first and last name, your recipients first and last name and the date your order was scheduled to be delivered please?
\nYou: thx
\nYou: me: Greg Porter
\nYou: her: <name redacted> (mom)
\nYou: date: mother’s day weekend
\nCustSvc: Thank you for that information. I will try and location your order and see why it was cancelled.
\nYou: I saved her address in my account in the address book, that’s a valid street address, that’s where she has gotten things delivered before
\nCustSvc: I’ll be right with you.
\nCustSvc: Okay. With the information you’ve provided to me, I was able to locate your order and I see that it was cancelled because the florist was not taking anymore order for the day.
\nYou: its a bummer because she thinks I blew her off
\nCustSvc: With the information you’ve provided to me, I was able to locate your order and I see that it was cancelled because the florist was not taking anymore order for the day.
\nYou: i usually find a local florist and order with them directly so i dont get hassles like this
\nYou: an email or text like “hey, order was cancelled, sorry” *BEFORE* Sunday would have been nice
\nCustSvc: I apologize for the inconvenience.
\nYou: i still dont have a status of cancelled in my email… if i hadnt inquired I would have assumed it was fine
\nYou: bakersfield has 350,000 people in it and dozens of florists, you guys couldn’t find one to deliver?
\nCustSvc: I\u2019m sorry about that.
\nYou: i need to do something to let her know i didnt forget
\nCustSvc: What I will do for you is have a call placed to her and let her know for you.
\nYou: i think you guys should send her something nice with a note like “Hi, Greg tried to send this to you last weekend, but we dropped the ball. Please accept our profuse apologies. 1-800-Flowers.”
\nCustSvc: I’m very sorry but we will not be able to have that done however, we will have a call placed to her and let her know that you did not forget the occasion.
\nYou: hmm
\nYou: well, you can add me to the “not happy with 1-800-Flowers” list.
\nYou: tell the computer geeks there that failure notices are at least as important as success notices.
\nCustSvc: if you like, we can arrange to have the order delivered since the florist will be able to take the order at this time.
\nYou: if i had known that it was not going to be delivered i would have made other arrangements
\nYou: no thanks
\nCustSvc: No problem. Would you like for us to have the call placed to her?
\nYou: yes please
\nCustSvc: No problem. I will go ahead and have that done for you right away.
\nYou: i guess we’re done
\nCustSvc: I’m sincerely and very sorry for the inconvenience. It was my pleasure assisting you today. Is there anything else that I can assist you with at this time?
\nYou: no. bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1-800-Flowers and other online services like FTD and teleflora are at best a waste of money.\u00a0 All they do is take your order, skim a fee off the top, and call a local florist to place the order.\u00a0 The local… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}