If you want to show somebody you love them – avoid 1-800-Flowers.com

Depending on how well you know me you may be aware of my aversion to talking on the phone.  It’s not so much that I hate talking on the phone as much as I hate how it totally destroys my ability to multi-task.  When I am working I will be handling a dozen or two different tasks at once on my computer without issue but the second I’m on the phone that all goes out the window.

Generally if I want to look into something or accomplish something I’ll find a way to do it via my computer which I can do without putting everything else I’m working on on complete hold.  Realistically I should have taken the time to find a local florist and called them up to arrange for the delivery of some flowers for my wife.  I instead went to “1-800-Flowers.com” to see if they could deliver today – and they could!

I browsed the different floral arrangements and chose the one that I thought my wife would like the most.  The arrangement I chose was allegedly from a local florist and was available for delivery today.  I was happy to see this and placed the order to have them delivered and I sat patiently waiting for my order confirmation to hit my inbox.

After a while the order confirmation arrived and it included a link to track the status of my order.  I clicked this link and it said I did not have any orders and that it could take up to 60 minutes to show up.  I checked periodically and the system still showed that I did not have an order and almost two hours after I placed my order I received a call from an 844 number that I did not recognize.

I suspected that the caller from the 844 number that I did not recognize was really “1-800-Flowers” so I answered it and it was quickly confirmed that I was correct.  The woman on the phone did not appear to be a native English speaker which I do not look down upon but it can make it difficult to communicate effectively.  She explained that the arrangement I had chosen was not available.

The woman then asked me if it was ok if they upgraded the arrangement to another more expensive one for free and proceeded to describe the differences.  I’m a visual being and I chose the arrangement based upon it’s looks and not based upon it’s text or verbal description.  I simply couldn’t choose something so visual in that way – it’s not how I function.  I said, “Ok, that’s fine – go ahead,” even though I didn’t know exactly what it would look like when it arrived.  I figured any flowers were better than no flowers at this point.

The woman then informed me that they could not deliver the arrangement today but instead the earliest they could deliver it would be on May 31 which is almost a week away from the original delivery date.  I told the woman that this was not acceptable and to cancel my order and refund my payment.   She stated that she had done so and apologized and I told her to have a good day and got off of the phone.

My phone began to ring again 30 minutes later and I recognized the number as the one that “1-800-Flowers” had called me from before.  I answered the phone to hear call-center background noise and a woman say, “Hello?” a couple of times before hanging up.  A few seconds later my phone rings again – the same number and the same process repeats itself.  Then again, and again, and again, and again…  I think you get the point.

They were calling so much that I actually had to block their number to be able to call them back.  I explained the situation to the woman that answered the phone and she assured me that she had removed my number from the system.  Then a minute or so into the conversation I was discussing the order and making sure it was canceled and she insisted that I needed to provide her my phone number to look up the account.  Wait a second – how could you assure me you removed my number from your system if you don’t even know what my number is?

By the end of the phone call the woman did assure me that the cancellation was submitted and that my funds would be released back to me within a few days.  I informed her that they were to remove my phone number and email address from their systems and that they were to no longer contact me via any means for any reason other than to update me about the status of my refund.

TL;DR

Even if you feel like you may be saving some time by ordering flowers online – please save yourself the trouble and just call a local florist.  In my honest opinion “1-800-Flowers.com” is not a quality service and the customer support definitely leaves a lot to be desired.