From the category archives:

News

Online Florists: Whither the ethics?

November 29, 2009

Last month the two biggest names in online flowers, 1800FLOWERS.com and FTD.com, were summoned by the US Senate Commerce Committee for records of their participation in post transactional marketing programs labeled “scams,” “robbery” and “theft” by both angry consumers and US Senators.
The congressional report lists both 1-800-Flowers and FTD as having received more [...]

Read the full article →

Fall is in the air~!

September 18, 2009

Can you feel it yet?  We do here in Michigan… Fall is in the air!
The hot muggy days of summer have given way to the cooler and dryer days of Fall with their Autumn hues of gold, orange, bronze, yellow and accents of green and purple.  We’re always excited for the seasonal changes in the [...]

Read the full article →

Why your flowers don’t look like the picture – Part 4

December 15, 2008

Blogger Chris took FTD.com up on a offer he’d received via Netflix to purchase a Christmas arrangements for his wife. What he was sold:

 
What he got:

 
Chris said “I didn’t know it was supposed to be DIY. I figured as much from the way it came in the box, but my wife–who hadn’t seen the original [...]

Read the full article →

Why Your Flowers Don’t Look Like the Picture – Part 3

January 8, 2008

Because according to a 1800Flowers.com customer service rep, pink is out of season.
Blogger, the Trading Goddess, wanted to send pink flowers and ordered a “Florist Select European Hand Tied Bouquet”, relying on the product photo to make her purchasing decision. (It displayed a mixed pink and white bouquet wrapped in pink paper.)  
While the bouquet description mentions “Components will [...]

Read the full article →

Customer Service Run-Around

October 19, 2007

This month, Ron Burley of the AARP Magazine showed readers how to fight ‘company policy’ at 1-800-Flowers and get their money back for faulty products and services.  The AARP member’s flower gift had arrived two days after Mother’s Day and was dead on delivery, ”crushed and brown,” and the company has refused to refund the cost or replace the whithered blooms.
Burley described 1-800-Flowers’ [...]

Read the full article →

BloomNet Numbers

October 12, 2007

The discussion about the decrease in florist wire service membership made a few of us ask why and how the latest BloomNet directory only shows 6,978 members yet a 1800flower.com press release from May 2007 pegged the number at “more than 9,500 BloomNet Professional Florists.”
We asked more than one source to check the figures on [...]

Read the full article →

Shifting Florist Wire Service Numbers

October 11, 2007

According to recent florist wire service directory updates, there’s a significant shift in the numbers of member flower shop affiliates in North American. The latest figures, which include both the US and Canada, as of the Oct. 1, 2007 electronic directory releases:
FTD
13,876 records including 313 new and 1151 deleted for a net change of
Teleflora
25,913 [...]

Read the full article →

SEM for Florists: How to achieve a high bounce rate

September 13, 2007

Many small businesses are looking to search engine marketing firms (SEMs) to help position them in pay per click campaigns so they’ll appear for relevant keywords in popular sites like Google and Yahoo. Local companies, like florists, often prefer to turn to professional firms rather than undergoing the steep learning curve (and ongoing monitoring) while [...]

Read the full article →

1-800-Flowers pulls local RCF phone numbers

September 11, 2007

In a comment last week in Mike Blumethal’s blog about Yahoo Local Mapspam, I mention the frustration of a local Butler PA florist being challenged to prove his company was a real brick and mortar store while a national affiliate marketer had managed to place ‘local’ listings without addresses throughout Y Local.
The 1-800-Flowers remote call [...]

Read the full article →

FTD removes brand from Florist.com

September 10, 2007

FTD member florists report receiving a mailing outlining the flower marketer and wire service company’s new plan for mirror site Florist.com. After spending an estimated $6-$8M to purchase Florist.com late in 2004, and rebranding it as an FTD-owned site, the company has now decided to remove all references to FTD.
The old version (screen shot below) [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries