FindaFlorist.com a scam?

Status
Not open for further replies.
F

flowershopgirl

New Member
Aug 31, 2007
7
3
0
Scottsdale
www.cactusflower.com
State / Prov
AZ
So we recently moved off of the Teleflora eFlorist platform onto our own platform (hooray!). I assumed that our FindaFlorist.com (Teleflora's online florist directory) listing would either come down, or the website link would be removed from our listing. We discovered yesterday that our shop was still listed when you searched our city, but a "View my storefront" had replaced "View my website". When you clicked on "View my storefront" you were sent to a cheesy Teleflora template site with just our company name in the header. The URL did not include our brand name or Teleflora ID, which made me wonder how they were giving us credit for the orders coming through that fake site? Hmmmm...

Has anyone else noticed this? Do you think it's a scam? I think it's a pretty lousy user experience for our customers who believe to be on our official website, and I strongly believe that we are not seeing these orders unless we are filling them as a filling florist.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
This has been discussed here, I think two years ago? Search "storefront" maybe .... It is a TOTAL scam; they gather orders using your name, and send them to you from TF.com, or possibly to another shop if you really want to be paranoid.

Absolutely call them and ask that they take down the site ... others here have done this, but I forget who. I want to say Eric, Everyday Flowers? I believe you can pay a premium price and have your shop linked, or have a non-linked listing for free.

hope that helps.
 
I'll let some others in your position tell their experiences...but...

I believe that in the past, there have been some others too that took down their TF site, but TF kept a page up...you can imagine how the orders (if any) they collect from these sites are transmitted...if in fact they are...
 
How do they get away with this stuff?

Last year, we noticed that they had a listing for our event business, which does not have an ecommerce site. We placed an order and had it delivered to ourselves (since we thought we'd be receiving the order anyway), and sure enough, our biggest competitor delivered the order a few days later. Not only was the order given to our competitor, but it was several days after the delivery date.

When we called Teleflora about it, we were told it was a mistake and they removed it immediately.

Now I'm certain it's no mistake!
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Yet another confirmation of order harvesting off the names of real florists. :( It sure looks like bait and switch.

I also spotted more OGs listed in FindaFlorist.com. The sick part is that Google Local appears to be using FAF as an authority site on local florists, so those listings are appearing as real local florists in the Google Ten Boxes. Can you spot the OGs on this page? How bout this one? (Looks like the link to the OGs site isn't working ATM.)

Flowershopgirl, they get away with this stuff because the resources aren't there to take them on ATM.
 
I called them and told them to take my name the fork off that site - and they did.

They're counting on the countless thousands of florists who aren't paying attention, and yes, those orders captured under your name are going to your competitors. Your customers looking for you are being horked by your competitors. There's several other sites that list florist names with no phone numbers - makes you go hmmm don't it?

They (TF) have as near as I can tell hundreds of thousands of doorway pages, and are in my opinion thousands or 10's of thousands of times more intrusive to all of us than a dozen wesley berrys or kay's.

They do thousands of orders a day.


These are the real problems and this is why Wesleys and Kays don't bother me much. (I've sent Wesley more orders than he's sent me AMOF and they are a good florist as far as I can tell)

I know

opinions vary...
 
Wesley Berry is a filling florist AND an d'OG ???????
 
flowershopgirl said:
When we called Teleflora about it, we were told it was a mistake and they removed it immediately.
Click to expand...
The only "mistake" is that they got caught....this IMO is blatant thievery.

bloomz said:
They (TF) have as near as I can tell hundreds of thousands of doorway pages, and are in my opinion thousands or 10's of thousands of times more intrusive to all of us than a dozen wesley berrys or kay's.

They do thousands of orders a day.


These are the real problems and this is why Wesleys and Kays don't bother me much. (I've sent Wesley more orders than he's sent me AMOF and they are a good florist as far as I can tell)
Click to expand...
Bloomz drank the Kool-Aid again.....:faint::wallhead:
 
RWK said:
Wesley Berry is a filling florist AND an d'OG ???????
Click to expand...
Yes they have a real shop - not all OG's are internet only ...
 
Chez chicken was very angry with TF

TF's findaflorist "view our storefront" was the reason I found flowerchat so long ago. When I saw our name on thier cheeseball storefront website, I was spitting mad and almost exploded with rage. I called and told them to take it off, they said no. I called again later, much calmer and simply told them I would be speaking to a lawyer. It was gone in two days. I never had a TF website to begin with and after 6 months of membership, I dropped them. And after 14 more months, they stopped sending me bogus bills. I quess they found some money elsewhere. :ssmoke
 
Oh HELLLLLLOOOOO NO! I just checked our zip code of 25313. We are the only flower shop in this zip code. Not only were we on the bottom of the list (because we don't have their crappy website) but we too have a fake storefront. We will be calling about this on Monday. This is complete doo doo.
Oh, I don't think so.......:soapbox: Hope they are prepared to fix this next week!
 
Of course they would bury it in small print! Who would want it? Especially when a shop is working hard on thier own unique website!
TF's deliberately confusing and ridiculus statements should be rolled and sent back to them in a tube for easy insertion.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Well, we contacted the webmater at Teleflora and asked them to remove the faux web-site. They responded saying that they have removed our "free" listing on find a florist and it will be gone tomorrow morning.

I explained to them that the listing on "Find a florist" wasn't the issue. The issue was that they created a fake web site leading customers to think they were ordering from our shop when, in fact, they were not.

I also went onto say that I certainly hope I don't find any other web sites with their shopping cart attached.

Boy that find a florist is most certainly a rip to those florist who choose not to play in TF sandbox.

There are certain things I do like about TF but this crap is not one of them. I also didn't appreciate getting a case of containers today that I didn't order. Oh what a fun Monday!!!!!
 
If you look at your statement you may even be paying for it. It was on ours for months after we took our site from them. " Non-member e-service fee" and it was 40.00 a month.
 
As far as I am concerned, this is not over. Today, the "storefront" is gone but so is our listing. We are the only florist in Cross Lanes and have been completely removed from FAF. Not even our name is listed. We asked them to remove the fake web-site not the entire listing.

We have contacted our TF representative and I was told that all orders placed through the "storefront" is supposed to go to that particular florist. She said that in order to find out why it went to another shop, they want specific names, etc to research it.

I don't see how anyone can make up a fake website and then fradulently obtain orders using your company name. Something is definitely amiss here.

Oh and by the way, when we told our TF rep that we have a web-site through someone else, she tried to sell us a TF website saying we could have more than one website. Why in the world would someone want to pay for more than one when all your information should be in one location?

And lastly, our TF rep said that the "technology" dept couldn't guarantee when our listing will be back on FAF without the fake site. WTF??
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back