1800 flowers ARRGGHHHH

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jbarb

jbarb

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Oct 31, 2002
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I'm normally pretty good about filtering out the 1800.com orders but with all the extra stuff going on this week, one of their orders slipped throught the cracks. I have a new designer this week and she did not ask, she just filled the order and sent it out the door.
This afternoon this woman comes stomping in with the flowers in hand. " My daughter would not have ordered these!! they look like funeral flowers!" Oy was she cranked up. We got her calmed down and replaced the flowers with an FTD M1 arrangement.
Well I can tell you after this, I'm having a little chat with 1800.com and telling them that from this moment on any orders coming in from them will go in the trash can unfilled.
Obviously there were other issues with this woman and her daughter. She actually thought her daughter came in and ordered the flowers from us and that we did not fill the order the way we should have. When I explained to her that her daughter ordered the flowers on the internet and that we just fill the order as it came in, and that her daughter should be ordering flowers from a real florist instead of a discount OG she got red in the face.

Personally I can't imagine ever complaining about flowers that I recieved. If they were poor quality or something sure, but that was not even an issue. She was all primed for a fight about how much her daughter spent on her flowers. Well I got the order out and showed her that her daughter sent her a $35 arrangement. That pretty much stopped that .

Anyway, I guess there is always going to be one....
 
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I am still amaze that they ae stil in business..they must have a horeshoe up their butttttttttttttttttttttt.
Luc
 
Um Jim

I would have also, explained to her, that her daughter probably spent 55.00+++ and showed her the check ot screen on 800s web site !

The truth shal set them free:eek:
 
I was so sick of the Butterfly basket that I shut off my merc.
I was so tired of no second choice....so tired of wrong addresses and the card messages?? OMG.....Love, John and Becky, James and Elizabeth John and Rebecca duh. We had so many of their oders all week where the send was typed in twice, that we just wrote the card out as they sent it just to field complaints. Before we suspended the merc to avoid their orders.
 
Why are you filling orders for 800Flowers?
By the time you straighten out their mistakes and buy their products and fill them for their prices that they set... you would be better off to not fill them.
We used to fill them and when we stopped we dropped two designers and ended up makeing more money. They made money at 800Flowers and our designers made money.
We broke even. We are not in the business to make friends and help designers, we are in the business to make some money ourselves
 
I tried not to grin too broadly when one of my employees told me that a lady came into our shop yesterday to say, "I made the mistake of ordering flowers from 1800Flowers for Valentines, and they were never delivered. I'll know to never do that again. Will you help me send flowers to my daughter?"
Naturally the employee took the order and explained that we always give better service than any of those OG, and she explained why. Trying to educate the public at every opportunity.
 
Connie Baker said:
Trying to educate the public at every opportunity.
Click to expand...

You raise another good point Connie...we should not forget to educate our employees too...
 
It's from almost 2 yrs ago. FlowerMike just recently replied.

Ryan
 
That policy you threatened of "trashing their orders" should be a standard policy with every local florist for every order gatherer who markets directly to the local florist's market through any media. And that is especially true if they use any medium of advertising to imply that THEY are a local florist in your market . . . as almost ALL of them do in one form or another in one medium or another.

I personally think that is the only hope of fixing this problem. If they're sending orders out and they're not getting delivered and they've got no way of giving customers an answer on why THEIR store has messed up because receiving florists won't even respond to their inquiries on the orders, both their credibility and their ability to continue to do business will soon disappear.

It's not a pretty way of doing business and there is the admitted possibility of short-term harm to the entire industry while real florists are cleaning up this problem with this method, but I think the long term effect will be very good for the industry, if it works. Particularly if we could get some publicity about a "florist revolution" to protect OUR CUSTOMERS from a scourge and scam perpetuated and supported by both of the BIG 2 WIRE SERVICES.
 
PhillyPhlorist said:
Check out the date of the orig. post...09/05/03???? Is this from Mother's day???? Or, am I in some type of time warp....

?????????????????????????

- H.
Click to expand...

A few years ago when I first visited the FTD message board I used to go way back and respond to older posts. I had no clue that was unusual. I loved reading all the posts no matter how old they were and responding to the ones that interested me. Hero told me that most people don't go back that far and I thanked him for informing me of that. BUT...

this message board is different. I am thrilled that some newcomers and perhaps not so new-comers are bringing up older threads that interest them.

It's also possible they never looked at the dates I suppose. I guess we just have to look at the dates now before we respond to something that might be a couple years old. No biggie, right!
 
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atta girl Patty....

and you are right...time has no meaning here..it's ALWAYS a good time to bring up old posts, old ideas, and re-kindle threads!!
FlowerMike is becoming a force to reckon with in these parts...
 
