Who Sent Flowers?

The short answer: Not Who Sent Flowers, the company.

The long answer: Read on.

We florists just know that when a customer starts a phone call with “Are you really located in (our town)?” the caller has previously been fooled into placing an order with an out-of-state call center.

Yesterday I heard the saga of a fellow who had tried to send his sister flowers for her birthday by using 1-800-FREE-411. He’d requested the number of a local Anaheim florist. After listening though and passing on the clearly identified sponsored ad of America’s Florist, he chose the first ‘Anaheim florist’ listing that was supposed to be near his sister’s home - a company called Who Sent Flowers. What he didn’t know was that Who Sent Flowers is really a bank of telephones in the Philadelphia area.

The flowers weren’t delivered on the birthday and only after making numerous calls back to Who Sent Flowers and to his credit card company, did he realize he’d been mislead into believing he was dealing with a local florist. His credit card had been charged by a company called ‘Flower Concierge' and the operator finally admitted they were not in Anaheim.

Call centers like this typically charge a fee above the normal price of the flowers and delivery and then transfer orders to real local flowers shops via a floral wire service. Who Sent Flowers by name is not currently listed in any wire service data bases but does appear as a FloralSource ‘Sending Only’ (nonflorist) member under the Name Teleflorist 411 of Philadelphia PA.

Who Sent Flowers, also doing business as Teleflorist, was fined and order to pay restitution by the State of Tennessee last year for using “deceptive listings and local phone numbers to make people think they were buying from local florists.” They were also recently fined an additional $26,000 to resolve contempt allegations.

We recommend consumers scammed by out-of-area or out-of-state call centers file complaints with their States Attorneys General and the US Federal Trade Commission.

It's a shame services like 1-800-FREE-411 are selling out trusting users but they're not the first or only to present distant call center listings and ads as real local florists.

Too bad other states haven’t aggressively gone after these types of phony local florist scams like Tennessee has.

Calling Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo.