A Texas man is suing 1-800-Flowers for $1 million after a thank you note from the web florist outed him as an adulterer. Leroy Greer specifically asked 1-800-Flowers not to send him a receipt for the cuddly stuffed animal and dozen long stemmed roses he ordered for his mistress. Despite his request, 1-800-Flowers sent a thank you note to his house several months later, prompting his wife to ask who the hell got flowers. She called 1-800-Flowers, which gladly faxed her a copy of Leroy’s order form that included the following message meant for his mistress: “Just wanted to say I love you and you mean the world to me! -Leroy.” Above The Law has the legalese:
Breach of contract action in which the defendants agreed to keep the plaintiff’s order of flowers for his girlfriend private, with no record of the transaction mailed to him at his home or office.
Months later, the defendants sent a thank you card to the plaintiff’s home, and his wife called the defendants for proof of the purchase. The defendants faxed the plaintiff’s wife proof of his order of flowers for his girlfriend, which resulted in a divorce being filed.
Shucks, we thought giant internet florists could be entrusted with secrets. Maybe Leroy should have sent his mistress flowers from the local florist instead.
Lawsuit of the Day: Greer v. 1-800-Flowers [Above The Law]
Greer v. 1-800-Flowers: An Update [Above The Law]
(Photo: candiche)
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Morons…
I remember when I was working in hotels. The one golden rule is that you never give out who is in the hotel, if someone asks if there is a room registerred under a perticular name, you’re welcome to provide that information, but if they ask which room it is, you’re forced to transfer the call to the room. The -only- information we were allowed to provide to someone outside the hotel was whether they was or was not a room under a perticular name. Beyond that, the information protection act forced us to seal our lips… We wouldn’t even give the POLICE the room number of a guest unless they had a damn good reason to request it (like a crime in progress).
This was the ONE rule that could get you fired immediately. You could be fired ON THE SPOT for this rule, because we could get the hell sued out of us for this very same situation.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Friggin’ idiot!
Idiot. Go into the flower store and pay cash next time. You deserve everything you got for leaving a paper trail….
1-800 Flowers are morons anyway, they screwed up two orders of mine including sending 2 dozen roses a day late – the day after Valentine’s Day! Trust me, they made up for it.
Thats what he gets for pulling aggro.
I hope he loses the lawsuit, damn cheatin’ bastid!
1800Flowers.com has just won some business from me lol. how about ‘being loyal to your woman?’
Yeah, I can’t feel bad for this guy.
Ah, the entitlement epidemic strikes again – It wasn’t his fault for cheating, it was their fault for following their own policy. Damn them, damn them all to hell!
He asked them not to send a receipt, but didn’t say anything about a thank you card.
Did they really break any laws? It sounds like they did what he asked.
Wow, that’s cold. It makes me wonder if there’s a “woman scorned” currently employed by 1-800-flowers.
“Ooops, forgot to put the ‘no receipt’ note on your order, sorry!”
bwahahaha….no comment….bwaahahahahaha
Uhh – the fact that he’s a cheater is irrelevant and shouldn’t encourage men to hate them and women to think they did it on purpose for “girl power” or whatever
The lesson is don’t leave a paper trail when you NEVER want one! Surprise party, flowers to mistress, whatever – don’t give your address if you don’t want crap coming to it from the company.
Another reason (no I’m no a cheater) I have a mailbox at Mail Boxes Etc. and have all my business and personal stuff go there.
james [www.futuregringo.com]
@jamesdenver: Wait, What? Tell us again why you have a super-secret mailbox? What goes there?
He should have had a PO Box in his name only, and the credit card he used should have had the billing address at that PO Box. That way, the thank you note would have been sent there, not to his home. I think that’s just common sense if you want to be a lyin’, cheatin’ bastard.
Let’s see if I have this correct… Guy knows that a paper trail may expose his misconduct to his wife. Guy makes the purchase neverless and ASKS the vendor to make no acknowledgement of the sale. However, the clerk entering the order is not the person responsible for such acknowledgements and ulimately a thankyou note for the purchase is forwared to the guy’s home sometime later thus revealing his misconduct.
And the guy has the guts to complain? What a whinebaby.
I hope 1-800-Flowers is legally authorized to provide documents to the divorce proceedings.
Geez–I hope AdultToyChest.com doesn’t have this policy!
Will his (ex-)wife be entitled to any settlement he gets?
@Godz: ROFL. “God DAMN it, Leroy!”
