hating on ftd.com
February 17th, 2006 by Dylan
After years of hating the quality of flowers delivered through 1800flowers.com, for Valentine’s Day this year I decided to order a dozen roses for that special lady in my life. Being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until February 13th to place the order.
On February 14th, I see that my credit card has been charged for the flowers, but then I realize at around 7pm that no flowers have arrived. I call their customer (dis)service number, hear a recording that informs me that due to high holiday volume, no delivery confirmations are available, that deliveries can happen as late as 9pm, and the phone wait time to talk with someone is 45 minutes. So I hang up, and no flowers arrive, and I look like a jerk for not buying flowers, so I send an email to the ftd.com support department.
February 15th, still no flowers. I call their support number, the same recording is still active, and I am immediately disconnected. February 16th is a repeat of February 15th. And no response to their email.
February 17th I finally get through, and receive the following response: “At your request, your FTD.COM order has been canceled and a refund in the amount of $94.98 has been posted to your credit card. We hope you’ll give us the opportunity to assist you in the future. It is a lot easier to guarantee delivery when we have more notice. Thank you for shopping with FTD.COM. Sincerely, ASHLEY”
What I fail to understand is… Valentine’s Day is not exactly a new holiday that sneaks up on florists. There is a reason roses cost $100 on February 14th, but $20-40 the rest of the year… it is called peak pricing. They seemed to have no difficulty in charging my credit card ontime. No attempt was made to contact us regarding the delivery on the 14th, or the 15th, or the 16th. Ashley, (and who signs their name in all-caps anyway? Is that even your real name?), I didn’t “shop” with FTD.com because nothing was ever actually received. And I will not be shopping with FTD.com in the future. Your note seems like the an insincere attempt at customer support, instead trying to blame me, the customer, for trying to purchase product from you that you contracted to deliver by charging my credit card.
I guess I will now have to actually find a decent local florist.
About FTD. com. You aren’t the only one upset with FTD.com. I run a shop which has been FTD for years and their recent actions have me on the brink of dropping them. I won’t go into any length here, but would be glad to at a later date. I will tell you that today I delivered flowers to one of the local funeral homes. Sitting o a stand at the funeral was a very small bouquet in a birdhouse. It was not in good shape. FTD.com had sent it directly instead of sending the order to our shop. We are the only FTD shop in town. By the time the customer was done with the order they had spent close to $70.00 on something that we would have charged $30.00 for.
And then they have the audacity to put FTD on it. Pick a local florist you know and trust or go the teleflora site. Either way you will be dealing with a much more reputable business person. FTD.com is cooking thei own goose as far as I am concerned.
This just happened to me too. Order flowers, none arrive. Never again.
My husband ordered a dozen Gerber Daisies with a delivery guarantee of Valentine’s Day. I didn’t get them, so we tried calling to check on the status. I was able to get the tracking info online, and saw that they would be delivered on the 15th (today.) Due to the high volume of calls, the recording said to call back later, and disconected us. Same thing kept happening today. I finally got the delivery today, and opened the box to find a dozen gerber daisies with mold growing on the stems, and browning, bent petals. There were cheezy green plastic tubes on the stems. They were held together by a lovely rubber band. I was finally able to get into the Customer Service queue, and after 75 minutes, my call was answered. I asked for a refund, and they didn’t argue. I will never recommend FTD to anybody, and I actually took my flowers around the office to “advertise” for them today.
Another “customer” who will NEVER shop at FTD.com. I also never received the flowers and its now 5pm on the 15th… And I placed the order on Feb 1st. So much for planning on my part. I happened to add another order to my daughter through 1-800-flowers… and she got them on time with good quality…
Ordered flowers from ftd.com and I was apaulded and frustrated with the lack of communication and customer service that I received regarding the 3 orders I made.
Although alot people may have preordered theirs in a timely manner I ordered mine on the morning of Valentines day and received a message indicating the order would be delivered by 02.14.07. So like many others I waited to see if the flowers would be delivered and to my shock nothing was delivered on 2.14, 2.15, and 2.16 (my credit card was charged for 1 order and refunded for another - I called to cancel both) I called many times and had to wait on the phone for an hour and a half before I spoke with anyone. One order was delivered in another state on the eastern shore board.
I was very upset about the 2 orders that was not delivered and requested a refund and they only refunded one of the orders. On 2.16 I get an e-mail indicating that DHL will be delivering the order sometime today when I expressly asked for a refund. After finally getting through I asked to speak with a Manager and he indicated that FTD expereinced some computers problems that lead to orders not getting processed properly and had staffed for high call volume but seemed very insincere in his apology and sounded more like a sells call rather than altrusim for the globla problems that we all were experiencing. I had success with this company in the past but WILL NEVER USE THEM AGAIN. This was a major screw up!
