Teleflora 24 hour answering service.

K

Ken

New Member
Mar 17, 2004
125
23
0
Greenwood
www.theflowermarket.com
State / Prov
Indiana
We have had two customers insist that they called our telephone number after hours and reached Teleflora’s 24 hour service. Our shop did not receive the orders. The customer is upset because the flowers were not delivered. The customer checked his charge card and the charge was placed by “Say it with Flowers”. We tried to explain that we did not receive the order and of course he is insisting that we did.
I hope that he actually mistakenly dialed a “boiler room operation” from the website and that Teleflora is not giving our order away. Teleflora 24 hour cannot check without confirmation # and he did not write the number down.
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
 
Ken, If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's a duck. I heard of this story prior to you especially from the website end.
 
No I haven't had that happen but I can say that their service sort of sucks.
 
Ken, I would advise the customer to call his charge card company and have them resolve this, tell him to dispute the charge. They will find the contact info for the company that actually charged his card. Did both of these customers have the same "Say it with flowers" charge?

See if you can get these customers to provide you with the phone number they get from their charge card companies and do a little sleuthing. Do you have the TF answering service for after hours?

I googled say it with flowers and found three completely different companies that use that name, in North Carolina, Florida, and an order gatherer.
 
I wasn't going to go into detail on this issue, but I'm about to wet myself. Last year or the year before while speaking at Southern Retail, I asked a florist who I knew was coming to the show to do a test for me. I told her that I always test the OG and Ws and I've learned many marketing tricks from them. She agreed. The main reason I swtiched from a WS (phone and web service) was because of stories like yours.

My test florist had all her features (website and phone) from one of the WS. I asked her on Wednesday before the show to send herself flowers to her home address and place the order through her website after 11pm at night. I asked her to be vague about how she heard about the shop and other qestions. She did and flowers we're recieved the next day at 5pm. She was so suprised as the main reason I asked her to do it.

I asked her, how long did it take for them to start marketing you away from your own store?..................

She replied, "12 hours".....................I rest my case on web and phone services. If anyone else besides you can read your info or talk to YOUR customer, then they are fishing in your pond. I'm just say'in
 
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I received two calls yesterday from Teleflora's 24 hour answering service asking me to sign up for it. I told them that I didn't need that service even if it was available at no charge (ha). I have an answering machine that can do the job for me. The telemarketer was quite adamant that I avail myself of their service... 80% of the people won't leave a message....whatever! I hung up on him.
 
Rick's scenario is all too true. All wires tell the florist they do not collect data, but as his test orders, and the ones we did 5-6 years ago show, the wires DO in fact collect YOUR CUSTOMERS DATA when you have a wire service website....

A little more on Ken's phantom florist... Say it with Flowers WEBSITE looks like TF images to me...

And here's an interesting little thingy... 300,000+ results for the same address as taken from the above website, they seem to have Hundreds of various URLs.

The URL's are hidden ownership... but... this is who owns them: http://www.corporationwiki.com/Arkansas/Fort-Smith/w-c-m-investments-inc-5173292.aspx

THIS is him too, and if I remember right, he crossed my desk via Linked In within the last couple months....

I'd be holding Teleflora's feet to the fire on this one...
 
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Petals said:
I received two calls yesterday from Teleflora's 24 hour answering service asking me to sign up for it. I told them that I didn't need that service even if it was available at no charge (ha). I have an answering machine that can do the job for me. The telemarketer was quite adamant that I avail myself of their service... 80% of the people won't leave a message....whatever! I hung up on him.
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interesting numbers.. I have call display and a machine and so far most people will leave a call back request after hours. and I have been known to call those who don't leave a message and say "you tried to reach AFAC after hours. " Then they place the order.
 
When I dropped FTD, who was doing our after hours answering at the time I think it was $1 per call or so, I looked into TF's service and was appalled at what they charged. That's when I went to voice mail, which I like a lot more. I can change the message often and I direct them to our web site if they want to place an order when we are closed. I would not trust them with my customers period.
 
