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!!!!!!!
Yes. I’m a former worker and supervisor for FTD.com. The reps are the worst I’ve ever had seen in my life. The company is deceitful. Supervisors are trained to lie to the customers as well as reps. Want your money back? Keep escalating the call up as far as you can. Trust me. you will be compensated. As far as flowers or items delivered by fed ex, ups, or dhl. Even if the package and arrangement comes in nice, if you want your money back all you have to do is call in and tell the rep there is a bad quality issue within 7 days of receiving your item. They will either give you a full refund, or send out another at your request. Also, here is a list of managers and ect. if you wish to go the email route and skip the phone call crap.
Kelly Wood (manager) — kwood@ftdi.com
Tracie Lucas (manager) — tlucas@ftdi.com
Erin Reigle (manager) ereigle@ftdi.com
Jimmy Herndon (Asst Director) jherndon@ftdi.com
Carey Howington (Flowers all hours director) chowington@ftdi.com
Scott Sanders (Director) ssanders@ftdi.com
Michael Soenen (Pres. and CEO) msoenen@ftdi.com
Very dissatisfied with the “dead” flowers delivered to my daughter for her 21st. birthday. The only thing I could get out of several emails to FTD was 20% taken off my bill. Never again!!!
I will NEVER order from FTD.com again. I am an elementary school principal who is honest and values integrity. I trust that FTD wound maintain a positive business ethic that would respect the consumer. NO WAY !!! During the holidays, I ordered a $100.00 arrangement to be delivered to friends in Oxnard, CA. When I saw what was delivered, I was mortified!!! The online picture showed a beautiful arrangement with casa blanca lilies. The delivered arrangement consisted of mums, carnations, AND PLASTIC POISETTAS STUCK INTO THE ARRANGEMENT. absolute highway robbery!! And after numerous calls to FTD and with no call backs and no refunds, I gave up. BUYER BEWARE!!!
Hi, just got done reading all these posts. Sounds really sad. I really do sympathize. I have worked for a FTD call center a couple of times. Believe me when I say that the problems you have with your flowers are not the reps fault (most of the time) A lot of problems arise from the florists and the fact that the company (FTD) does not want the reps saying they are in a call center, they want us to represent ourselves as if we are in the florist’s shop. I never agreed with that and had “issues” with it because I felt that it was misinformation and deceitful. I worked in the Flowers All Hours portion of the call center and I got in trouble a lot because I would explain to the customer that I was NOT in the floral shop and that I had no way of knowing what flowers were the freshest or what flowers were available. I felt it was better to be honest with the customer and I was shocked when my supervisor threatened to write me up because I was explaining this tiny bit of info to the customer. When I did customer service for FTD.com I always tried to help and be compassionate and I never fought with anyone who wanted a refund. I also made a personal pledge to myself that i would never promise a delivery that I didn’t think would make it, see they keep or fire the reps based upon their phone performance, like call handling times and sales amounts etc. So…my call sales will be low if I do it my way (which I felt was the honest way) but it would be high if I did it their way which is to place every order no matter what even if it can’t be delivered on time. And believe me again when I say that yes there are reps on the call center floors like that because they are totally stressed out about keeping their job and BECAUSE the company makes it all like that…do you see where this is going? That is why there is such horrible customer service and why flowers are in horrible condition and why they don’t get delivered or on time. So please remember it is actually the big wigs who make the rules, who boss everyone, who lead the company it’s really their fault NOT (for the most part) the call center rep. Yelling at the call center rep might make you feel empowered and better for a moment…but once you realize that you just took your wrath out on the wrong person who is just doing a job trying to pay their bills for 9.00 dollars an hour, you might feel bad. Anyway, the whole point I am trying to make is that the problems arise from the big dogs in the company (CEO’s and President’s and VP’s) who make the decisions and set the rules. And yes some of the call center reps don’t care…and SOME of us do, like me.
try this one and find what you looking for…Westminster florist
My FTD experience was terrible….thank you to the individual who supplied the FTD email addresses….here is the email that I wrote & sent to them regarding my experience…..
—————————
I would like to request a refund for my 2 recent orders with FTD.
I placed 2 orders for Mothers day (one for my mother in Florida & one for my mother-in-law). I placed these orders on Thursday, May 6, 2010 for delivery on Friday, May 7 2010.
