the FTD "Quality Star" program hoax

[bloomz]

Jon, Wondering what your thoughts are on the star program, and the effort to keep track of rejects? Do you think this will come into play for a shop of your volume? Or not so much, because you do so much sending? ~Melissa

Melissa honestly I give a crap less what they think of my number of rejects - this one is a stupid idea.

I remember how Tom Meola used to court florists to fill his skim by calling his site PFN for Preferrred Florist Network.

I hope I'm a bit smarter than to let them work my ego that way.

Now if it went out to the public it would be a different, fighting matter.

Our MAS system already keeps track of all rejects right when you pull a florist up, and that's a help for us to rate florists. I understand why they have it internally, but to try to publish it to florists is nothing but some kind of dumbassss psychological manipulative ploy.

and no I don't think it will have any bearing whatsoever on who we send orders to, except possibly in reverse of what they intend, since discerning smart florists (who know when to reject) are the ones I WANT filling our orders.

AFAIK it has absolutely nothing to do with quality and everything to do with brains.

Tho I haven't seen it yet - It's a total backfire in my book, and an insult to my intelligence.


Opinionz??? open to comment

 

[goldfish]

I understand why they have it internally, but to try to publish it to florists is nothing but some kind of dumbassss psychological manipulative ploy.

I don't think they will publish their star rating. No need to.

But I think FTD will introduce a monetary incentive to reward "star" FTD florists, so that its members would want to become one of the "star" florists. For example, FTD can reduce monthly fees for "star" members.

Less rejects -> you get Star rating -> you pay less monthly fees. Sort of like "filler's rebate."

It won't affect bigger florists, because it doesn't matter to them. But it will affect the behavior of a lot of small, filling florists desperately trying to cut costs. They will start rejecting less and filling more orders.

FTD can use that extra revenue to finance the incentive program for "star" florists. They need more reliable fillers and this is how they can achieve that goal.

I'm pretty sure this is what will happen. It makes so much sense (to them).