Teleflora misses two deliveries, delivers wrong order
Written: May 23 '11
|
| Full Review |
This year I ordered flowers for Mother's Day from Teleflora. I put off the order a little too long so I had to pay extra to have them delivered on Saturday. When I called my mother on Sunday she didn't mention anything about the flowers, so I asked and found out that they had never arrived. So on Monday I called Teleflora to find out what happened. The rep called the shop and reported back that the shop had been out of the particular arrangement I had ordered, and that my order had then "slipped through the cracks." There was no apology or any even embarrassment. She just stated this like it was an every day occurrence then waited for me to speak.
So I told her that I'd like to have the flowers delivered (they had charged my card already... I had checked that) and that I wanted a refund for the service charge and delivery fee (especially since I had paid extra for a rush). She refused to waive the fee. Pretty standard front line CSBS, so I asked to speak with her supervisor.
The supervisor immediately agreed to waive the fee and have the flowers delivered the next day (Tuesday). Having a bad feeling, I got her name (Shannon), and asked for her extension. She said that she was the only supervisor at the special number she had given me, and to call and ask for her if I had any problems.
So Tuesday comes and goes. No flowers. I call on Wednesday and ask for Shannon, and the rep that answers the phone responds, "There's no Shannon that works here." I tell her Shannon had been helping me and gave me this number and said to ask for her if I had a problem. "We have several different locations. There's no Shannon here, I don't have an extension list, and I can't transfer you even if I did have her extension." Very helpful. So I asked to speak with her supervisor, and explained the whole thing over again. This supervisor was very pleasant and nice. The flowers still had not left the shop, so she agreed to upgrade the bouquet and have them delivered the next day. I asked that rep to call me the next day and either confirm that the flowers had been delivered, or tell me why they had missed a third delivery. She agreed to follow up with me the next day.
Well the flowers did finally arrive, after missing two delivery dates, 5 days late. Amber never did call me to confirm their delivery, although I did get what appeared to me an automated email confirmation. My parents said the guy who dropped the flowers off had said that Teleflora had gotten completely overwhelmed that weekend and had messed up a ton of orders: ours wasn't the only one. I wanted to see what kind of upgrade Teleflora had given them, so I asked my parents to snap a few pix and email them to me. Not only had Teleflora not upgraded the bouquet, but the bouquet they sent was SUBSTANTIALLY SMALLER and of LOWER QUALITY than the one I originally paid for! It didn't even come close to matching the picture!
So I called Teleflora again. I asked for the supervisor I had last spoken with, and again was told by the rep that answered they didn't know who she was. So I explained the whole situation again, and this time asked for a full refund. He put me on hold to find out about the refund.
When he came back on the line, he said, "We can give you a refund. We'll arrange for someone to go pick up the flowers."
"Well that won't work," I told him. "They were a gift."
"That's the only way we can give you a refund."
"OK, I'll just contest the charge with American Express," I responded.
The rep was very pleasant through the conversation, and we said goodbye and hung up.
Now here's the kicker: later that day I got a form email from Teleflora asking me to write a review of my experience with them for their site. "OK," I thought, "perfect." I filled out the form honestly, explaining all the problems I had, just as I have done here. I have them a 1-star rating: the lowest possible. The page said that all reviews are screened before they are posted (specifically, for language and mentions of competitors, which are not allowed, and which I didn't do) and then the reviews will be up in 3-5 days. Well, it's been ten days now, and while other positive reviews have been posted from the same day I submitted mine, my negative review has not. In fact, there is not a SINGLE review of the bouquet that is under 4 stars. Out of over 280 reviews!
Now censorship irritates me even more than the less-than-stellar service I had received from Teleflora. And THEY were the ones who asked ME to write the review. I went to the trouble to do it, and to conform to their standards, only to find that they refuse to publish reviews with less than four stars? For the first time in this whole fiasco of an order, I was actually finally p.o'd.
On the up side, I had learned how to order flowers. First, go to Teleflora.com and pick out the bouquet you want. Next, go to Google Maps. Type in the recipient's address and click "Search Maps." When the map loads, erase the recipient's address from the search box and type "flowers." Click on "Search Maps" again. You now get a list of local, independent, small business florists located near your recipient. Many of them even have reviews. Reviews that aren't censored.
When you call there's no wait time, and you get to talk to a live person who is usually very helpful (and cheerful since they're surrounded by flowers as opposed to sitting in a dark cubicle). And often this person is even the person who will actually make the arrangement. Tell them which bouquet you want and they can go to Teleflora's site and replicate it, most probably better than Teleflora would if you ordered it through them in the first place. And you can take the money you would have been paying for an inflated order-processing fee (whose only value-added is crappy d-bag call center "service" anyway... and is a fee which, incidentally, you never hear about until you're on the final checkout page having already taken the time to enter address information, gift card info, and payment info!)... and you can use that money instead to add even more flowers to the arrangement.
That's how you order flowers for delivery.
Incidentally, after I wrote the review that you've just read, I decided to send it to Teleflora before publishing it and give them one final chance to make this right. I told them they could put together whatever they thought was a fair resolution to my experience, and I would end the review with their response. Here's what happened:
A rep from Teleflora called me back fairly quickly. He apologized for my inconvenience, and said Teleflora would like very much to have me back as a customer. He asked me what resolution I would like from them, but I thought that was pretty clear in my letter so I didn't re-iterate it. He offered me a 50% off coupon code for my next order, which I declined. When asked why my original review wasn't published on their site, he said he did not know, but he agreed with me that it was fairly "weird" that there were no reviews less than four stars. We said goodbye, and hung up. Oh, Teleflora, I so shall miss you.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
About the Author
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
|
