Did you suspend your Mercury or Dove?

Did you suspend your Mercury or Dove this last week?

  • Yes

    Votes: 42 33.3%

  • No

    Votes: 84 66.7%
  • Total voters
    126
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3genflorist said:
We were frustrated with the number of recipe arrangements from the dove, had to reject some on saturday, it was annoying to spend the time rejecting, looking up recipes, finding the web numbers was a challenge, what ever happened to the good old days of selling the teleflora main specials? the ones we are hounded to purchase? Taking a look at saying by to Teleflora!
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Agreed. I took a quick count, and we rejected / refused nearly 30 orders from TEL HQ for low-ball orders last week. Low-ball defined as 34.99 TOTAL or lower.
Many were for that "Make A Wish" thing for a $30 TOTAL...

FTD.COM rejects were for coverage reasons mainly - very few $$ amount reasons.

- H.
 
I am proud to say that we suspended all wire services Saturday around 10:00AM (and stated so on the poll).

I have been in the flower business for 18 years. I have owned my own shop with a business partner since December, 2003. We are a 2 person flower shop with limited help (a part-time designer working one day a week and another part-time designer that works Saturdays when she isn't working her other full time job).

As a designer (and control freak) I do not hire temporary help with no design experience nor any temporary help that cannot effectively communicate with customers and extensive knowledge of flowers. I personally check every arrangement that leaves our shop.

I have worked every day for the past 6 weeks with only 1 day, yes 1 day off. My business partner and I have worked more hours than I can count last week.

If we cannot handle any additional orderss, we will suspend our wire services until we can. It is the professional thing to do in my opinion.

I had a situation during Valentine's day where I wired an order to a shop 2 days prior to the holiday. They accepted the order, delivered it after Vday and then had the nerve to delivery confirm on Vday when we knew darn well it was not delivered until 5pm the next day. We contacted the wire services and the rep told us it happens all the time. I couldn't believe that a so called florist screwed my customer and then left a paper trail verifying they lied. Our customer didn't have to pay for it but we spent 3 days getting this corrected and countless hours apologizing for the mishap.

So if you think that all florists who don't suspend are better preparers than others, think again.

Everyone needs to do whatever they need to do to run their business successfully. No need to put down others who have to run their business a different way than yourself.
 
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Flowerchatter03 said:
I am proud to say that we suspended all wire services Saturday around 10:00AM (and stated so on the poll).

I have been in the flower business for 18 years. I have owned my own shop with a business partner since December, 2003. We are a 2 person flower shop with limited help (a part-time designer working one day a week and another part-time designer that works Saturdays when she isn't working her other full time job).

As a designer (and control freak) I do not hire temporary help with no design experience nor any temporary help that cannot effectively communicate with customers and extensive knowledge of flowers. I personally check every arrangement that leaves our shop.

I have worked every day for the past 6 weeks with only 1 day, yes 1 day off. My business partner and I have worked more hours than I can count last week.

If we cannot handle any additional orderss, we will suspend our wire services until we can. It is the professional thing to do in my opinion.

I had a situation during Valentine's day where I wired an order to a shop 2 days prior to the holiday. They accepted the order, delivered it after Vday and then had the nerve to delivery confirm on Vday when we knew darn well it was not delivered until 5pm the next day. We contacted the wire services and the rep told us it happens all the time. I couldn't believe that a so called florist screwed my customer and then left a paper trail verifying they lied. Our customer didn't have to pay for it but we spent 3 days getting this corrected and countless hours apologizing for the mishap.

So if you think that all florists who don't suspend are better preparers than others, think again.

Everyone needs to do whatever they need to do to run their business successfully. No need to put down others who have to run their business a different way than yourself.
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Another great post!
 
Ya know...you ALL have some very valid points...and there are some not so valid ones too...

I don't see shutting down Merc or Dove on Friday night as a bad thing, it most likely means that your local capacity is reaching it's full point. With that, selection is generally limited, and talking to folks on the phone is a good way to make sure that 1) you will take the order, 2) that you have something both shops can agree on product wise and 3) that you will attempt delivery and agree to leave it if no ones home.

At the point of the last 8-12 business hours before the major holiday of the year, there are restrictions, no way around it. Talking on the phone eliminates that issue.

Technology is necessary in this industry, but at times it's not always the best choice especially at crunch time. Thats the reason we gave out other shops numbers Friday afternoon and all day Saturday...yes I lost some bucks, but I got rid of many more head aches...

