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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 vary", it's hardly clear that the colors will be chosen by the delivering local florist, too.

The Trading Goddess summarizes the frustrating conversation with CSR 'Dora' during her complaint call to 1-800-Flowers:

"I told her how important the color pink was, and solely due to the photo on their website, was the reason I choose this bouquet. I told Dora that I would have purchased the larger bouquets if they had the pink pic that went along with the description, which it did not. There was only the "small" choice for the color pink.

Well, Dora repeatedly told me that the description says "Florist Select" and that means their choice of color. She repeatedly said that they choose from the flowers that are in season and that the pink was not in season."

The testy exchange between the shopper and CSR rep is reminiscent of other customer service run-arounds with 1800flowers.com.

I'm guessing that company will fix the product description to make is clear that color choice isn't an option, but they also need to work on training the CSR's to stop blaming customers and giving out lame excuses for why the flowers don't look like the picture.

Honestly, every professional florist knows that pink is only out of season in October. ;) 

This post is third in a series. See Why Your Flowers Don't Look Like the Picture - Part 1 and Why Your Flowers Don't Look Like the Picture - Part 2 for more details about avoiding disappointment when ordering flowers online.

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' customer service as being 'belligerent', 'testy' and 'obstinant' and finally had to resort to contacting senior executives at the company to obtain a refund.

Joseph D. Pititto, vice president of investor relations at 1800flowers.com, finally promised the customer satisfaction and assured that "the company and the partner florist involved have taken measures to ensure that such an episode doesn’t happen again."

But in this week's 1-800-Flowers Be Damned, yet another episode of the customer service run-around by 1-800-Flowers is painfully described by a grandmother trying to send flowers to her severely injured granddaughter. The blogger was so infuriated she vowed

"I would sooner bury my own mother with daisies from the back yard than have to deal with this company again."

Her flowers finally got delivered, but she was aghast that

"on the backside of the lovely note that I had written was an ad for 15% off when you join the Fresh Rewards Club. Since when is it a good practice to advertise on the back of a gift card?"

In response to a comment, blogger Marie said "we have lost those special customer relations that made shopping a personal experience." 

Sounds nostalgic - but direct customer service without the run-around is plentiful in the flower industry.

Local florists like myself remind all flower buyers that by dealing with a call center instead of direct with the florist that will deliver their flowers, they’ll sacrifice “those special customer relations that made shopping a personal experience”. There is no personal relationship since, as was pointed out in her post, you can’t even speak with the same rep twice.

Numerous commenters recommended the blogger use a local florist next time. We real florists agree. :)

On NBC's Weekend Today this past Saturday, anchor Amy Robach and CNBC reporter Vera Gibbons featured a story about Tricks of the Trade - What Your Florist Won't Tell You. (video)

The consumer advice segment included a comparison of two arrangements - both costing $50 - with one being purchased from a local florist and the other being ordered through an online or 'virtual' florist.

The $50 local-florist-ordered bouquet is on the left, the 'virtual florist' design on the right.

Some would assert (mostly marketing firms and 'online only' florists) that there's no difference between purchasing direct from a flower shop located in the community where the flowers are to be delivered and a 'virtual florist'. Arguments typically run along the lines of comments made by Russell of InfoCommerce Group:

"Florists have several elaborate national networks that allow them to accept orders for prompt delivery anywhere in the country. The customer doesn't know who fulfilled the order at the distant end, and the customer doesn't care."

"What seems most important is not the actual physical location of the retailer, but whether or not they can deliver on the promises they make to their customers. The florist business can do this."

Perhaps Russell doesn't realize there are typically $12-$15 service charges when going through most 'online florists'. Sometimes the fees (called 'shipping charges' or 'service charges') are added above the price of the flowers and local deliver, and sometimes they're deducted from the total budget. On a $50 order, the consumer may only end up getting $30 in flowers after the service fee and local delivery charge are deducted.

We have no way of knowing if the fees reduced the overall value of the 'online florist' flowers in the Today Show comparison test, but we do know dollar-for-dollar that local florists provide more flowers for the budget. And as Vera Gibbons said, regardless of which ordering route a consumer goes, a local florist will be making and filling the order.

In discussing the Today Show segment, fellow florist Erlene LeBorgne of Rosemont Floral pointed out:

We thought on the whole the report was very informative for consumers, but we are a bit confused as to the subtitle of the report. Any reputable florist is willing to share the same information with their customers and to educate their customers on care and handling of the flowers after purchase.

In other words we WANT you to know, and we're happy to share information with you!

Informed consumers are happier customers and happier customers are what any business wants. Perhaps a better subtitle would have been "Here's What Your Local Florist Wants You to Know".

