Flowers insolita Blog

As some of you already know, Internet “florists” are not florists.  They are “Order Gatherers”, the middlemen who just take your order and then pass it to a real florist, earning the sales commission in the process.  (Read our article “fake local florist” for more info).

On the New Year’s Eve (Dec 31st), one of those Order Gatherer* sent us one such order to be delivered the next day (Jan 1st).  The order was a funeral spray and the destination was someone’s home.

Two things were very wrong in this order.  First, they didn’t bother checking to see if we were open on Jan 1st (we were not).  This tells you how irresponsible these Order Gatherers are.

Second, it is totally inappropriate to send a big funeral spray to a residence (where are they going to put it, anyway?).  Any responsible florist would have advised the customer to change his/her selection.  Not this Order Gather.

We sent them the following message:

“A spray is not an appropriate choice to send to a home. Please advise or send a cancel.”

To which they replied as follows (all small letters):

“please send as the customer ordered. that is what they wanted. you can make it appropriate for a home but just because you dont like it doesn’t mean our customer doesn’t. thanks”

Clearly, this Order Gathering doesn’t care about anything, as long as they get paid. No grieving family wants a funeral spray in their living room. Because they are not the one who would have to deal with the upset recipient, there is no reason to make sure the gift would be appropriate.

We rejected the order and asked them to remove us from their list. They still sent us two more orders.

* They call themselves “FTDfloristonline.com/flowers.”  They advertise in online yellowpages and google. They also says “free delivery”; but they don’t “deliver”, so what thye are not charging is actually “service charge”, not “delivery fee.”  If you call a florist direct without this scam middleman, you won’t pay any “service charge” in the first place.