Flowers insolita Blog

Don't waste your money on flower-order middle-man!

If you order flower delivery online, chances are that you are placing your order with a middle-man.  And you are paying an unnecessary middle-man’s fee, without realizing it.

For example, when you place your order with a well-known national flower company (the one whose name starts with “1″), you will be charged with $13.99.  They call it “Service Fee” and you will not see this fee till the very last step of ordering.

This $13.99 is NOT a delivery or “Shipping & Handling” fee, which is already included in the merchandise price.  This fee is nothing but a middle-man’s surcharge.

In fact, there’s no need to pay this extra fee at all.  How can you avoid this completely unnecessary fee?

Call a local florist in the destination town directly, that’s how.  Middle-men, including the one that starts with “1″, send your order to one of those local florists anyway.  They earn 20% sales commission from the florist in the process (in addition to the middle-man’s surcharge).

For more info about flower-order middle-men and their deceptive tactics to rip you off,  read Fake “Local Florists”.  For a full explanation, visit Florist Detective.

In the previous post, I wrote how yellowpages.com lists numerous bogus florists in their local listing.  What about their main competitor, superpages.com by Verizon?

If you look for ‘florists’ in ‘Huntington NY’ in superpages.com, you will be presented with “only” 73 florists, which is a vast improvement compared to >1,400 “florists” listed in yellowpages.com.

But again, our town doesn’t have 73 florists.  Not even close.

Most of these 73 florists are national floral-order brokers, such as FTD, JustFlowers, etc.

Let’s sort by ‘distance’ again, which is supposed to list only the local florists.  Take a look (Click).

At the top, you will see a business called “Huntington Florists NY – All American Flowers.”

This is a bogus florist that doesn’t exist in Huntington.  In fact they are located in 4201 Church St, suite 2, Mt Laurel, NJ.  They aren’t even a florist.

This bogus “florist” in NJ does this all over the US and Canada.  They are a well-known crook in our industry.

Verizon knows about them and does nothing.  No surprise here.

Do you think Yellowpages are reliable sources of local businesses?  Well, think again.

If you look for ‘Florists’ in ‘Huntington NY’ in yellowpages.com (AT&T), you will be presented with a list of 1,435 florists. We can safely tell you that our town doesn’t have 1,435 florists.  Who are they?  They are various businesses in Long Island and elsewhere who claim to serve Huntington NY.  OK, fair enough.

So let’s click on ‘distance’ tab, which is supposed to list only the florists physically located in Huntington.  Take a look (click).

You will see our listing and a few of our local competitors, fine.

But who are ’1StopFlorists’ ‘Floral Ftd Directory Information’ ‘Floral Teleflora Directory Information’ ‘Huntington Florist Concierge’ and so on?

They are bogus florists who don’t even exist in our town.

How did they manage to be listed in Huntington?  They purchased either 800/888 numbers or even local number (631) with bogus local addresses (let’s say 1234 main street). These companies do this, not only in Huntington, but everywhere in the US and Canada.

Many florists complain to yellowpages.com.  They ignored us.  As long as they earn ad revenues from these bogus florists who hurt local businesses, AT&T doesn’t care.

So, I would not trust Yellowpages.com.  If they allow this sort of practice for florists, I believe that there are many other similar bogus listings for other types of businesses.

“Local” listing?  What a joke.

A well-known dot-com flower company (whose name begins with a number) has been busy promoting “Free shipping or No Service Charge” ad campaign.

A misleading word play.  Here’s the truth…
Most consumers will not get what they might think they are getting: Free delivery of florists-delivered products.  Delivery charge is hidden and consumers still pay these charges.

What consumers don’t pay this time is a middleman’s commission called “Service Charge” which, if they call a local florist directly, they don’t have to pay in the first place.

Please see the chart below.

In this example, a consumer is sending a $40 bouquet.

If she calls a local florist directly (right column), she would be told how much her delivery charge would be ($10 in this example).  With sales tax, she would be paying a little over $54 in this example.

She would have to pay >$15 more if she went through .com flower companies.

Take a look at the left column.

