/ Cory Doctorow / 6:31 am Tue Feb 15, 2011

Crappy V-day bouquets and their deceitful online representations

Readers of The Consumerist have continued their annual name-and-shame Valentine's festival, in which they send in pictures of the bouquets they ordered from online merchants and pictures of what actually came. Shown here, a $80 arrangement from FTD that "R" sent to his mother.

The Consumerist's 2011 Valentine's Day Garden Of Discontent

 

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  1. Ooh, that reminds me, I’d better run out and get my wife some flowers!

    We have a long-standing agreement not to do flowers for Valentines day, since they obviously jack up the price and are far too busy to get it right.

    Instead, we have flower day on the 15th, when the price is far more reasonable, although still outlandish compared to what I’d pay for flowers at the farmer’s market.

    Another thing we would never dream of doing on Valentine’s day is go out for dinner. What’s romantic about sitting in a crowded restaurant, while the server tries to rush you out so they can seat the next couple? Nothing. There’s nothing romantic about that at all.

    Valentines day. Humbug!

  3. I wish they did this sort of flower reporting all year round. When I worked in the funeral business, I saw this kind of thing ALL THE TIME. Terrible, terrible funeral arrangements from half assed florists. Some of the FTD flowers are nice, but it depends on what shop they farm out the work to – and in my experience, generally, really good florists are too busy doing their own work to bother with FTD or 1800flowers jobs. This is why, if you need to send someone flowers, you call a local florist (hint, the local funeral home usually knows the best local florists.)

    People don’t know how the floral business works, so they don’t look into it, and don’t think about where the flowers they order online are going to come from. But seeing how pathetic a job the FTD and 1800flowers people do year round…I saw some truly pathetic pieces in my time.

    I think the best example was actually on valentines day. My co-worker’s wife sent her a beautiful bunch of roses from our favourite local florist. My boyfriend at the time called FTD, and I got the saddest bunch of roses I’d ever seen. Plus, the guy was totally confused to be bringing a delivery to a funeral home. He was actually getting back into his car when I found him in the parking lot.

  4. That reminds me : I was at a florist’s yesterday who explained to me that he refused to sell red roses on Valentine’s day because they were horribly expensive and usually three-weeks-old hothouse flowers, as rose bushes don’t normally make a lot of roses in February.

    I went for a small arrangment of black hawthorne flowers. Pretty and seasonal.

  5. Not to be an a-hole or anything, but why not buy them from your local florist? That way you can point at things that are made, make size references, and get a really good idea of what it’s going to look like. Sometimes I even bring pictures of past ones that my wife has liked and ask if they can make this and how much… And even better I know my dollar goes to help someone here in my town that I do business with.

    (Obviously this only works if you are buying local, but the simplicity factor does not out weight the potential crap factor if you are just lazy.)

    1. Those kinds of services are for for times when you can’t use your local florist. I have a local florist that I REALLY love. They do beautiful work and really go all out to provide exceptional service. But they only deliver locally. When I need to send flowers to someone across the country, they’re not going to be of any help to me.

  7. @bcsizemo You’re not exactly being an a-hole but certainly not considering some of the logistical problems people face. I needed to send by Italian girlfriend some flowers in Italy a few years back and my Italian was not up to snuff, so I used 1800flowers. 2 weeks after Valentine’s Day, they arrived! My complaints fell on deaf ears. Needless to say, I never used them again. Afterward we came to an agreement that if I ever used a middleman to send flowers again, it could be the day before whatever event. It worked like a charm, and we are married now, so problem solved, apparently.

    1. I needed to send by Italian girlfriend some flowers in Italy a few years back

      If you can’t pick up the flowers yourself, SEND CHOCOLATE! I know very few women who would rather get flowers than chocolate truffles.

      1. This is something a lot of guys don’t get. There are a lot of times when it’s not about how much the girl loves the flowers as it is how much the other women in the office love the flowers. Girls get a big kick out of everyone being able to see how much she’s loved and what a beautiful arrangement her boyfriend sent her. It’s petty and catty. We know that, but it’s a chick thing. If all the girls in the office got lovely flower arrangements to put on their desks, there’s no amount of delicious chocolates at home that makes our empty desk look and feel less pathetic. (Luckily, I work alone, so yeah, my hubby’s big box of fabulous chocolates was a bigger hit for me than flowers would have been.)

