Truth and Accuracy in the Advertising of Floral Products

Would you sign the petition/letter to WS executives?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 84 94.4%

  • No.

    Votes: 5 5.6%
  • Total voters
    89
  • Poll closed .
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ogs and ws

i am not sure what we are trying to get across here about the ogs and the ws. There are so many issues to address here: The dishonest fee collection, the offers of free products and free delivery, the idea that the sender is being dealt with by a business who's goal is to provide a quality product and be a contribution to their industry and their community, the fact that the very organizations that were designed to establish a standard for our industry have now turned their backs on the independent businesses that helped to build those companies , that these companies continue to assess us fees and charge us monthly membership dues when their association with the og are sucking the lifeblood out of the floral industry, the fact that the ws still fine us for low sending when they are in bed with the very companies that are taking these orders from us, the fact that they charge a fee to send us and order and cancel said order, etc, etc. etc
How any florist could not see that being a member of a ws is like having an abusive spouse but paying them for the abuse is beyond me.
ask your wire service rep they will tell you that these companies generate a lot of orders. An order that comes to me for a dozen roses in a vase for 39.99 including delivery is not an order, it is an insult. even just refusing all incoming orders from og is a good start.
i will be free of all this nonsense very soon and will focus on my own site and collecting my own orders. This way i will be able to provide the quality service and product i feel i owe my customers.
 
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Cathy, there has been something bothering me about your letter all along.

I think, I know what it is now.

First, the letter in its present form and sent to the wire services is fine.

The WS suits will probably ignore it.

Second, sending it to the FTC, Attorney Generals of certain states or to a federal or state congressional committee will be ignored for reasons you have already stated.

The missing link is that your letter does not show how the consumer is harmed. How many millions of dollars are wasted on service/delivery fees/and sales taxes that never reaach its intended business or its states department of revenue?

Actual lost dollars to cosumers need to be shown and explained so the bureaucrats and politicians notice.

If you can't show a link between the dogs and ogs harming the North American consumer and show actual dollars I think you will have a hard time convincing any regulator or politicians to act.

(for those of you who think this is a criticism, it isn't and Cathy knows me well enough to know this post is a genuine suggestion and not a criticism)

Joe
 
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Ok....
So back to Cathy's original premise (many posts ago) that:

we show the FTC, Attorney Generals, etc HOW TO FOLLOW THE MONEY,
WITH EXAMPLES, PICTURES, CC RECEIPTS, ETC.

Extrapolate these individual instances to the order volume of TF.Com, FTD.com, 1-800, PF and many others, to give the watchdogs the grand overview of how big this mess really, really is!!

The numbers are HUGE.....we all know it.....no-one else does, because it's always rolled into something else.

Cheryl
 
CHERYL BAKIN said:
Ok....
So back to Cathy's original premise (many posts ago) that:

we show the FTC, Attorney Generals, etc HOW TO FOLLOW THE MONEY,
WITH EXAMPLES, PICTURES, CC RECEIPTS, ETC.

Extrapolate these individual instances to the order volume of TF.Com, FTD.com, 1-800, PF and many others, to give the watchdogs the grand overview of how big this mess really, really is!!

The numbers are HUGE.....we all know it.....no-one else does, because it's always rolled into something else.

Cheryl
Click to expand...

Dang! you are a smart cookie! :)
Joe
 
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Cathy:
Here's just one example of consumer fraud for the FTC letter:

I went to www.Teleflora.com website.
I selected an item, TF23-2 (lily topiary). It was shown in 2 sizes, $44.95 & $64.95. I proceeded to check-out.

Price shown: $64.95 (i selected deluxe)
Promo discount ($10.00)
Service fee: $13.99
Subtotal : $68.94

I clicked on the "more delivery information" box & this is what I found:
"Orders must be received before 2 pm Mon-Fri or 12:00 Non Sat in the receipients's time zone to assure same-day delivery. Same day orders received after that time may be delivered the following day...................A service fee of $13.99 will be added to each item......."

No-where on the website, or in any product description does it tell me that the item selected above Includes a delivery charge (of any amount). and there is never any break-out of delivery charges anywhere that I can find.

The clear implication in the above statement is that the $13.99 service charge, since it is shown under "Delivery Policy" is, in fact, the delivery charge, and is thus passed onto the florist for the costs of delivering the product. We all know that this is not true & correct.

I forgot to look at the tax information section on this order, and will do so & then add that information to this post.

Regards,
Cheryl


Added:
Information on the tax stuff on the TF website:
"Orders delivered to Oklahoma, Arkansas & Michigan are subject to sales tax. Orders placed from Arkansas & Oklahoma are also subject to sales tax. You will have an opportunity to review this amount before submitting your order."

In our "follow the money" trail, this is just another reason why the US Attorney General and the States Attorney Generals would want to have a look at this. The states are losing sales tax revenue every time an order is placed thr TF.com. You & I, on the other hand, are required to collect the sales tax.
 
Me Too...

I also find it humerous that if I try to select a florist (in the Pittsburgh area) that I know does not have a TF website, they will not come up....even though they are long-standing TF members.

Now tell me again what those membership dues are covering each month?

More investigation......

cheryl
 
Karen,
this was not a find a florist search.