That's my $0.03....ya'll play nice now...ya hear!
 
BOSS said:
Thats the reason we gave out other shops numbers Friday afternoon and all day Saturday...yes I lost some bucks, but I got rid of many more head aches...
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We did as well, people were grateful.

800flowers told customers there were no florists in our area accepting orders after friday - I had a nice chat with that customer, who was very very grateful we could still send flowers for her....she bookmarked our site while we were still talking, so she could call direct from now on ...
 
I suspended my dove on saturday. Had too, I had to take care of the orders I already had. (small shop, just me & Mom) I also didn't send out any orders on Saturday, I know better. I had my customers call the shops directly.
BTW as it was explained to me by TFHQ you can put "blocks" on certain shops meaning you go in to maintanance and put in that shop's code number as a shop you do not want to get orders from. But I was told That does NOT mean it blocks those orders. They get a message on their screen stating that I do not wish to recieve their orders but they can ignore that and still send the order.
For me it has worked well, I do not get dove orders from the OG scum that I used to. I went in and blocked as many as I had code #'s for.
I will occassionally get an order from TF HQ (yes they are on my DO NOT RECIEVE list) that I in turn reject. (sorry I can't see why any REAL flower shop would just send it to HQ. if I am listed )

Jennifer
 
BOSS said:
Ya know...you ALL have some very valid points...and there are some not so valid ones too...

I don't see shutting down Merc or Dove on Friday night as a bad thing, it most likely means that your local capacity is reaching it's full point. With that, selection is generally limited, and talking to folks on the phone is a good way to make sure that 1) you will take the order, 2) that you have something both shops can agree on product wise and 3) that you will attempt delivery and agree to leave it if no ones home.

At the point of the last 8-12 business hours before the major holiday of the year, there are restrictions, no way around it. Talking on the phone eliminates that issue.

Technology is necessary in this industry, but at times it's not always the best choice especially at crunch time. Thats the reason we gave out other shops numbers Friday afternoon and all day Saturday...yes I lost some bucks, but I got rid of many more head aches...

That's my $0.03....ya'll play nice now...ya hear!
Click to expand...


AND SO IT"S BEEN SAID !
Thanks BOSS
 
I did not suspend my daisy system at all. I was taking any calls for delivery until 4 p.m. sat then the calls for delivery went to sunday. I was expecting calls on sunday and worked till 4 p.m.
All orders I had to do was filled and delivered except 4 where there was no one home all weekend and that was confirmed today when they call for their delivery.

Now with that said, I had staff answering the phone from thursday on. Some where serving customers in the store and had 2 designers going steady.

I find that if I stay all night friday night and wrap all of my orders for Sat, We can service more customers the following day and I can co-ordinate my deliveries better. The delivery aspect is my job on Sat. I work with three delivery guys and we do well over 220 deliveries.

I came in at 4 am friday morning and left sat night at 6p.m. By staying all night it eliminates staff pressure to wrap well over 75 orders on sat and serving customers. It also help us know what we have left to be sold on sat. This way we eliminate product sold several time.
It is a long shift. 38 hours but it is only one day a year that I do this. Well 2, I do it also at valentine.

You work at our pace, you can do a better job than being rushed to do the job.

I think if more smaller store took the time to look at their operation they also can elminate lots of the smaller problem they occur during Mother's Day week.
The payroll is almost triple at mothers day but I can do lots more.
At least I won't have anybody coming in my store on monday looking for their mothers day arr because they ran out of flowers or time like the other florist did in our town. The stories I can tell about her would make your toes curl.

THe one thing I still have a trouble understanding is the amount of orders we still get on Monday because people forgot. How they can foget with the amount of advertising, talk on radio, tv paper etc.
On Sunday alone from 9 am till4 I made over $2,000.00 in sales. We did not offically open our door from 11 till4 but was answering the phone at 9am.
Opening on Sunday is saving souls....
Glad it is over.
Luc
 
suspend

I did not suspend my daisy system at all. I was taking any calls for delivery until 4 p.m. sat then the calls for delivery went to sunday. I was expecting calls on sunday and worked till 4 p.m.
All orders I had to do was filled and delivered except 4 where there was no one home all weekend and that was confirmed today when they call for their delivery.

Now with that said, I had staff answering the phone from thursday on. Some where serving customers in the store and had 2 designers going steady.