        BTW, the same goes for engagement rings. It’s not that your woman loves jewelry or that having or lacking a piece of metal with a stone on it makes any difference to her in terms of how she feels about your relationship with her. It’s that it matters that she has it to show the other girls.

        Silly. But even lots of us normally very very practical seemingly rational ladies fall prey to that stuff. We hate like crazy to admit it, but we do.

  8. I learned not to order from online florists last month. The mother of my wife’s best friend died, and we had to quickly order flowers online to have them sent out of town. The picture online was of a lovely colorful bouquet, full of flowers with a blown glass hummingbird feeder. What they delivered was three pink carnations and a lily. They said (after repeated emails to customer service) that they would offer a 50% refund, but I just checked my credit card statement, and they have so far refunded 33% of the order.

  9. This is straight up fraud. It’s one thing if the product isn’t quite as nice looking as the picture, it’s another when there’s no resemblance at all.

    1. Indeed. It’s incredible what they get away with. I’ve learned to never trust florists, the entire “flower industry” seems to be operated by shady people.

  10. I got my wife a set from a radio special through Pro Flowers because I was out of town for Valentine’s Day… I’m pretty happy with the bouquet. I would probably use them again next time I’m in a similar situation, but would probably never use them if I’m in town…

    1. I’ve had good luck with Pro Flowers, too, at least for some suprise Mother’s Day flowers. They’re a little different from the other two – if you’re not getting Next Day/Overnight/Sunday delivery they put everything together. They can at least offer some sort of quality control. Not exactly on par with a *good* local florist that you can actually plan stuff out with, but better than a random florist that you have no control over.

      Nothing matches the quality and price of a bundle of flowers (for $5, I think) from the Hmong girls at the St. Paul farmer’s market.

  11. bcsizemo@4 “Not to be an a-hole or anything, but why not buy them from your local florist?”

    As it turns out, doing this isn’t as easy as you might think!

    The florist business is quite strange (and deceptive).

    You really have to be sure that the florist is actually local. If you google florists by town, you get lots of hits but very few of them are actually in the towns returned.

    If you live near the florist you are using, it’s not so hard but it is much more difficult (more difficult than it should be) to find a florist local to whom you sending the flowers to.

  12. I second Wendy Blackheart’s comment.

    I personally have never worked in the funeral business – but I grew up around it (family business).

    If you want to know a good and reputable florist, contact a funeral home, they typically know better than anyone else which ones are good and which ones are drek.

    Personally I’m not one to send cut flowers, as I don’t like sending something “dead”. I’m much more likely to send a beautiful plant, possibly flowering, or something else that I know will still be enjoyed as time goes on.

  13. The one time I ever used one of these services (I wish I could remember which one it was!), I was attending the second day of a two day wake, occurring several hours away. I requested that the flowers arrive on the first day, which they did not, and when they finally did, I was absolutely mortified by how slapdash and cheap the $80 arrangement looked. I learned two lessons that day– never use one of these crappy services, and never judge a person’s thoughtfulness or intentions based on the quality of an arrangement that arrives with their name on it.

  14. On the other side of this coin, one of my most effective methods of maintaining the appearance of adultivity has been to create and maintain a strong relationship with my local, quality florist. Not to the extent of Affleck and friends in the town, of course– just enough to know that I can make a quick phone call, drop my name, and count on someone else to reliably make me look good when I have somehow not managed to do so myself.

  15. This seems like one of those times where you have to take care of it yourself if you want it done right. Florist are in the “flower selling” business; you, however, are in the “Make significant other happy” business.

    My guess is the florist biz is more than happy to refund the .5 percent of people that complain, because they make so darn much money from those who don’t complain.

    Lanval

  16. I’ve never used the online florists. But several years ago my girlfriend was in South Korea at this time of the year, and I wanted to send her a valentine bouquet*. I called one of the larger local florists here in the States and asked them what they could do.

    They said they could request a delivery of the flowers I wanted from a Korean florist. But, they said, what was delivered might be what was requested, and might not! I went for it anyway, and on the 14th, she got a nice mixed bouquet of spring flowers with a few roses.

    If they’d said, “Sure, we can deliver a dozen roses,” and she got something else, I would have been upset. But because they were straight with me about what was possible, it worked out OK.

    Every since then, when I want to send flowers, I call a local florist. I find that most of them don’t have a clue what’s on their websites (which are usually run by FTD). If you want something from the website, your best bet is to read them the description, so they can duplicate it. (Be sure to tell them the FTD website price too, because usually they’ll want to charge more.)