This was a selection tool, from the TF.com website, that asked you if you wanted to select your own florist, or not. If you said yes, then you were direct to a list of TF members "covering" the zip code that you needed to send flowers to. Anyone who has an independent website is not shown on this list. Anyone who does not have a website at all is also not shown on the list.

Let me make it clear, this is the TF.com order gatherer website. It was not done thru Find A Florist. (I know that FAF costs money).

Cheryl
 
Thanks for a great job with the letter. I am very happy to sign it. As things stand, we cannot compete with many large order gatherers, and it's almost impossible to fill the orders as they are sent to us for the price they give us, AFTER we take out our local delivery that we charge our regular customers.
Let me know if there is anything else I can do.
Bonnie
 
Great letter Cathy! I'd be glad to sign it even if it's unlikely to make a difference. To really make a difference, florists must unite and take our industry back from the order gathers.
There is now a way to do this. Check out PFS Florist. You should be hearing from them soon if you haven't yet.
 
CHERYL BAKIN said:
Karen,
this was not a find a florist search.

This was a selection tool, from the TF.com website, that asked you if you wanted to select your own florist, or not. If you said yes, then you were direct to a list of TF members "covering" the zip code that you needed to send flowers to. Anyone who has an independent website is not shown on this list. Anyone who does not have a website at all is also not shown on the list.

Let me make it clear, this is the TF.com order gatherer website. It was not done thru Find A Florist. (I know that FAF costs money).

Cheryl
Click to expand...

I got one better than that and this is when we did have a teleflora website.

A few years back, if you selected a product you weren't codified for (all of them for us) it actually said - here are more florists serving that city/area but we don't recommend them.

Yeah I blew a gasket and that was pretty much the end of the TF website.

I dunno if it still does that or not, nor do I care. I only had one of their sites because of all the traffic they promised they were going to drive to us thru the findaflorist and the tf.com site, and got something like 14 visitors and 2 orders in a year, using only their promotion they were promising.

At $60 a month I think it was then, those orders only cost me $360 each.

What a deal, huh?
 
I think the letter is very good, but maybe the place to send it would be the better business bureau instead of wire services. They already know they are doing this and don't care. Or florist have to get together on a plan to boycott this nonsense. I was a florist when FTD was just starting out. The reason they came into business was because there were no credit cards, and they took the responsibility of getting payment to florists, when many florists would not accept out of town orders, for fear they would not get paid and also to control quality of service and design. I think we need to train our customers to call directly to florists and forget about wire services. Maybe have a florist reference club or something. Face it, we don't make any money sending out of town orders anyway. Let the cusomer do it themselves and if something is wrong they can waste their time in getting credit or whatever. Well, enough said for now.
 
CHERYL BAKIN said:
Information on the tax stuff on the TF website:
"Orders delivered to Oklahoma, Arkansas & Michigan are subject to sales tax. Orders placed from Arkansas & Oklahoma are also subject to sales tax. You will have an opportunity to review this amount before submitting your order."

In our "follow the money" trail, this is just another reason why the US Attorney General and the States Attorney Generals would want to have a look at this. The states are losing sales tax revenue every time an order is placed thr TF.com. You & I, on the other hand, are required to collect the sales tax.
Click to expand...
I can't for the life of me understand how TF can avoid collecting and remitting sales tax in California. Their headquarters are here so surely there's a nexus.

Did the Board of Equalization really screw up when they revised Florist Rule 1571 at the request of Just Flowers & ProFlowers?
 
Cathy:
I read briefly thru the Ca tax stuff that you posted, and I think they are escaping because they do not apparently have an "order taking" arm in Ca. I did not see any definition as to what constituted a "presence" in the state of Ca for sales tax purposes. Just a definiton of a Florist.

that being said,
I have sales tax on my Dove, and other things, and I am not located in Ok, Ar or Ca.....Not sure how they can justify charging some sales tax to us and not to the consumer????

Makes no sense to me. Will pose the ?? to my TF rep on Monday, and send him digging....

Back to the trenches.
Cheryl
 
bloomz said:
I got one better than that and this is when we did have a teleflora website.

.......got something like 14 visitors and 2 orders in a year, using only their promotion they were promising.

At $60 a month I think it was then, those orders only cost me $360 each.

What a deal, huh?
Click to expand...

I don't understand how a lot of my competitors have both tf and ftd websites either. It's now $80 a month with tf, and I guess almost the same with ftd.:hammer:.
 
CHERYL BAKIN said:
Information on the tax stuff on the TF website:
"Orders delivered to Oklahoma, Arkansas & Michigan are subject to sales tax.
Click to expand...

How come New York isn't included? We just passed a law (dubbed "Amazon Tax") saying that any online retailer who is getting more than $10K sales a year from NY-based affiliates must collect NY sales tax. Amazon started collecting it, even though they sued our state.
 
CHERYL BAKIN said:
Cathy:
I read briefly thru the Ca tax stuff that you posted, and I think they are escaping because they do not apparently have an "order taking" arm in Ca.
Click to expand...
That's baloney on 2 counts.
1) When you get the call center in the Phillipines/India/ or wherever, they always say they're in 'California'

2) Unless policy has changed, on holidays most every employee handles customers, including the ones at 11444 W. Olympic, Los Angeles, CA
 
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