1-800 NEVER Call Them...
/Have you ever thought to yourself, “I would love to order my friend some flowers for her birthday, but how do I find a florist where she lives?”. Oh, I remember seeing that commercial about 1-800 flowers, or Just Flowers, or Got Big Blooms. com something or other. Hold it, stop right there!! There is a new miraculous invention called, wait for it, the INTERNET. Instead of calling one of those fast quick and so called easy 1-800 numbers, try out this wondrous tool called Google, to search for a local florist in the area you need. I bet 1 Trillion dollars, Google has the answer!
Most people think contacting these, devil people as we florists call them, makes their lives so much easier, Yet in fact you are better off throwing your money outside into the dirt and hoping that a petunia pops up.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we florist understand that this company has to make money, but not at the expense of some poor sap looking at gorgeous full flower arrangements online that he/she can get for $29.99 with delivery included. This my friends is not reality and how the real world of flower shops operate. Let’s pull back those petals and see the rotten fungus behind the 1-800 flowers scandalous operations.
Being from the South it is not very nice to say something bad about someone, without finishing that statement with, “bless their hearts”. I am not talking bad about these flower companies, I am just only telling the truth, RIGHT? So you sit down at your computer ready to order your fabulous arrangement, you scroll through hundreds of bouquets and finally find the perfect one. You place your order, add your card message, pay your bill and boom you are done; feeling confident that you have just sent a bouquet that your recipient is going to love. Now, the deception begins, because these 1-800 flower folks call a local florist in your area of choice, Pssst didn’t I tell you there was such a thing as Google, and you didn’t believe me. They ask the local florist if they have the flowers listed, and 9 million times out of 10, the florist does not have the flowers and has to make substitutions, because what flower shop in the world carries every flower, in every color known to ever exist? So the florist tries to make the arrangement based on what they have in stock, when in fact the florist, let me say this out loud, HAS NO IDEA WHAT THE CUSTOMER SAW ONLINE! The poor florist is going in blind to make a flower arrangement out of thin air that they have never seen. The 1-800 company offers the flower shop a fourth of what you actually paid for the arrangement, and is required to take tax and delivery fees from this amount. In turn what the customer ordered is smaller, different and NEVER the same as the picture they saw online. Later the customer gets a lovely phone call thanking them and the infamous picture of the flowers, the customer’s eyes pop out as they scream, “THIS IS NOTHING LIKE I ORDERED”! And the saga begins, the customer is upset and disappointed with what was given to their loved one and contacts the flower shop, the flower shop is only the battered middle man in the war of words. The 1-800 flower company attempts to appease the customer with a small discount, however the small local flower shop is the one left out in the cold having to make every attempt to make the customer happy, when in turn it should be the 1-800 evil doers of deception. “Bless their hearts”!
The next time you sit down to order that flower arrangement for your loved ones, remember NEVER, NEVER CALL 1-800-FLOWERS, JUST FLOWERS, OR ANY OTHER FLOWER COMPANY. As the saying goes, just Google it!