She's right. Local florists do want you to know. There is a difference.

How many flower-buying consumers haven’t heard of 1-800-Flowers or FTD? When they decide to purchase direct from a local florist and skip a middleman, it’s logical a shopper would head to a Local resource to help find a brick and mortar flower shop in the city where their gift is destined.

In our first article about Mapspam on Yahoo Local, we covered an out-of-market ‘order gatherer’ (an affiliate of a national wire service) creating local-sounding company names, using manufactured addresses, spamming user reviews and leaving black hat negative ratings on legitimate local florists.

One of the questions left unanswered was how that set of bogus listings made their way into Yahoo Local in the first place.

In investigating this next set of phony ‘local’ companies, there’s a strong correlation between the florist’s listings in Y Local and those shown in data provider/Y Local marketing partner YellowPages.com (owned by AT&T).

The florist, Exceptional Flowers and Gifts, 2800 N Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL is and member of FTD. (FTD also hosts the florist’s website and keeps a percentage of each order destined back to the city where a shopper thought he/she was purchasing direct from in the first place.) Y Local users’ orders through Exceptional Flowers & Gifts numerous listings will be filtered through their Florida location, then passed though FTD and then relayed back to a real local florist in the community.

Exceptional Flowers & Gifts (EF&G) has acquired remote-call-forwarded local phone numbers in cities across the US, listed the locations of real B&M stores, and is now running what appears to be coordinated banner ad campaigns across Y Local and YellowPages.com. – using the same data and the same tracking code - yp5.

Here's an example from Nashville, TN:

Yellowpages.com listing:

Yahoo Local Nashville banner ad:

Yahoo Local listing of 'Nashville' store:

By adding in a hefty dose of review spam, the team has managed to push some of the faux ‘natural listings’ higher in each city’s results.

Note that some of the reviews were originally written about different fake local listings but have been recycled, redirected and now appear under newer 'local florist' EF&G profiles. Did Y Local have a roll in redirecting the reviews? They sure help give the newer listings instant cred.

What’s to stop any and every other out-of-area flower seller from purchasing RCF and buying ads for the misleading listings? AT&T can sell the RCF, YP.com can sell the ads there and in Y Local, and then 10 of these in each city (plus one cooperative real local florist) could crowd out the other real local florists entirely.

(We note that in claiming physical addresses, companies can trigger requirements in many jurisdictions to hold applicable business licenses, register with the states’ tax boards, and collect & remit appropriate sales taxes.)

Local florists had hoped that sites like Yahoo Local would help cut through the affiliate marketing clutter of FTD, 1-800-Flowers and other ‘order gatherers’ and become reliable sources for consumers seeking to purchase direct from real brick and mortar flower shops. We believe their users expect that, too.

Instead, Y local is starting to look more like yellowpages.com, where real locals get buried deep beneath a layer of affiliate marketers ‘serving your city’.

Are local florists the only people who think florist wire services should stop members that use false addresses or who believe publishers shouldn't monetize their sites if it means selling out their users?

Added: A big thanks to the Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo Local blog for covering Yahoo Local Mapspam and bringing the issue of phony local florist spam to light.

Do you see a flower shop here? Neither do we. But according to Yahoo Local, it's the location of NEW YORK FLORIST (FREE DELIVERY TO ALL ZIP CODES) - 60 Reade St., New York, NY.

Take a few steps east and you can stop into a real local flower shop, Langdon Florist.

Where is NEW YORK FLORIST (FREE DELIVERY TO ALL ZIP CODES) and why does Yahoo Local list them as the #1 result for Florist in New York, NY? First - they're really located at 11411 Jefferson Blvd, about 3000 miles away in Culver City, CA with a local Los Angeles area phone number - (310) 391-3333. To get to the #1 spot for their fake local florists in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Boston and many other major US markets, it appears this local mapspam abuser has used a crafty combination of tactics including:

- Keyword-rich fictitious flower shops names
- Fake addresses that indicate locations at or near the center of each city
- User review spam praising their services with mutiple identities like this, this, this and this. (Note that one of these 'objective reviewers' is the source of the uploaded photo on the New York profile page.)
- In at least a few cases, Black Hat user review ratings that anonymously damaged the star ratings of real local florists who would have been top results. (Thankfully, Yahoo has at least stopped their ability to easily hit competitors with anonymous negative reps although creating mutilpe user logins is still an option.)

Attempts to correct the bogus listings with the proper name, address or phone number via Yahoo's 'update this business' link are futile.

How could Yahoo Local have spotted these phony florists? In Yahoo's case, a 'local listing' without a local phone number should be a big clue. Additionally, none of these addresses appear on the linked website and none of them appear in conjunction with the phony business names on any other credible sources on the web (sounds like Yahoo needs an algo. ;) )

How did the listings make it into Yahoo Local in the first place? None are marked 'Merchant Verified'. Perhaps one of Yahoo's data partners knows.