I just got off the phone with FTD. My husband ordered me flowers on 02-13 and he was assured that I would receive them on Valentine’s day. I have been trying to get thru to them since V-day and just succeed at 3 pm CST on 02-16, after waiting 1 hour on hold. My flowers were not delivered because the florist was unable to print out my ordering ticket….I asked for a refund and my flowers. Personally, I would have been happy with my flowers and a smaller refund. But, I was told by both the rep and a supervisor (she was a joke) that per company policy, I could only receive one or the other. I say that the supervisor was a joke because I am a supervisor in a call center for a major company. She did not apologized for the inconvenience, offer any empathy, etc….I told her how unhappy I was with FTD and her vendor. I reminded her that the vendor represents FTD and is not doing a very good job with the representation.
I am getting my flowers on Monday with a note of apology from the florist. I told the supervisor that I/my husband will never use FTD again and that I will let everyone know in the 1000 member call center know of my displeasure. I have already told over 20 people of my dissatisfaction. FTD will be receiving a certified letter next week.
This problem with FTD is not holiday related. I ordered a simple dozen of roses to be sent to a friend while she was out of town. They were to be delivered on a Saturday to her hotel and that evening I discovered that they had not been delivered. After a lengthy conversation with both FedEx (who was extremely helpful) and FTD (yeah, not so helpful) the bottom line was that the earliest the flowers could be delivered was Monday, after she would already be out of town. The best FTD could offer was to call the recipient and apologize and give me a partial refund. That wasn’t really working for me, so we kept talking. Eventually they gave me a full refund and I told them to hold the apology. I would find someplace else to fix what they had totally screwed up. And I did…. I don’t think the FTD chick could have cared less and I spent almost enough time on hold to write this. Good luck and choose more wisely than I did.
-HB
A lot of the problems I’m seeing is that you guys are waiting until the last minute to order flowers. Its no wonder the orders are coming in late and in bad condition. You guys are getting the leftovers. It goes with any .com floral franchise. FTD or Teleflora. I happened to use FTD and they screwed up my Mother’s Day order. Did it ruin my life? No. It happens. I got over it. Why? Because there’s bigger things going on in the world other than crying about missing flowers?
Michael, I’ve edited your comment because I don’t believe this is a place to have a religion debate.
People are less angry about FTD.com failing than they are about the dreadfully poor customer service FTD.com provided when they did fail. Guaranteeing delivery, charging someone’s credit card, not delivering, and then having a phone line busy for 4 days, then not apologizing for their failure but instead giving attitude to the person that called is not the way a business should behave.
The people posting here feel that such behavior is inexcusable, and are making their voice heard so that other consumers need not be treated so poorly.
Hey, I am a rep at an FTD Call center (however, due to some papers we had to sign saying we wouldnt do this, I had to leave the location out). I have been there for a while and at first it wasnt bad really and truly. What happened was a guy by the name of Michael Dorion came to power as the companies VP of operations and since then the company has gone to hell in a handbasket. Its all about the number and great lengths have been taken to ensure customer service is slowly disappearing. The requirement for a representative at this point in time is to have (by the end of the month) an average call time when taking an order of 7 minutes or less. This really isnt that hard considering the information needed. What sucks is that the same requirement when dealing with customer service issues is 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Pretty stupid huh? To anyone who orders from FTD.com, I agree with the girl Melissa, just ask for a supervisor right off, it’ll help you AND the rep better, cause if the rep is trying to help you as best as they can, and have to check with supervisors and such to get permission to do certain things they will help you but they get in trouble for taking too long. When you ask for the supervisor, they can send you over to the person in charge who has more rights to anything and everything more than the rep does, and it wont hurt thier times either so everyone wins (you can get more out of a supervisor is the point im making in the case of the consumer) To respond about the FTD in California, here is something I know that the girl may not have. The Arkansas center and the Oregon center have a program FTD runs called “Flowers All Hours” which they provide an answering service for the florist. Also keep in mind when florists are part of FTD (and Teleflora’s) services, they most of the time have some sort of designation that they are a part of that. If you combine the fact that is all they show, then you get this answering machine (which is suppose to act like they are from the shop’s location, ie Sacramento, California, etc) that might do it too as far as sounding like tey are in a call center in california. For those who feel a little more malicious when you have to deal with us, get the supervisors name (first and last, if you can) thier emails are all the same format and you can bug them all you want, for example if the persons name is John Smith, then the email is jsmith@ftdi.com, just use the first initial and last name. It would be so much fun for all of our supervisors to get harassing emails from spoofed emails and stuff, make our IT work on something for a change (laughing). Hope this helps guys!
I too have been burnt by FTD. All the comments that have been made apply to me and my order yesterday. I ordered flowers for my wife on Valentines, and they did not arrive. I have been calling ever since and all I ever get is a message saying that they are having high call volume and disconnects me. I will never use FTD again!
Well, at least you received flowers or a refund
Listen to my offer.
I ordered flowers 2 weeks BEFORE Valentine’ Day to be shipped to St. Thomas Island for my inlaws.
My credit card was billed but no flowers delivered.
We ASSUMED they received them but never did.
My offer from FTD - Sorry it has been over 7 days and we can’t do anything about it. After showing disappointment they finally said they can mail the same order to the same address. No refund to my credit card!!!!!
My flowers can’t be shipped to any other location so they are going to a vacation home in St. Thomas in April with a Happy Valentine’s Day card with them!!!!!!!