Well, I did it. As of July 31, I will be free of Teleflora. I started this process in April. They did some things to entice me to stay. I got 2 free months (membership and dove) to stay on thru Mother's Day, and they offered combined membership and dove for 99.00 going forward AND offered to cut my website fee from 80.00 to 40.00 per month. The 7% clearinghouse fee, 1.50 fee per dove order and 3.45 fee per web order remain. I think their offers are a nice start, but they don't address the real problems. I told my rep if they could do it the way Flower Shop Network does it, I would stay on, but that isn't going to happen, at least not in the near future. In some ways I find it hard to leave TF, because of all the big 3 they have done the most to help the florist. IMHO, they haven't done enough. I have to keep reminding myself that even though I receive about $22000 per year in volume, it costs me about 20% in pure overhead, plus 27% in fees and commissions to get that business, or about 10,300.00. What's the point? I hate to see my gross sales drop that much, but as I told my rep if I can't make money doing it, I shouldn't do it. To those who have already gone thru this transition, how did it affect you?
