Teleflora & AARP
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BOSS
FlowerChat Administrator
Here's a copy of the press release
I'm sure the retirement community based florists, especially the ones in Florida, are all happy to hear about this deal.
Wonder how many local florist customers will now order through AARP to get 20% off? Shoppers over 50 years of age are the most likely to buy from local florists.
I'm sure the retirement community based florists, especially the ones in Florida, are all happy to hear about this deal.
Ted-
Yes, Teleflora will 'eat' the 20% discount, as is done with other partner discounts and Teleflora.com discounts. We think AARP will be a great partner to drive additional orders.
-N.
Yes, Teleflora will 'eat' the 20% discount, as is done with other partner discounts and Teleflora.com discounts. We think AARP will be a great partner to drive additional orders.
-N.
Sorry to ask this again, Nicole, but I didn't get an answer last time: Why doesn't Teleflora "eat" delivery charges through teleflora.com generated orders? As I said before I placed an order back in Feb. There was no delivery charge to me (the customer) and no delivery $ was passed onto the florist either.
Dorothy-
I really don't quite get the question, as you say that the customer wasn't charged a delivery fee in the first place... with the discounts, a charge is displayed but then discounted. We can't pay for something that wasn't charged.
I really don't quite get the question, as you say that the customer wasn't charged a delivery fee in the first place... with the discounts, a charge is displayed but then discounted. We can't pay for something that wasn't charged.
Hi Nicole, thanks for answering. My question is: even though Teleflora.com lured the customer (me) by saying "no delivery" Teleflora still knows that the filling florist has to charge for delivery. So, the filling florist has to take the delivery charge out of the amount sent to them, which was only the amount of the arrangement. I just don't get why TF does this and also does not inform the filling florist that no delivery amount is included in the total sent. In effect, TF is expecting the filling florist to deliver the arrangement to full value without compensating for the delivery. Does that make better sense?
Perhaps I can put it into better terms Nicole......
I go to Teleflora.com and place an order for an arrangement. ( You advertise Free Delivery ).
Ok....the arrangement I choose has a 50.00 price. You add in a shipping charge, a service charge, appropriate taxes. For the sake of illustration....The total cost on my credit card is 65.00
Ok......Now we turn to the filling florist.
You transmit the order for 50.00......not 50.00 PLUS the shipping, or the service charge, or any other fee. I, the filling florist have 50.00 to work with.
Out of that 50.00 I have to deduct a ten dollar delivery fee leaving 40.00 for me to arrange the flowers as ordered.
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What we are asking is for YOU, TELEFLORA.COM, to give us additional monies in an order IN ORDER TO COVER DELIVERY CHARGES.
I go to Teleflora.com and place an order for an arrangement. ( You advertise Free Delivery ).
Ok....the arrangement I choose has a 50.00 price. You add in a shipping charge, a service charge, appropriate taxes. For the sake of illustration....The total cost on my credit card is 65.00
Ok......Now we turn to the filling florist.
You transmit the order for 50.00......not 50.00 PLUS the shipping, or the service charge, or any other fee. I, the filling florist have 50.00 to work with.
Out of that 50.00 I have to deduct a ten dollar delivery fee leaving 40.00 for me to arrange the flowers as ordered.
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What we are asking is for YOU, TELEFLORA.COM, to give us additional monies in an order IN ORDER TO COVER DELIVERY CHARGES.
BOSS
FlowerChat Administrator
But in reality they (and any other wire service) only send $36.50 in WS wampum (TOTOism) so then, minus the $10.. real dollar delivery charge the filler fool only get's $26.50 to deliver a $50.00 design...
Nicole, the real issue it, TF (and the rest) are collecting a delivery/service fee up to $14.95 or more and keeping it all for themselves... it's a scam.
This is a perfect example of corporate double talk, especially the part about "drive additional orders". These will not be additional orders in the purest sense of it. The orders will actually be orders that would have gone to a florist in the first place, but now will go to a florist discounted.
The winner in this AARP deal is Teleflora. The loser is the florist. The will see their core customer market be cut into and have the priviledge of paying dues and fees to see their very own orders come to them discounted
Teleflora is really great. Make the florist pay to get order from the core consumer and accept a discounted on top of it.
And the crux of the matter is........I don't believe Nicole or Anda will answer us as to why they keep all the additional fees and do not send monies to cover the delivery charge.
When we send an order, we are expected to send a total amount - which is enough to fill the order AS REQUESTED AND TO HANDLE THE DELIVERY CHARGE. We simply want you to do the same thing.
