800flowers and their "new" pricing system

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It will come down to this....They are hping the florist will believe the story that it will be adjusted at the end of the month but we all know it won't be unless it is adjusted right away by a price change.

I can see 1-800 pulling wool over our eyes again.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 1-800 orders here.

Why can't they let the florist get their own orders instead of trying to generate orders for us. It must be because of the other monies they get....service fee, rebate etc.

Luc
 
I also get 1800 orders through the dove. However, their under priced arrangements no longer fly at my shop. I price out their arrangements to what they are worth and ask for that much. Most of the time it is anywhere between $20 more and double the money. Sometimes we get it, and sometimes we don't.
When they call I tell them I price it out correctly and that is the reason for the price request.
I tell them they have 2 choices, one is to send me the correct money, two is to send me a designer's choice order. I explain to them what designer's choice means because most of the cs reps have no clue.

We get some orders and we don't get some orders. But I say we WIN ALL of them. We can't win on ANY order we do for undervalue.
 
Don't ever fall for that "just fill it to value" deal - that's a complaint and reputation smear just looking for a place to land.
 
I got the same order yesterday ...I actually found the order around midnight when I got in...so I fired back a message to be ahead of the morning game.... told them that the price with the ballon was x amount of dollars and del to that area was x amount of dollars....send me the price increase or cancel....I got two PC printouts back with the same price saying heres the price increase you requested have a great day....I fired one back said ...no...you sent me the same price twice and now you have missed the deliveries to that area for today...mind you I sent them the first message back at midnight ....now at 10 the next morning still has wrong price.... TWICE about 5 minutes later I got one back with the correct price but no comment on the next day del so I CALLED them...told the gal what happened...if it was not ok for next day to cancel...she ok'd next day...got her name and her employee id.....also told her this is why FLORISTS hate wire services...way to much time for way tooooo small of an order.....got one from ftd this morning for 29.99 ..for the F806...dramland pink...6 pink med stem roses and 8 stems of alstro arranged in a glass cube..hmmm let me add that up minimally 6 times 3 buck = 18.00 plus 8 times 2.50 = 20.00...now add the cube vase and the labor and the delivery....to an address 15 minutes oneway?? I do not have any idea how they think??? THEY DON'T!!!
thanks for letting me air it out.....
 
still ranting...lol....what do we have to do to get their attention and fix this prob...we need wire service but we don't need them......we all just need to start those call direct orders....I am all about it.....whewww think I am done
 
update, last night they re sent the same message

"fill the order and we will credit your account....."

This am I said, no change the dollar amount to the regular price and give me $7.00 for delivery.

Hour later, I got the price change and the $7 delivery.

so, i got what i wanted.

joe
 
Joe, I am not real sure about how they would propse that you would get your full amount when going through the TF system.....

I do know that when we reconcile we do get the correct amount when they absorb their promo...but this is through their accounting not from theirs through TF...I cannot see how that would work and you would be right to dispute or question that....

Good for you in standing by your guns and getting what you need...
 
Joe Mioux said:
okay, but how do you account for this order in my POS?

When we reconcile our monthly statement, we will not balance with this order.

also, I am not a member of 800flowers.

this came in via Dove/TF.
Click to expand...

Refuse it. I was beginning to wonder WHY you would be a member of 800...

BOSS said:
Maybe 800F expects TF to cough up the dif...??

Cough...cough
Click to expand...

Now THAT's funny. The only thing TF is gonna cough up is a hair ball.

Another example of 800 undercutting the flower shop, and trying to collect the orders FIRST. Yea, others do it too, but none as masterfully as 800.

- H.

"Be Bloomlink, but say NO to filling 800..."
 
Makes you wonder how many they slide by FWOAC's huh?

I'm sure it is significant.
 
Why does Teleflora accept orders from 1-800?

The real question here is why does Teleflora accept orders from 1-800? They try to say they are better than all the other wire services... then why accept orders from them other than to pad their own pockets?

If you don't like 1-800 just refuse the order. AND tell your Teleflora Rep that you won't accept orders from them and that Teleflora shouldn't either!!!
 
coppercountryflowers said:
The real question here is why does Teleflora accept orders from 1-800? They try to say they are better than all the other wire services... then why accept orders from them other than to pad their own pockets?

If you don't like 1-800 just refuse the order. AND tell your Teleflora Rep that you won't accept orders from them and that Teleflora shouldn't either!!!
Click to expand...

The reason why 800 sends via TF/Dove and FTD/Mercury is because they need the distribution network. A long time ago, TF sued FTD to gain access to Mercury it is a long story. Suffice it to say OWS's got access to Merc and later 800 got access to Dove. 800 was (probably still is) TF's and FTD's largest sender. It means big bucks for TF and FTD for 800 to send via Dove and Merc.

Bloomnet isn't there yet and there are no 800flower/bloomnet members in this area.