First of all, her delivery charge would be “included” (meaning “hidden“) in the price listed in their web page.  It doesn’t matter which .com flower companies she goes (FT*, 1800*, or whatever, all the same).  Delivery charges are always hidden.

What does it mean?  Well, what it means is that, to order a $40 bouquet, she would have to order a $50 bouquet on their web ($40 plus $10 hidden delivery charge).

If she ordered a $40 bouquet, thinking that she is sending $40-worth of flowers, she will be disappointed….

Or not.  Because she won’t be seeing the flowers delivered, she won’t know how tiny her gorgeous “$40″ bouquet would look like, – the fact that these .com companies are fully taking advantage of.

Wait….  It actually gets even more interesting.

During checkput, they will charge her a “Service Change” (or “Handling Charge”), usually in the range of $12-15.  She would think this is a delivery charge.

Sorry, but she is wrong.

This “Service Charge” is a middleman’s commission that this .com company keeps in their pocket.  It has nothing to do with delivery fee.

All in all, she would end up paying $69.51 on their website, >$15 more than is necessary.  Isn’t this a rip-off?

We believe it is, and can be completely avoided if consumers call a local florist direct.  Virtually all of us have 1-800 numbers and many of us now have a website for you to place order online.

Maybe our site is a little more inconvenient than national .com flower websites.  But you don’t pay the middleman’s commission here!

What this national .com company is saying in this ad campaign is that, because they are afraid of losing sales, they will remove this middleman’s rip-off fee for the time being.

Should you jump onto this opportunity to take advanatge of this “free” offer?  We are not so sure about that.

If you’ve ever read our article on “Internet florist”, you already know that these guys are not florists. They just take your order and electronically transmit the order to a local florist for fulfillment and delivery. We real florists call them “Order Gatherers” or simply OG.

Some of them are called dOG, meaning deceptive OG. They usually masquerade as a local florist in a town that you are trying to send flowers to. Our town, Huntington, has many of those dOGs lurking in the search results of Google/Yahoo/Yellow Pages, some of whom are enshrined in our “Hall of Shame” list. We don’t fill for them. We do fill for other OGs (called hOGs or honest OGs), like FTD.com, FromYouFlowers.com (ProFlowers), etc. In many cases, however, distinction between hOG and dOG is not very clear.

The other day, our manager (Lori) got a call from one of those OGs. He had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He wanted us to make “a flower arrangement.” – “… well, OK, what kind of flower arrangement do you want us to make”, she asked. He said, “um… I dunno… there’s some purple thing in it.” “Purple thing?” “yeah… looks like purple to me.”
What are we supposed to do when an OG want us to deliver “a flower arrangement” with what looks like “some purple thing in it”? Obviously, we declined the order.

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.

According to Fox News Texas, a man is suing 1-800-flowers for a million dollars. He alleges that 1-800-flowers revealed to his wife a secret that he had sent a dozen red roses with a love note to another woman, and got into trouble as the result. Here’s the quote:

A Missouri City man is suing an online florist because they sent his wife a receipt for flowers he ordered – the problem is the flowers weren’t for her.

Red roses are supposed to symbolize love, passion, happiness and romance – but all that changes when your wife finds a receipt for flowers you sent to your girlfriend. [snip]

In April 2007, Greer, who was in the middle of a divorce, used the company website, 1800flowers.com, to order a dozen red roses and teddy bear for a woman who was not his wife.

According to Kennitra Foote, the attorney for Greer, “a couple months later 1800flowers sent a thank you card to his home and his wife who he was reconciling with saw the card and said who ordered flowers and why?”

After Mrs. Greer called the company, she was sent a copy of the receipt by fax along with the note he sent with the flowers and what he purchased.

The copy of the note included with the purchased items read “Just wanted to say I love you,” which was sent to the girlfriend.

After reading it, Mrs. Greer wrote her husband Leroy a note of her own [see the picture below] before refiling her divorce papers.

According to Leroy Greer, she decided to ask for more money. He told FOX 26 News that he “was gonna give her $150,000 and $4,000 a month in child support. She was satisfied with that.”