I doubt the thank-you note was anything other than a pre-printed advertisement based on his ordering record, something along the lines of “LEROY, we want you to remember us for all your flower purchases!” — in other words, not really a receipt, and not something it’s easy to stop, since it’s all automated. If they’d deleted all record of his purchase the moment it was sent out, that would’ve worked — but who does that?
He should’ve known better. Ordering something from any service these days results in floods of mailing-list materials.
Leroy ah-Jenkins-uhhhh! What could go wrong? Wife aggro, ftl.
At least he has chicken.
@homerjay: Reason for an outside Mailbox?
Meet me there at 5 and I’ll show you. Just kidding.
Actually eight years ago I moved somewhere I’d only be for six months before moving again. I didn’t want my mail forwarded all over, and it looks better on credit reports to have ONE permanant address (have no idea why,) so I got a small box at an MBE close to home.
After I bought my house I kept my MBE address and still have all my bills, credit card statements, personal junk mail, and packages go there.
I do a bit of work out of my home, so I can use that address as billing. I travel a lot so never have worry about mail piling up, and they can sign and hold packages while I’m at work. (A huge time saver not having to be home to sign for something expensive, or have it sent to work.)
I’m not paranoid about ID theft, but having as little personal mail sit in your box during the day mitigates that.
From a “paranoid potential problem” aspect it’s very beneficial: Should someone be suing my, trying to track me down, stalking me or whatever, or suspecting me of robbing a priceless museum piece – it’s a nice added buffer between my personal home and where I’m listed at and people will go looking for me.
Sure someone could find out where I live given enough research and time – but if something immediate happens where I’m suddenly the focus of attention, (mainly media attention) it will take a bit of time to find me and camp outside my house.
Yes I know that last part sounds crazy, but just consider Richard Jewell and similar cases.
I should turn this into an article – personally I think EVERY smart consumer should put a mini-firewall between their domicile and the outside world. Considering the psycho CSR people we read about here I wouldn’t want them having my home address.
Hey is Dateline still doing those shows about how 1800 flowers CSRs are working out of prisons or something?
@boandmichele: Why do I get the feeling that comment was posted by Bo, specifically so Michele would see it? lol
Just kidding – I feel the same way you do Bo…
@KIRZEN2007:
What is this “information protection act” you speak of?
So when his wife asked him who the flowers were for, the moron couldn’t make something up? Sick coworker, new friend of a friend’s baby, his mother on mother’s day, etc. If he had come up with something even semi-convincing, then she wouldn’t have called 800-Flowers and had them fax over the receipt!
“I do not want a receipt for this transaction” is not the same as “this transaction should never be mentioned to me (or my home address) ever again.”
What a jerk — I hope he loses the case, thus looking even more ridiculous than he already does
@formergr: So when his wife asked him who the flowers were for, the moron couldn’t make something up?
She may have been asking herself –
(1) get receipt
(2) wonder, “Who did we/he/I buy flowers for? Is this some weird identity theft thing, somebody used our credit card without our knowledge?”
(3) call 1-800-FLOWERS
Husband probably didn’t learn any of this until she confronted him with the evidence!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Serves him right. This reminds me of all the marriages I musta’ broke up as a csr for a phone company. People would call wanting daily phone records, or ask when xxx-xxx-xxxx has been called last, and then the sudden anger in their voice…I had no choice but to provide what was asked, even though I know you don’t own the account, but you can verify. Or the idiots that would call and freak out b/c the phone numbers were on their bill, that was always a riot. You all know who you are
lol. yeah, 1-800 flowers is wrong in this case since he specifically said not to have the address faxed to him
but to an outsider, i just wish 1-800 flowers was right
@StevieD: A representative of the company did state that they wouldn’t send a receipt etc. They shouldn’t have made that promise if they couldn’t do it.
I’m a big believer in personal responsibility and accountability. The flowers’ receipt may have been a proximate cause, but not the root cause. 1-800-FLOWERS didn’t cause anyone to cheat on their wives. His wife finding out about the affair didn’t cause her to divorce him, the guy having the affair to begin with was the problem. Nobody thinks they’re at fault for anything they do anymore, sue someone else for your problems that you caused…
@Buran: They sent a receipt after a member of the household called and requested one. This action was prompted by a thank you note that was received by said member of household.