    —

    *BTW, Korea has THREE different versions of Valentine’s Day.

    Their Valentine’s Day is in February, same time as ours. On that day women give gifts – usually chocolate – to their male friends. (My girlfriend’s Korean friends were really puzzled when she received flowers.)

    White Day is a month later, on the 14th of March. The men give gifts to the women. (The tradition is white chocolate but sometimes it’s other white things – such as frilly lingere.)

    Black Day is on the 14th of April. Then the unattached folks, and those who didn’t get anything from their alleged sweeties, all get together for noodles with black bean sauce, and to kvetch.

  17. As a former floral designer, I’ve heard all the complaints (and then some) about appearance vs. size vs. value.

    To address most points, you have to remember that florists are first and foremost LOCAL. That means they get their stock from local suppliers, and I’ve got news for you: every shop or wholesaler in the country does NOT carry the same product. This includes flower varieties or colors, vases or containers, balloons and stuffed animals. So that cute EXACT hummingbird vase or monkey may only be available in New York, via one supplier and not so in the Midwest where suppliers are few.

    Most florists are very conscientious and try to exactly match the contents and look/overall feel of the requested arrangement, and only substitute as a last resort. FTD and 1-800-Flowers send “recipes” for florists to use as a guideline but states that if necessary the local florist may use whatever they have to fill the order to it’s value (read the fine print in that FTD book, it’s there). The other option is for that local florist to reject the order and then the sender is out of luck if it’s time sensitive (say for a funeral or next day delivery) as the call center (FTD) frantically tries to reach another florist before cutoff times. When you call a local florist directly, they’re more likely to tell you instantly how close they can come to reproducing what you’re looking at on the screen, then it’s up to you to decide how much you’re willing to deviate. Florists can and do run out of flowers, shipments don’t arrive, they don’t have the colors you wanted, whatever. Stuff happens.

    Also, remember that fresh flowers are PERISHABLE and completely non-standardized. They aren’t mass produced in some factory, they’re grown seasonally, most likely from South America. They are living (sort of), breathing organic forms who have a life cycle of their own. They take up water through their stems and aspirate water through their petals. Those pictures online or in the catalogs are of the blooms at their fullest (which is sadly just before they completely die). When your florist sends tight, compact buds they are anticipating that you will care for your arrangement (e.g. add water) and that as the buds open and bloom, you can enjoy them for a good week to ten days. If your flowers arrived in the state they are pictured, they would be dead just two. Remember, too, that pictures are often misleading; look at any hamburger commercial vs. what you actually get. For those photos, FTD or whoever pushes all of the flowers to the front of the vase and faces each one perfectly at the camera, whereas in real life most bouquets are all the way around and can’t be “bent”. Hence, sometimes your bouquet looks less “full”. **note: Those tulips weren’t wilted, they move and bend towards various light sources, even after cutting.

    Couple this with the fact that Valentine’s Day is the most taxing, demand-heavy season of the year, when supplies are at their lowest levels and prices at their highest. Your florist is working insanely long hours to produce the freshest bouquets for you (and about 1000 of your neighbors) while trying to accommodate all of your insanely specific special requests, like delivering between 10 and 10:30 a.m. and attaching that thing you bought her to the tallest rose. Give them some slack, realize that they won’t make promises they can’t keep, and that if the details must be PERFECT, send it another time with at least two weeks notice.

    *side note: For the record, I’m not in the biz anymore and could care less about the state of the industry these days. There’s a reason I left… but I just hate it when the delivering florist gets all the blame.

    For what it’s worth, I didn’t feel that Anon #2’s flowers were that different than what was ordered. Everything in that bouquet was a “spray” type of flower with multiple small blooms, about 1″ each, including the roses. If you look at the stock photo, those aren’t “fullsize” roses, etc. Sure the asters weren’t perfectly facing out but they don’t in real life. From the website, look at the sizes.. this thing is small:

    GOOD bouquet includes 11 stems.
    Approximately 7″H x 6″W.
    BETTER bouquet includes 15 stems.
    Approximately 8″H 8″W.
    BEST bouquet includes 19 stems.
    Approximately 11″H x 11″W.

    Avoid the delivery and middleman fees, use your local shops. A good tip to find a true local is to google search “Name-of-your-town Florist” or “Flowers by ________”. Talk to them. Get to know them. You won’t be disappointed.

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