Mr. Greer said finding out about those $100 roses caused his wife to demand a $400,000 lump sum plus $6,000 a month in child and spousal support.”

Mrs. Greer declined the request to interview with FOX 26 News, but 1-800-FLOWERS sent a statement to FOX 26 that said:

“We take pride in creating relationships with our customers by recognizing and thanking them for their business. We take all matters relating to our customers seriously; however, we are not responsible for an individual’s personal conduct. Beyond this, it is the company’s policy not to comment on pending litigation and legal matters.”

Foote said “People are going to swing one way or another they’re gonna think he doesn’t deserve anything he just got busted he should just take it, but its more than just his reputation or him being an adulterer.”

According to Leroy Greer, it’s about his soured marriage. Greer is seeking more than one million dollars in damages.

• Flower Buzz in W. St. Paul, MN
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Basic facts about “(Flower) Order Gatherers”

“Order Gatherers” are the companies that advertise themselves as “Florists” on the Internet or local Yellowpage. They take flower orders through their websites or over the phone, which they subsequently wire out to the real florists in the destination city.

Perhaps the best known examples are 1-800-flowers.com and FTD.com, while there are hundreds, if not thousands, flower dot-com sites all over the Internet.

How do they make money? At least two ways. They earn:

1. So-called “Service fee” from the customer (which is usually about $10)
2. 20% commission from the florist to whom they send the order
3. In addition, some Order Gatherers further “skim” the order to steal additional markup (see “Example of Order Gathering…” in this blog)

While some “Order gatherers” are real florists, most are not florists.

Let’s say you want to order Sunflowers. You type in “Flower delivery” in Google and find flowerdelivery.com, which is one of many, many web sites run by JustFlowers.

You look for Sunflowers and here’s what you might like. A bit pricey, but the arrangement looks good for the money, if that’s what you will get (which you won’t as we will show below).

Now they say that’s $59.99. But if you click on a tiny link (pricing info), you will discover this disclaimer.

That’s right. The $59.99 “may” include what they call “handling fee.” In plain English, you won’t get $59.99 worth of flowers. Hmmm… whatever. Most people don’t really understand what this means anyway. They don’t want you to understand. So you just go on to checkout.

OK, let’s look at the final checkout screen. Look very very closely, before clicking on “Place Your Order.”

First, they added what they call “shipping and service fee” of $9.99. The total is now almost $70, not $59.99. Most Internet “florist” sites will charge this rip-off fee (we don’t).

Second, they devalued $7.20 from the value of flowers as “handling fee”, so the value of your Sunflower is now $52.79.

You know, Internet “florists” don’t make/deliver your flowers. They are telemarketers; they just send out this order to a real florist who fills the order for them. The amount they will transfer is $52.79, not $70 you paid. They just pocketed $9.99 “Service fee” and $7.20 “Handling fee” from your money. That’s their business, folks.

The florist who actually makes this arrangement is allowed to further subtract their delivery charge, a fact that JustFlowers chose not to disclose. The average delivery charge is about $7. This is not a rip off. The filling florists are allowed to deduct our delivery charge from the money we receive from another florist or a middleman.

Thus, after all those fees and charges, the money left for Sunflowers will be only about $45. That’s right. Imagine that, you pay $70 and get $45 flowers!

With only $45 left, our professional opinion is that it is highly unlikely that recipient of your Sunflowers will get the gorgeous 12+ Sunflowers shown in the picture. Instead, s/he will get probably only 6-8 stems depending on the season and locality. The scariest part is that, you most likely won’t find out about the smaller Sunflower arrangement, because you are sending it to someone else and you won’t see it yourself. Most recipients of gifts will say “How nice” to you as a matter of courtesy.

We at Flowers insolita believe this is a terrible, terrible deception that’s hurting our industry.

If you call a local, real florist, you will not be cheated like this. Please don’t go through a middle man. Go to Yahoo-local or Google-local instead, and look for local florists. Alternatively, you can just call us. We can take your order and send it to anywhere in the world, at no service charge.