Being fair on incoming wire orders...

[Doug Munro]

Just one last thought on this.... (yeah right....lol)

As consumers how many of us could see the justification in a store publishing a price for a dozen roses, excepting orders and payment from customers , and then delivering only 10 stems using the logic that they could not make money at the agreed upon price.

This in a nutshell is exactly what is occurring when a shop accepts an incoming wire order then under-fills it.

 

[anytimeflowers]

Brushing aside all of the arguments something like this statement engenders, (My name is Linda and I'm a recovering whiner) this is exactly a correct analogy.

 

[retro]

I am down to only FSN, and I get few wire ins which is fine by me. I use it to do wire outs for my corporate accts. But when I do get a wire-in say for $50, I deduct my delivery fee if any and send that value. I realize I'm only getting 80% but I am still making a profit. I consider it professional courtesy! I once had a florist call me and demand more $, she said once she took out her delivery fee and the 20% there was not enough left. Excuse me, that's skimming in my book. I sent the order to someone else.

 

[Flowermomma]

I am down to only FSN, and I get few wire ins which is fine by me. I use it to do wire outs for my corporate accts. But when I do get a wire-in say for $50, I deduct my delivery fee if any and send that value. I realize I'm only getting 80% but I am still making a profit. I consider it professional courtesy! I once had a florist call me and demand more $, she said once she took out her delivery fee and the 20% there was not enough left. Excuse me, that's skimming in my book. I sent the order to someone else.

I to am down to FSN I use it to send to the states and overseas.
I find many shops I call directed here in Canda offer me a 10% rebate for sending to them... but i don't ask for that.. I do the sending as a courtesy for my corp accounts and older customers. yes i charge them a sending fee and they know up front they could call themselves.

 

[lori042499]

I am down to only FSN, and I get few wire ins which is fine by me. I use it to do wire outs for my corporate accts. But when I do get a wire-in say for $50, I deduct my delivery fee if any and send that value. I realize I'm only getting 80% but I am still making a profit. I consider it professional courtesy! I once had a florist call me and demand more $, she said once she took out her delivery fee and the 20% there was not enough left. Excuse me, that's skimming in my book. I sent the order to someone else.

I would have sent it to another florist too...Skimming in my book is way worse than any og trick or deception of consumers...Skimming is a whole different animal..Order gathering is a marketing thing, lies or fabrications are made up everyday to get us to like or purchase from companies...coffee is coffee, but a starbucks coffee sounds better because a barista makes it and it is organically grown and no animals were harmed in its harvesting and the farms are responsible to its wrokers, blah blah blah...if you really believe all that who ha you are nuts...and panera bread freshly picks their strawberries at the peak of the season fresh at the farm washes them and cuts them just for your salad...those strawberries come in the same plastic cases you get in the grocery store....I don't like that brokers use our credentials to get our customers, I don't like that they trick people into believeing they are in our state, but that is onle one way to get orders, it isn't illegal and it isn't agains the rules of wire service engagement and we are free to do it too...but skimming off the 20% that you signed a contract to provide full value now that is theft, it is immoral and it is against the ws rules...and it is probably being done the most from all the florists who are killing themsleves to fill over 50% of their gross for these companies yet complaining that they cant make any money on their orders..They are probably the same folks who regularly call for a boycott of ws orders and to hold the orders hostage until the sender can't get it filled to teach them a lesson....it is so silly, I belonged to many of these kinds of operations my whole career and now to me it is so silly, when the answer all along was, if you cannot fill the order don't accept it..If a particular company constantly sends you rediculous requests and immpossible orders don't fill anything for them....there is nothing that says you have to and then finally if you have no use for the service or find a better or cheaper means to and end with another service just do it...stop with the silly games and trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear or trying to reinvent the wheel...

 

[flst4evr]

I once had a florist call me and demand more $, she said once she took out her delivery fee and the 20% there was not enough left. Excuse me, that's skimming in my book. I sent the order to someone else.[/QUOTE]
Skimming is a polite way to say stealing.

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

I once had a florist call me and demand more $, she said once she took out her delivery fee and the 20% there was not enough left. Excuse me, that's skimming in my book. I sent the order to someone else.

Skimming is a polite way to say stealing.[/QUOTE]
To be "fair",in the "old days", shops tried to "balance" incoming and outgoing, so that, being a member, meant that you had convenience of sending, AND the "expectations" of receiving!
Younger florists have NO concept of the balance that was built into the system, and NOW, join for "incoming" THEN they beatch about the costs involved!!...thus, "skimming" was invented!
The advent of the online order thieves, just exasperated the imbalance of in/out, and shops probably quietly decided to try and extract a little extra for themselves, and NOW, it's gotten WAY out of hand!!
I think it was prudent to to report AND take that shop out of your "send to" list, AND, I also believe that "occasionally" we ARE ALL guilty of doing what you say happened.....we too, have rarely had enough of the nonsense of a particular day, and decided to "challenge" the validity of an order that appears out of whack, for WHATEVER reason!

 

[Johan]

In the UK it was at one time stated by all the WS that you could not be a member of any other WS - you signed up with one and that was it. If a owner had more than one shop they would have each shop in a different WS but if they ran the shops as one company they would get removed from one of the services.
Now it is abit different. Some WS have sending only options for members or like what I use. You just OG for them and don't pay any fees, just claim the rewards. I have to say I don't really agree with this but I just use it as a service for my customers and what I claim goes towards paying my own shops website bills which work out much cheaper each month even after paying for e-commerce charges and hosting etc. And it brings me in about 40% of my work either over the web or the phone.
I hope you can get out of this 'contract' and follow the great advice here.

 

[Johan]

Thank you to everyone who responded to my post. I can see it makes more sense to just do away with the wire services, but I don't think i'm ready to take the leap. I fear (as most of you probably did before deciding to deal with the florist direct), that I will start to see a decline in business. We fill alot of incoming BN orders, not as many TF orders as I had hoped, especially with 2 store locations.

I also try to keep a positive attitude that these orders that I fill will lead to new customers and future business. But, will it really?

Anyway, thanks again for all your input. Hopefully soon, I will be joining the ranks of fellow florist with no wire services. I may just take the plunge and get rid of Doomnet and Floral Scortch, but I still have financing with TF for the new Dove POS system I had to purchase for the new store location. Ugghh! What was I thinking when I decided to open a 2nd location??? I must be crazy!

I read an artical in one of my trade magazines and it was about ' should you stay in a WS or not'. It seemed on most parts that as long as you had a great e-commerce site you may loose orders but you made much more profit overall. One company even after lossing thousands of pounds worth of incoming orders didn't have to loose staff and profits shot up.

It convinced me.