So, this is a challenge call - Which one of you is going to be brave enough to step up to the plate and tell us why you do not include monies for delivery to us - your FILLING shop members?
When we send an order, we are expected to send a total amount - which is enough to fill the order AS REQUESTED AND TO HANDLE THE DELIVERY CHARGE. We simply want you to do the same thing.
So, this is a challenge call - Which one of you is going to be brave enough to step up to the plate and tell us why you do not include monies for delivery to us - your FILLING shop members?
BOSS
FlowerChat Administrator
Everyone, let's not shoot the messenger because we don't like the message. Nicole and Anda do not make, and I doubt have any input into Teleflora policy.
While I would hope they would carry these messages to the "powers that be" at Teleflora, the best method to make a (yours, mine, our) point is to not fill *company generated orders*.<period
Rhonda
Well-Known Member
I agree, Nicole and Anda are not the problem, nor can they solve the problems we feel are holding us hostage. They can listen...hopefully give feedback where warranted....
lori042499
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All of the orders have the delivery charge figured into them....just like ftd and bloomnet....there is a 7.99(I think) delivery built into the prices on tf.com, the same reason most real local florists sell a 50.00 arrangement with their service fee and send that 50.00 along to me without a delivery fee...the florist just expects the delivery to come out of the total...poor customer just doesn't see it coming...at least with a website they can see what they are supposed to get...not just some imaginary fact and figure and hope for the best..
lori042499
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This is the actual crux of the matter....There are only so many "floral" orders the world has to offer up....20 years ago they all went to florists, then the grocery stores cut in, then the big box stores took a piece...then the order gatherers were created so that the WS could show the florists the orders that they could "generate", but in all actuallity it was just order shifting from 100% biz to discounted, then the WS themselves got into order gathering....
Maybe what we should all do is drop WS orders all together and give a 20% off blanket coupon to all and market our own stuff...heck we could afford to give all customers the 20% off if we can afford to give them 27% off plus fees....you know TF says they don't compete against us, but they do in all actuality because all the orders were at one time florist orders....now they just hide behind the fact that they save the orders from going to another WS and claim to be competeting with ftd and bloomnet for us the real florist...It is all hogwash, WS never should have gotten into the order gathering game ever it is at best a conflict of interests...
lori042499
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OK I just want to get the the facts straight about WS orders as they are...
First fact is that WS orders were never meant to be 100% orders..They have always been and always will be discounted...that is not the broken part of WS...it worked before without a big problem...
Second fact is that WS orders are sent as a total always...and always have been and the delivery has always been taken from them...
Third fact...we are under no obligation to fill any arrangement that comes our way that cannot be filled as pictured for the money given...noone forces us, we have the choice to pass it on or fill it...this is not TF, FTD, Bloomnet, or FYF problem, they sell it, we either fill it or pass on it...
Fourth fact, there are really only so many floral orders in the world and every non-florist broker getting in the game just shifts the profit structure further in the toilet...this includes anyone who does not actively fill any orders....TF, FTD, FYF all of you make the profit shift unequal and are what is driving the industry to ruin...like it or not...you are not generating any orders for anyone but your own company...
Fifth fact, the most profit driving information to get is the senders info...it is the only info worth anything, the best place to be is the first one in line to gather the info, the only people profiting the true profit are these people, if we understood this years ago, we may not have lost this place and now we need to try harder to get it back...
These are really the only things that matter when we talk about our industry and how it is failing....it is failing us because somewhere we lost what the important things were, we thought it was the orders, but it was the info...we let the info go and ultimately lost the profit in the orders...our bad....our big bad...now to get it back takes more knowledge and money than most of us possess....a big giant catch 22 as I see it!!!
First fact is that WS orders were never meant to be 100% orders..They have always been and always will be discounted...that is not the broken part of WS...it worked before without a big problem...
Second fact is that WS orders are sent as a total always...and always have been and the delivery has always been taken from them...
Third fact...we are under no obligation to fill any arrangement that comes our way that cannot be filled as pictured for the money given...noone forces us, we have the choice to pass it on or fill it...this is not TF, FTD, Bloomnet, or FYF problem, they sell it, we either fill it or pass on it...
Fourth fact, there are really only so many floral orders in the world and every non-florist broker getting in the game just shifts the profit structure further in the toilet...this includes anyone who does not actively fill any orders....TF, FTD, FYF all of you make the profit shift unequal and are what is driving the industry to ruin...like it or not...you are not generating any orders for anyone but your own company...
