The Flower Club - When Their Site Works, It's Great
Written: May 11 '03
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Preamble
Every Mother's Day, I make sure to send flowers, fruit baskets, and/or candy to a select group of women in my life. I've tried many of the other online flower services and when Continental Airlines aligned themselves with The Flower Club, I was definitely interested in earning some extra frequent flyer miles.
Who Is The Flower Club?
The Flower Club is a company of florists who have networked together (since 1993) in order to arrange and deliver top notch floral arrangements. How they differ from your FTD group is that they have strategically aligned themselves with several Fortune 500 companies including Airlines, Department Stores, and Banks. Their web site is located here: http://www.flowerclub.com
What The Flower Club Offers
Like their main competitor, FTD, you'll find a large selection of floral arrangements, plants, gift baskets, balloons, and candy. Their prices seem to run on the high side - but not any higher than their main competitors.
The Web Site Experience
The web site is supposed to be available 24/7 but I can tell you that it is not. See "my experiences" for more details on that.
The home page of The Flower Club is just what you would expect it - 2/3's of the page is filled with colorful floral arrangements. On the right side is a menu of choices you can navigate to. If you want something for a special occasion, mother's day, birthdays, a new baby, etc...The Flower Club has their arrangements broken out into these various categories.
Your other options of searching include by price and by keyword.
All of the pages are fast loading and the actual photographs used are gorgeous.
Each product offered shows a picture of the arrangement, a description of what you get, the price, an option to make the arrangement bulkier (more flowers), and an option to add on balloons, candy, and/or stuffed animals.
If you're unclear about their policies on delivery, there's a pop-up reminder for you to review.
And speaking of "delivery", The Flower Club charges you a flat $9.95 fee for each arrangement that you order through the internet.
As long as you order by noon EST, you will be guaranteed same day delivery (excluding Sundays and holidays). If you want to send your flowers internationally, you'll be charged an additional $15.00 for it to be wired over.
When you get ready to place your order, The Flower Club insists that you create an account. The nice thing about this is that they will store the "important" dates and names of people (and addresses) of where you send the flowers so that presumably, you can come back next year and whizz through the entire process. They send reminders a couple of weeks before the date so that you can get out there and purchase in time.
The Flower Club accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover/NOVUS, Diner's Club, Carte Blanche. Sales tax is added for a select number of states: Arkansas, California, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Every floral online service has an out that they publish - they have the right to substitute should certain flowers not be available. The Flower Club is no exception.
Other Interesting Parts of the Web Site
Ever wondered what each flower name was and what they meant? The Flower Club provides a nice picture of each individual flower, the name of the flower, and what the flower symbolizes. In addition, they give you some helpful hints on how to make your flowers look nicer and last longer.
My Experience
The first time that I went in to order, it was a Saturday night. I took care of finding every thing I wanted, placed it in my shopping cart, and then filled out the information on who should receive which gift and when. I was at the last gate - I had entered my credit card number and was ready to get on with life. Instead of going through, like it should have, it came back and told me that there was a problem with my credit card. This, of course, shocked me! I put in a different credit card number and it gave me the same error message. That's when I knew it was THEIR issue and not mine.
I wrote to customer service and Monday morning, they emailed me back asking for more information. After that, I never heard back from them. I did go back and go through the entire process again. This time, it did take my credit card.
Because it was the first time I had ordered from The Flower Club, I was concerned about the quality of the flowers. I wanted them to look just as nice as they did on their web site. I wasn't disappointed. All flowers and gift baskets arrived by the exact date promised. All recipients were pleased with the freshness of flowers, fruit, and chocolates.
I have ordered from other online floral services and have gotten crap before so the fact that I got quality - well that made me VERY happy :).
So, despite my one aggravating experience with the web site, and the one lack of follow-through from customer service, I was pleased with the overall products offered and delivered. Next year, I will go to their web site first to try and order. There's no guarantees I'll be back though if they don't fix whatever's broken in the whole availability thingie :).
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Flowers, Fruit Baskets
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Epinions.com ID:
kristinafh
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Member: Kristina Frazier-Henry
Location: Indiana
Reviews written: 1344
Trusted by: 1169 members
About Me:
Cannot breathe. Missing Barbara.
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