I find that if I stay all night friday night and wrap all of my orders for Sat, We can service more customers the following day and I can co-ordinate my deliveries better. The delivery aspect is my job on Sat. I work with three delivery guys and we do well over 220 deliveries.

I came in at 4 am friday morning and left sat night at 6p.m. By staying all night it eliminates staff pressure to wrap well over 75 orders on sat and serving customers. It also help us know what we have left to be sold on sat. This way we eliminate product sold several time.
It is a long shift. 38 hours but it is only one day a year that I do this. Well 2, I do it also at valentine.

You work at our pace, you can do a better job than being rushed to do the job.

I think if more smaller store took the time to look at their operation they also can elminate lots of the smaller problem they occur during Mother's Day week.
The payroll is almost triple at mothers day but I can do lots more.
At least I won't have anybody coming in my store on monday looking for their mothers day arr because they ran out of flowers or time like the other florist did in our town. The stories I can tell about her would make your toes curl.

THe one thing I still have a trouble understanding is the amount of orders we still get on Monday because people forgot. How they can foget with the amount of advertising, talk on radio, tv paper etc.
On Sunday alone from 9 am till4 I made over $2,000.00 in sales. We did not offically open our door from 11 till4 but was answering the phone at 9am.
Opening on Sunday is saving souls....
Glad it is over.
Luc
 
Learning from past experience we suspended our system about 11:30AM Saturday to better handle walk-in clients and telephone calls. It has always been better that way, I rarely refuse another shop that telephones an order on the AM of holiday weekend. The OG's were alive and well, unfortunately.
 
unfortunately......JB

we didn't suspend FTD. So we got a late order (on Monday) for a Mother's Day gift. It was rejected by the recipient, even tho it exceeded any and all FTD requirements. We made a mistake...trying to play by the rules. What will you say about that JB?????
 
We had a total of 9 wireins from real florist and keep the dove on all the way through. Average wire in $70.00. I guess thats what happens when you have a $50 min and 9.00 for delivery. So I will take a guess and say that all those so called "Tustin Orders" where below our min since we where at the top of the list for Tustin.

Wire outs where up big time with a $89.00 average. I think I can get use to that with all those new TF web images we where using.

FU flowers really started to piss me off with $40 to $55 orders that included chocolates and balloons and delivery. WTF. The rejection on these orders where time consuming and I don't thinks its right that they did not respect our min and expected us to forward them for them. By the way I didn't forward any of them unless it was a real florist. But most of them where from FU and I don't think my fellow tustin florist would of appreciated us forwarding that crap.

I saw that Cathy was having the same problems and I will bet that there was a filling florist in the area that where rejecting orders and forwarding them to her. Not very nice!!!

I just loved the fact that our website was going crazy and customers where really going out of their way and ordering big time. I mean we had some crazy big orders with customers really looking for that perfect gift of flowers. Shoot we even delivered our citrus celebration to a number of moms this year at a $175.00 each.

So you can do two things. You can run all over the place delivering $35 orders with free delivery or you can go after the quality orders and do what we all wanted to do going into this business.

Design!!

Good to hear that everyone kick some butt.
 
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I SAID AMEN!!!!

We had the same problem to as you and Cathy did Eric. I tell ya it drives me crazy!!
 
avenuegardensflorist said:
....Ryan. Is this possible on flowerchat?

Red dots administered anonymously? If so I would think transparency would be more fair. Can that be done?
Click to expand...




...I guess that red dot ?you? just gave me was my windshield hitting your bug, Mr/Mrs anonymous.:jester



No wonder the lurkers lay low.
 
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mvf said:
BTW as it was explained to me by TFHQ you can put "blocks" on certain shops meaning you go in to maintanance and put in that shop's code number as a shop you do not want to get orders from. But I was told That does NOT mean it blocks those orders. They get a message on their screen stating that I do not wish to recieve their orders but they
Jennifer
Click to expand...

I told Tel to block from you flowers. Since I did this I have not gotten one order. If you get an order from a shop that told you not to send then you should do nothing. Let them monitor there orders. Better yet they should be fined for every order they send you.
My Merc and dove were on the whole holiday including Sunday. Perhaps the industry needs to make it more worth while at holiday time to get florist to fill orders. Wave the sending penalty and reverse the rebate.
 
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David said:
Perhaps the industry needs to make it more worth while at holiday time to get florist to fill orders. Wave the sending penalty and reverse the rebate.
Click to expand...
I agree...but....

Opinions do vary :)
 
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