A few Yahoo users have tried to warn others about these fake florists, but most warnings - like the ones in the fake Boston listing - have been met with yet more five-star reviews from first-time reviewers.

Yesterday, Florida's Attorney General announced a lawsuit against a company that used fictitious local-sounding florist names . The Tampa listing from California-based AAA Flower Mart deserves his attention, too.

AAA Flower Mart is a member of the Floral Source florist wire service.

Let's hope Yahoo Local will quickly clean up this weed patch of fake flower shops and help ensure their users get real local florists when they're looking for them.

Part 2 of this series will address a company that purchases remote call forwarding to make itself appear 'local'.

In a press release today, Florida's Attorney General, Bill McCollum, announced his office has sued New Jersey-based Flowers With Gifted Elegance and the related companies owned by Tom Meola, alleging they "created fictitious florist listings" and "named them so as to lead consumers to believe that the companies were located in Florida cities and towns."

"Meola and his company were investigated by the Attorney General’s Economic Crimes Division, which will also litigate the lawsuit. The investigation has been ongoing since December 2005, focusing on violations of Florida Statutes which prohibit individuals from advertising a fictitious business name if the name and context of the advertisement leads consumers to believe the business is located somewhere other than its true location and if calls to the local telephone number are routinely transferred to a business location outside the state. Violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act carry penalties of $10,000 per violation."

Earlier this month, Meola's companies filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7 just days in advance of a scheduled hearing in a Missouri Class Action suit. The Aug. 22 hearing was to discuss sanctions against Meola for failing to appear for deposition.

The Florida AG lists Meola's company as using the following names to do business in Florida:
Florist in Oviedo, Florida’s Florist in Jacksonville TTP, Florida’s Florist in Brooksville TTP, Florida’s Florist in Coral Springs TTP, Florida’s Florist in Daytona Beach TTP, Florida’s Florist in Gainesville TTP, Florida’s Florist in Melbourne TTP, Florida’s Florist in Orange Park TTP, Florida’s Florist in West Palm TTP, Florida’s Florist in Palm Beach, Florida’s Florist in Panama City TTP, Florida’s Florist in Orlando TTP, Florida’s Florist in Boca Raton TTP, Florida’s Florist Cocoa Beach, Florida’s Florist Cooper City, Florida’s Florist Winter Springs, Florist in Hallandale, Florist in Sanford, Carol City Florist, Cutler Ridge Florist, Davie Florist, Deerfield Beach Florist, Ferry Pass Florist, Hallandale Florist, Hollywood Florist, Jupiter Florist, Lauderdale Lakes Florist, Miami Florist, Miami Beach Florist, Norland Florist, North Lauderdale Florist, North Miami Florist, Pensacola Florist, Pompano Beach Florist, Riviera Beach Florist, Florist in Bartow, Bartow Flowers, Florist in Bradenton, Florist in Clearwater, Florist in Dunedin, Florist in Lakeland, Florist in New Port Richey, Florist in Sarasota, Florist in Seminole, Florist in St. Petersburg, Florist in Carrollwood, Lealman Florist, Plant City Florist, Tampa Florist, Tarpon Springs Florist.

More than 20 states have legislation outlawing misleading fictitious florist listings. The California Senate is scheduled to vote on a similar measure this week.

User ratings and reviews can be one of the most useful aspects of sites focused on local businesses and services. CitySearch, InsiderPages, Yelp, Yahoo Local and others have built legions of loyal users who enjoy sharing their experiences and reading the opinions of others.

The future of those sites depends on users' trust - in the sites and in each other.

Savvy businesses know that ratings and reviews can impact both the perception of their companies and the positions of their listings. So it was only a matter of time before unscrupulous elements started exploiting ratings and reviews to improve their visibilities and harm the credibility and reputations of competitors.

Thankfully, Yahoo Local's recent update closed a loophole and changed the way it allows users to rate and review companies. For local businesses like florists, it's a definite step in the right direction.

Prior to the change, Yahoo users with logins were allowed to leave anonymous ratings (without reviews) or to leave written reviews anonymously. On one level, the practice gave users the ability to rate freely - but local businesses, especially those with anonymous, reviewless dings to their reputations, had no way of knowing why they were earning negative marks (unless they accidentally spotted them while viewing a user's profile...which was highly unlikely.)

Yahoo's new review policy should go a long way in preventing the kinds of ratings and reviews seen in this screen shot (taken before Yahoo Local's recent update.)