Well, even if his motive for not wanting paperwork isn’t terribly admirable, the consumer issue here is that he *asked* not to be contacted further, and they did it anyways. Even if Leroy doesn’t win his suit, he could at least try to have the flower company fined for ignoring privacy/opt-out laws.
1) Win lawsuit, give award to ex-wife in divorce, laugh as mistress dumps him, too.
2) Laugh him out of court.
I think either scenario would be a win-win.
haha this reminds me of the lawsuit where a guy ran a redlight and got a traffic ticket from those cameras. The ticket went to his home address showing the guy’s mistress in the passenger seat as well and the wifey saw, so the guy sued the city and won!!! Now by law, the passenger is always blacked out in the photo.
The man was (presumably) wrong for cheating, but 1-800-FLOWERS was wrong for releasing confidential billing information.
The question is whether the $1 million he’s seeking supposed to be consequential damages (claiming the flower company caused the divorce) or punitive damages (the flower company should pay for what they did, even if it caused little demonstrative damage.)
If I was on the jury, I’d probably award him money for punitive but not consequential. What would you guys be inclined to do?
The guy was just asking for this to happen (maybe subconsciously, but still) so that he could get out of his marriage.
Now, he’s hoping to get some money out of it to pay alimony.
God how I’d love to be a judge. I would probably get sacked for laughing 90% of my cases out of court, but it would be so worth it.
So what if this guy told his wife he was going on a business trip, took his mistress to Vegas instead, and was spotted by an acquaintance who “outed him” to the wife (deliberately or inadvertently)? Could he sue the acquaintance? I doubt it.
BTW, tulips are my favorite!
@Onouris:
For a second there, I thought my comment had posted twice.
Nice avatar!
@acambras: If the acquaintance had agreed not to rat him out, then yes, he should sue him.
Regardless of why you don’t want to be contacted (and I do feel some schadenfreude about this guy — karma’s a bitch), companies ought to give you the option of saying no to their extended marketing BS. I’m pretty sure that if you’ve ever done business with a company, there’s no law to stop them from sending you crap for the rest of your life.
I do not condone his behavior (litigious or otherwise).
That said, however, he should sue his parents for raising a moron.
If he only asked for no receipt and what they sent was a thank you note to him then what can he really claim? They are not the same thing. If he specifically told them I am cheating on my my wife and If you send any proof of that to my address she will be able to demand more money in the divorce were having so dont do it ok? And they agreed that they would in no way contact him again then maybe hed have some case.
If you read the update they say that they were currently in the process of getting divorced and the reason why hes upset that she got the proof of him sending flowers to the other girl is because she can use that information to try and get an unequal split of their assets in her favor.
This guy was pretty stupid. Anyone should realize that you only use cash to pay for things you don’t want your significant other to find out about. She could have just innocently picked up a credit card bill and found out the same information.
That being said, a friend of mine recently bought his wife a birthday present and had it shipped to his mother’s house. He also asked for no receipt, because he wanted the present to be a surprise. Unfortunately, he was out of town for business for a couple of days and they sent a delivery confirmation to his home address. And he did tell them the reason for no receipt, so it should have been obvious that any other mailings telling about the item should be kept from his home.
@ALADDYN: Would she have been able to get that information anyway by subpoenaing his credit card records? Are such subpoenas allowed even in divorce cases? I have no idea how that works…
Here’s the best part: if he had just once sent flowers to his wife from 1-800-Flowers, she wouldn’t have been suspicious when the “Thanks for being a customer” card came in the mail.
@Miss Anthropy:
I think I saw in a movie or t.v. show once that whenever the cheater would send the g/f flowers, he would always send his wife some, too. That way she if she saw the bill she wouldn’t look too carefully and realize what was up.
This guy is an idiot for paying with a credit card in the first place.
I open all the bills in my house and read them carefully, because I’m the one who pays them. This includes my husband’s credit card bills (they are in his name only). I’ve called a few times on strange charges. I think every time I’ve called a company, with the exception of one, by telling them I was his wife they gave the info out no problem. I can guarantee you that’s what this wife did once she found out about the charge.
Leroy was stupid and should have gone to a local flower place and paid cash. Live and learn for the next mistress, Leroy!
@miborovsky: Not just agreed, but accepted money as a part of a transaction where that agreement was a condition. It’s not a contract unless there’s some kind of compensation (though it need not necessarily be monetary).
Hahaha… there’s nothing that draws comments like marital and girlfriend issues. When I saw the story, I was like “Well, here’s one story where my comment will get buried within a sea of 100 comments.”