Fifth fact, the most profit driving information to get is the senders info...it is the only info worth anything, the best place to be is the first one in line to gather the info, the only people profiting the true profit are these people, if we understood this years ago, we may not have lost this place and now we need to try harder to get it back...
These are really the only things that matter when we talk about our industry and how it is failing....it is failing us because somewhere we lost what the important things were, we thought it was the orders, but it was the info...we let the info go and ultimately lost the profit in the orders...our bad....our big bad...now to get it back takes more knowledge and money than most of us possess....a big giant catch 22 as I see it!!!
So, what I've learned is that about a year ago, the way bouquet prices were shown online changed. The service fee was rolled in to the overall bouquet price to be more streamlined for consumers. As a result, we also don't break out the value of the delivery fee when sending to shops. When any discount is made on Teleflora.com, Teleflora covers the difference between the bouquet value sent along to the florist and any monies discounted to the consumer. Since delivery fee is now part of the overall value of the bouquet, that's not displayed separately when sent to a shop but the money is included.
I hope that makes sense, I explained it the best I could with the short tutorial I was given this morning.
I hope that makes sense, I explained it the best I could with the short tutorial I was given this morning.
BOSS
FlowerChat Administrator
I just want to take a minute and thank Teleflora, and Nicole and Anda personally for at least having the gut's to battle it out in our hostile neighborhood!
Teleflora will go on record as being the ONLY wire service to take an active roll in the FlowerChat community... Kudo's for at least listening.
Yes Nicole, the delivery is included in web pricing. BUT, (and thats a big BUTT) the truth is it actually takes a delivery charge of $11.25 or so to translate into an effective $7.99 *real money* delivery charge. Most florists I know do not discount delivery, and remove the actual cost, it's only fair. A $7.99 delivery charge transltes to $5.84 in ws wampum, with most florists charging $9.95 and more in real dollars...
See the issue?
Teleflora will go on record as being the ONLY wire service to take an active roll in the FlowerChat community... Kudo's for at least listening.
Yes Nicole, the delivery is included in web pricing. BUT, (and thats a big BUTT) the truth is it actually takes a delivery charge of $11.25 or so to translate into an effective $7.99 *real money* delivery charge. Most florists I know do not discount delivery, and remove the actual cost, it's only fair. A $7.99 delivery charge transltes to $5.84 in ws wampum, with most florists charging $9.95 and more in real dollars...
See the issue?
steve
Well-Known Member
Let me add a more to what Mark just said. The fact remains that all the wire services drasticly under value the price of the arrangement so even before you rolled the delivery in the arrangement in most cases was not correctly priced based on what we pay per stem for the flowers to fill it and that by its self is a huge issue.
I do see the issue. Delivery fees are something we hear about frequently and the best I can offer up is that we determine delivery as an average of the delivery cost for all of the florists in the network, meaning it's going to be too low $$ for some and actually a profit area for others.
We've discussed using technology to capture delivery fees that are more fair for the florists (based on zip code, some customers pay more for delivery, etc.). However, we believe that since the majority of florists want higher # of incoming orders and we fear that having such a sliding scale would confuse purchasers and drive them away from ordering, we don't think it's worth implementing (it would cause more problems than it solves).
We do investigate these types of issues, especially as more technology becomes available to ease just these kinds of issues. Unfortunately, the stars have to be in just the right alignment to be worth such a large-scale change and, to date, we haven't believed that anything would solve the problem of delivery $$ without driving away a much higher $$ value in overall orders to florists.
Thanks for sticking with us and letting us try to get to the root of things! I do assure you, we're open to change but with such a huge network it takes quite a lot to be able to prove value in changes (making us seem slow as molasses or deaf/dumb/blind).
We've discussed using technology to capture delivery fees that are more fair for the florists (based on zip code, some customers pay more for delivery, etc.). However, we believe that since the majority of florists want higher # of incoming orders and we fear that having such a sliding scale would confuse purchasers and drive them away from ordering, we don't think it's worth implementing (it would cause more problems than it solves).
We do investigate these types of issues, especially as more technology becomes available to ease just these kinds of issues. Unfortunately, the stars have to be in just the right alignment to be worth such a large-scale change and, to date, we haven't believed that anything would solve the problem of delivery $$ without driving away a much higher $$ value in overall orders to florists.
Thanks for sticking with us and letting us try to get to the root of things! I do assure you, we're open to change but with such a huge network it takes quite a lot to be able to prove value in changes (making us seem slow as molasses or deaf/dumb/blind).
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