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I had not even considered that they would steal or redirect customers like that, I would have thought that after all these years I would not be so nieve when it comes to the Wire services...all the more reason to pull together and be done with them!!! As far as after hours phones what we have decided to do, should be ready for Mothers day week, is this: I wanted a smart phone but not the big commitment and price per month, none of us like loosing orders after hours although we do get a lot of after hours orders on our website. So our phones will be forwarded to my new phone courtesy of the shop. This may not work for everyone and I can choose to not answer and check the message or return the call later if nessecary, but it works for me. We currently do not have an anwering machine or anything.
 
I have a great 24 hrs flowers horror story...I used to have them when I first opened, In April, I was closed on Patriot's day, 24 horu had the memo...I had been grooming two companies to start using my shop, it took me 3 presentations, a few trips with shop swag and flowers sent to the receptionists to get them even interested in changing florists...Both of these companies called that Monday that I was closed and wanted to order flowers, the service told them I was out on lunch and I would call them back...I get in Tuesday and see these messages and blow my stack, glad I had the messages as proof...I then call the companies to explain that I was actually closed and to apologize for the inconvenience, blah, blah, blah...Then I was told that at 3pm one of the companies called back and was told that I left for the day and that I must not have bothered to call them back...I lost that potential client and had to assure the other client that it would never happen again and gave them my personal cell phone..I did get that other account and it turned out to be a 4000.00 a year account...I can only imagine the other would have been similar it was a large drs office with 6 drs that would all have been using me...Tf offered to send an apology letter, I told them no and that they had done enough damage and that I wanted compensation for the lost account....hahaha..Didn't get that, so I cancelled as I was going to anyway, and have been forwarding the phones to my cell ever since...I used to get complaints all the time from customers...Tests that I performed proved that after 8 pm my customers wouold wait on hold and average of 3 minutes to speak to someone when they could order from the web in that time...the card messages were always botched because of language barrier and the consistantly sold things that I instructed them not to sell, like specifics from the site and I became a mediator between what the customer wanted and what the sales person sold them....because people were used to my style and even if they asked for a mixed vase, the service would pick something from my site and it would just be very different than what the consumer was expection...

I got many bad addresses, spelling was atrocious and noone liked that foreight speaking people were answering my phones made them leary...not a good fit for my shop, my style, my standards or my area....
 
I have the shop phone forwarded to my cell after hours.

I started this about 3 months ago. Usually I get about 4 or 5 calls per week, and I've estimated that up until now I've gotten at least $4000 worth of extra business because of it.

If I'm busy, I just don't answer the call, and it goes to the voicemail on my phone.
 
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Sabrinas said:
.............We currently do not have an anwering machine or anything.
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You will be very suprised at thes sales results if you have an answering machine in place. Then tell them that you are open 24 hours a day at www.sabrinasflorists or another website. That $100 answering maching will be the most profitable employee you have. Yes, 1/3 will hang up for no live operator, but that number is slowly growing, people are understanding how to buy after hours. That is jsut another sales path that you can provide for MD, we all need all the sales paths we can...........................
 
I don't use Flowers all hours or anything else, but IF they are using contact information gathered from your website or your shop to market to your customers, you have a lawsuit. You actually have a pretty big lawsuit if you get a hungry lawyer who will contact florists across the country to get them involved. I know that I have seen TF company literature where they state that they do NOT use that info for themselves.

I am not one for frivolous litigation, but big corporations only listen when it hits their bottom line. This has class action breach of contract (possibly something much worse) written all over it.
 
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I ended the 24 hours service today. They are unbelieveable dumbasses. I think just about every order they took was drama. I've had it. I will go back to forwarding to the shop cell phone after hours.
 
shannonlovesflowers said:
I ended the 24 hours service today. They are unbelieveable dumbasses. I think just about every order they took was drama. I've had it. I will go back to forwarding to the shop cell phone after hours.
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i can't forward to my cell i never remember to turn it on!
 
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