No problem... what day is it again? ;)

V
 
This is where I again challenge people to take back the customers - not lose the orders. If an OG is sending you an order you've already lost the customer. Chances are they were looking for someone in your area and DIDN"T FIND YOU.

Yes, the skimmers and OGs are nasty, lying, deceptive baby-eaters, but the fact remains their basic lie is always this: "Order from us, your local florist." They can do this because the local florist is nowhere to be found. You want to take back your market? Be the first one to the customer, be the one the customer remembers, provide the best service to the customers you have, encourage them to "tell a friend."

In the end, the Big 2 facilitate ORDER TRANSFER. Yes, the have an OG component to each of them, but at least FTD & TF market their own sites based on brand and product. By facilitating order transfer they make sure Person A's order gets to Person B and that Person B gets paid. Good service to have. It's not their fault that Person B didn't market themselves well enough and now is hanging around the Mercury waiting for incoming orders like Barney from the Simpsons hovering near a dripping beer tap.

Get back the customers - out market the OG's, or don't market at all, take the incoming orders and allocate at least part of the commission expense as your ad budget.

Ryan
 
Infinite said:
Yes, the skimmers and OGs are nasty, lying, deceptive baby-eaters, but the fact remains their basic lie is always this: "Order from us, your local florist." They can do this because the local florist is nowhere to be found.
Click to expand...
Lack of investment in quality marketing is definitely a problem for many florists. The days of buying just YP and WS directory ads are long, long gone. But truly, there are two issues at play here.

Competing with deception

For those of us that do online marketing, competing with flat-out lies is most frustrating. We track effectiveness of ad campaigns and experience serious drops in orders and traffic when OG's target our keywords with claims like "local florist" and "free delivery".

In Adwords (Google's pay-per-click program) the use of dynamic titles, where large OG's opt to have the city name and the word 'florist' automatically inserted in their ads depending on the search - makes them appear to be local brick & mortar companies. Couple that with the newest fad where OG's insert 'local florist' in their text and consumers now have every reason to be confused. (We have the 'success of Vancouver' to 'thank' for making this new tactic so popular.)

Couple this with the lack of clear location identifying information, the mislabeling of 'service charges' as shipping or delivery fees, the failure to clearly explain that an estimated delivery charge is included in the price and that the amount of flowers shown may be reduced by the local florist to offset actual charges and I believe a strong case can be made for 'systematic unfair marketing practices'.

Most of these orders are wired to local florists with a second choice of 'similar as possible' because the selling agents don't want to hassle with
1) calling around to find a local florist that can actually fill the order as it was presented to the consumer.
2) coughing up the $ to have the order made and delivered after underpricing it in the first place.

I believe they also prey on the fact that the sender rarely sees the delivered product.

A few simple steps to get more traffic to your website

1) If you use a WS template (and even if you don't), make sure to include your local phone number and address on at least the home page and the 'About Us' page.

2) Make sure your 'About Us' page contains unique text about your company, the cities you directly service and your business hours, and includes photos of the shop's exterior and/or interior. The search engines see sites using boiler plate templates as lacking unique content and often just ignore them or place them at the bottom of the pile.

3) Primarily focus on selling from photos of your own work. Search engines love it since the products are unique - and will give your site 'credit' for being different than the pack.

4) Visually demonstrate, via your site, your specialties. I can't begin to tell you how many sites I've seen that say 'we specializie in weddings' that include absolutely no photos of their own work.

5) Add informational text. This can include tips, specials, news or anthing you think relevant about your store. Ever wish you could tell all your customers about something cool you're doing? You can - easily - on your site.

6) Keep your content fresh. Update your home page and product selections. The search engines give a lot of credit to new content (articles, products.)

7) Get inbound links. The more sites that link into yours, the more 'credit' you get from search engines. If you have not added your site to http://realflorists.flowerchat.com/index.php/a?cat=3 , do so today. We got a bump from page 2 to page 1 of Google's SERPs for our city within a day or two after being added to that list. (You won't go from last page to first just on this one link, but you will probably get a boost.) Also, cough up a few $ and list yourselves in directories with links that get spidered by the search engines.

8) Explore the different marketing vehicles - Online YP's, pay-per-clicks, paid directories, etc... Before sending any $ to anyone, ask other florists for feedback about the programs here in FlowerChat or other BBs. Everything won't work for everyone, but some of the programs work for no one but the programs' owners.

9) Learn about web marketing or find a good SEO to outsource the work to. Your future depends on it.

Ryan said
Get back the customers - out market the OG's, or don't market at all, take the incoming orders and allocate at least part of the commission expense as your ad budget.
Click to expand...
I whole-heartedly agree!
 
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