Let me be crystal clear.

They sent me a TF/dove price adjustment. As long as I have that new price recorded via TF the order is good!

This was not a promise to pay me the difference, they sent the actual Dove Price Adjustment.

joe
 
coppercountryflowers said:
The real question here is why does Teleflora accept orders from 1-800?
Click to expand...
It's all about volume through their network... remember "most" florists base the value of a wire service on the number of orders they get sent in, not on what they send out. TF allows 800 to send through them to gain the volume, and 800 uses TF because they do not have coverage in some areas.

coppercountryflowers said:
They [TF] try to say they are better than all the other wire services...
Click to expand...
They can say that...does not make it so! Teleflora does not do anything different than the other 2, except not showing direct ship items on their flower site, but they have affiliates that handle that for them far as I know...
 
Joe Mioux said:
The reason why 800 sends via TF/Dove and FTD/Mercury is because they need the distribution network. A long time ago, TF sued FTD to gain access to Mercury it is a long story. Suffice it to say OWS's got access to Merc and later 800 got access to Dove. 800 was (probably still is) TF's and FTD's largest sender. It means big bucks for TF and FTD for 800 to send via Dove and Merc.

Bloomnet isn't there yet and there are no 800flower/bloomnet members in this area.

Let me be crystal clear.

They sent me a TF/dove price adjustment. As long as I have that new price recorded via TF the order is good!

This was not a promise to pay me the difference, they sent the actual Dove Price Adjustment.

joe
Click to expand...
I don't mind spending the time figuring out the real amount I need for an order, requesting the price increase from 800-flowers, JustFlowers, SimonSays, etc., on the chance that we will receive the full amount requested...most of the time...BUT when we're busy at holidays and the printer is spitting out the orders I simply DON'T have time to waste so I end up refusing them. If I can I forward them to another shop, I will, so there is no charge for rejecting the order.... I also let SimonSays know that we will "confirm delivery" if and when we have time. They get around the charge for the confirmation by sending the request as an "ASK" message. We don't have the big bucks to hire someone to sit there and send out delivery confirmations!
 
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Nothing personal, but I think sending delivery confirmations is just simply Professional Order Handling and totally in the best interests of our industry.

I'm a proponent of mandatory same day delivery confirmations, as in, no decon, no payment. Not 2 or 3 days later, same day. what do they take, an extra 30 seconds per order for the driver to check them in? This is not "big bucks to hire someone".

800 is more advanced in this area, monetizing decons - I wish FTD would catch up and pass them by making them mandatory in order to get paid for the order.

We'd have way happier consumers if we could confirm every delivery just like the drop ship gift sites can and do. This is one area where we are behind the ball.

We also request them on every outgoing order and we provide them on every incoming order happily, as the driver checks in the trip.

This is something MAS started that is spreading among the other software providers, finally, about 5 years later.

It's simply good service.
 
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I just received a bad reputation dot so I want to explain a bit further. We DO provide delivery confirmations when another flower shop or sender asks BUT we don't have the time, or the extra person at hand, to sit at the computer and send delivery confirmations for every order. Verbal confirmation takes much less time. In my experience as a shop owner for five years, most designers (here at least) don't even know how to use a computer! Sad, I know, but reality....
 
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Teach your driver how to send them - it only takes about 30 seconds or so.

Nobody has to "sit at the computer" unless you're doing 500 deliveries a day or so.
 
To continue - we also dealt with that designers not using computers - until we bought one and took away the order pads.

It's very easy, you'll find way way way easier to take orders this way, and when it's part of the job, well, they will learn it.

Been there done that - they learned it in 2 days - don't let them tell you they can't.

Another dose of reality is - I think without a POS system, most shops days are numbered and they will go out of business - because the public now demands the level of service now that is impossible to provide without a POS system.

Getting one is the greatest smartest investment we have ever made into our business, and not to offend, but without one, how can a shop be a professional florist? We spent 8 years searching thru paper orders trying to service customers and looking like klutzes. Now we have all order details in front of us in 5 seconds that used to make us have to call them back.

I really believe we would have never grown to dominance in our area but for the fact that we moved on getting one years before anyone else. We had to borrow $10,000 from our Father to get our first one. Our business has easily tripled since then.

Both of the two shops that folded here in the last few years didn't have one, and it was like taking candy from babies to hork their customers from them.

Just trying to be helpful.....Get a computer/POS as if your (shop's) life depends on it.

Cuz it does.
 
I have top of the line computers and use FloristWare - have been since 2005. Thanks for your advice.... We are a small medium-size shop in a town of just 12,000 people. Finding good designers (or people that are eager to learn) is difficult enough here; demanding they learn how to use the computer is futile. They'd just quit. The delivery person is a contract guy, and believe me he's in and out as fast as he can go, so can't expect him to do our grunt work. I (or now the new owner) can only do so much!
 
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