For the record, all the 5-star ratings are for listings owned by the same company (some employing mapspam techniques by using fake addresses) and all the 1-stars (which appear without attribution in those business' listings) are for their local competitors.

This negative rep abuse of florists was reported to Yahoo Local and it appears at least some of the anonymous slams were reversed (though the large group of phony local florist listings still stands - we'll have more about that soon).

Yahoo Local now requires comments (with only a 50 character minimum) and requires the reviewer to identify his or herself by email address or nickname. While there are still ways to game the ratings system, Yahoo's change goes a long way in stopping review abuse.

An article today from the Star-Ledger details Tom Meola's Chapter 7 filings in Newark NJ. His two companies, TTP, Inc. (the retailer operation under the name Flowers With Gifted Elegance) and Preferred Florist Network (the wire service operation) have long been a source of complaints from both local florists and consumers.

Through a third company, Lower Forty Gardens, Meola purchased local phone numbers and used local city names in the listings of his fictional 'flower shops' across the US. Calls to the numbers were forwarded to his Randolph NJ-based call center.

Reporter Greg Saitz of the Star-Ledger sums up the issue well:

..some florists and consumers complained Meola's business model amounted to deception because people who called his numbers likely believed they were dealing with a local business. In response, 19 states, including New Jersey, passed laws that prohibit misrepresenting one's geographic location, according to the Society of American Florists, a trade group.

In addition, several state attorneys general have investigated or are investigating Meola's practices. He agreed to pay Virginia officials $10,000 in 2005 to settle and $50,000 to Delaware authorities in 2002. He also agreed not to publish phone listings creating the false impression it was for a Delaware business.

Among creditors are hundreds of local florists owed for Spring and Mother's Day orders they filled and delivered through the Preferred Florist Network.

It's unclear as to the status of Lower Forty Gardens and the future for Meola's phony local listings.

Unfortunately, Flowers With Gifted Elegance isn't the only call center operation to use remote call forwarding and local-sounding florist names, but they were the first and largest.

As more states enact legislation (North Carolina just passed a bill and California awaits a final reading and vote in the Senate) real local florists hope this business model will become a thing of the past.

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.

Since flowers are the #1 gift for Mother's Day, television stations across the US have been running news segments featuring shopping comparisons, buying tips and consumer information. Here's a summary of some of the major stories.

From NBC10 Philadelphia - Investigators Look Into Florist Complaints. Reporter Lu Ann Cahn exposed the noticeable difference between flowers bouquets ordered through phony local florists and real brick and mortar stores. The station includes a page of tips on how to avoid being fooled by out-of-state call centers.

From abc11 Raleigh-Durham - Online Flowers May Not Be Best Deal. The report compares ordering flowers direct from a local florist versus going through a national wire service.

The bottom line is Troubleshooter got more bang for its buck -- $10 more by going directly to the local florist and skipping the third party and its fees.

From KSL Salt Lake City - Investigation: Customers Not Getting what they Pay for in Flower Orders Reporter Debbie Dujanovic exposed out-of-state companies posing as local flower shops and revealed how consumers are paying more and getting less.

We spent hundreds of dollars ordering bouquet after bouquet, from companies listed online and in the phone book as local florists. But we discovered, after looking at billing records, the minute we dialed, our call was unknowingly forwarded out of town, not to florists but to telemarketers.

SmartMoney.com asked Can Grower-Direct Flowers Beat Your Florist's? The verdict:

It would be an understatement to say we were disappointed. With the exception of the order from Organic Bouquet — which was gorgeous — we'd be embarrassed to send Mom any of these arrangements. Dying and crushed blooms, and unopened buds abounded.

TampaBays 10 News reporter Tammie Fields asked - When you order flowers - Do you get what you pay for? and compared three local florists and ProFlowers. The opinion of ProFlowers' bouquet by flower expert Ian Prosser:

"This is pitiful. It's an embarrassment to the floral industry. There's absolutely no design. Mums which should last a long time are broken. They're soft."

Macon, GA's 13 WMAZ advised consumers that Flowers Don't Grow Online and discussed the difference between ordering from brokers and calling florists direct.

Over the past three years, about 550 consumers complained to the national Better Business Bureau after ordering from 1-800-flowers.com. Hundreds more complained about other flower websites, including ftd.com, proflowers.com, justflowers.com, and teleflora.com.

Cassandra Ford thought she was ordering from a florist. But many websites, including 1-800-flowers, are not florists. They're essentially call centers that take your order and ask a local florist to deliver the flowers.

Some florists say they've stopped taking orders from some of those websites because the websites create expectations among consumers that the florists can't deliver on.

Real Florists say 'thanks' to these local TV stations for offering good advice to consumers about saving money and getting the best flower values this Mother's Day.