First of all, the pictures on the web site clearly do not match the actual flowers that were delivered. The arrangement that I saw at my mother in-laws house had much fewer stems and the flowers were completely different vs. what was described. Very weak depiction.
Secondly, my mother in Florida did not receive her flowers on Friday 5/7/10 – however, your web site clearly indicated that they had been delivered. I had to call my mother on Saturday afternoon to see if she received any flowers and as of 5/8/10, she had not.
Delivered on:
Fri. May 7, 2010
Deliver by:
FTD® Florist
So, since she did not get any flowers but the web site indicated she had, I asked my husband call your customer service personnel to understand the situation better. After he was on hold for over 30 minutes the customer service person indicated that since his name was not on my account, they could not help him. Now, I can understand if this was about a money transaction – however, this was about flowers for Mothers day that were NOT delivered. They could not help him. So then after I got home, I had to call them & wait on hold for 30 minutes before being answered. I explained my situation & the customer service person said that he called the florist & that my flowers would definitely be delivered on Sunday. I was not happy with the conversation because the organization has lied to me already, more than once….1) about actually delivering the flowers in the first place and then about the quality of the flowers and truthfulness of the arrangement.how could I be sure that my flowers would actually be delivered? Luckily they were on Sunday.
I would think that since you are only a “service” organization – you would take pride in providing a great or even acceptable customer experience. Your customer service was not only NOT helpful, your service was terrible – since my delivery was 2 days late.
I did not get a great or even good customer experience.
I have made sure that everyone I know does not order flowers from FTD – given this…..
I think FTD stands for Failure To Deliver: 4 days before Mother’s Day I sent a request for flowerrs through this SHIT company. The day before they sent me a notice that they could not deliver the flowers. My mother hates me but not as much as I hate FTD
I hate to see people who get disappointed and ripped off time and time again by these big order taking companies.
First off the reps are not florists and they are not standing in the shop the order will be delivered from. They do not know the difference between a daisy and a daffodil.
Second they take these orders and pass them to local shops to deliver, they take their cut and the florist gets what is left over.
I do not have FTD in my shop but I do have one of the competitors and let me tell you it’s the same thing no matter what 1-800 number you call. You get the luck of the draw. Your order is wired to a local florist who then accepts the order or forwards it to the next. On Mother’s Day weekend I saw an order that we had refused come across our system 3 different times, the “rep” at the order taking company said, “just fill it with what you have.” I am sure that you, the customer, would not have said that. Also you get the luck of the draw. The best and busiest shops may be fully booked for Mother’s Day deliveries so you get the slow shop that everyone local knows to avoid.
The BEST and ONLY way to order flowers is to find a local shop in the area you want the flowers delivered in and go from there. The shop owner will know what they have to offer and most should be glad to help. They can tell you… we only have 1 of those or 3 of those and you can rest easy knowing that all is being done to make you come back again and again.
If you can’t tell what is local by looking at the website (some of the big name companies look small time and go to great lengths to fool you). Then find out from someone local who they use, or heck just ask mom what her favorite shop in town is.
Just some friendly advise from your LOCAL florist.
This place is horrible, I ordered online at 10am EST for a same day delivery on the west coast. Not only were they never delivered, they never contacted me to tell me they wouldn’t be nor did they every contact the recipient. It wasn’t even a holiday, there is no reason for this failure. I have tried 1800flowers and other and have had nothing but trouble, you’re better off just calling the flower shop directly. Thanks for nothing you morons.
FTD should be shut down and the entire company should be put in jail for the lack of customer service. My husband ordered flowers for me a week before Valentines Day to be delivered to my office. Of course they took the money and ran. No flowers ever arrived for me. No phone call to apologize, nothing. When my husband called the 800 # the automated phone system said that it could be a 30 minute wait to speak to a customer service rep. That’s probably all the other disgruntled woman who got burned on receiving flowers at their office on VDay. What kind of company does this to their customers. It’s absolutely cruel and unacceptable. What a joke. My husband also ordered flowers for his Mom and she didn’t receive her’s until 7:00 Valentines night. At least she finally got hers, unlike me. You’re best best is to contact a local florist via telephone and make the delivery arrangements. Do NOT ever use FTD.com to send flowers unless you don’t care if they ever arrive.