Sometimes, it doesn’t matter all that much when a florist substitutes in a different flower from the one you ordered, and sometimes it matters very much. In the case of Andy’s fiancée, it’s actually kind of important for her to not get a certain kind of flower, because she’s allergic to it. It’s no fun to get flowers for your birthday if you can’t be in the same room as them.

Andy didn’t enclose any fun pictures, because the problem was simple: she just can’t have lilies. He ordered a bouquet that didn’t have lilies in it. What did they deliver? Roses and lilies. He writes:

I ordered a bouquet for my fiancee’s birthday, being careful (as always) to read the list of included flowers. See, she’s allergic to lilies. They do bad things to her. I found one assortment that was lily-free and could be delivered by a local florist which, to my mind, tends to mean on-time delivery.

The assortment was on-time and gorgeous… and included lilies, perhaps to make up for the paltry number of roses. I reached out to FTD via Facebook, and very quickly got a reply asking for the order number. I provided that, and Nancy from FTD called not too long later. She apologized and mentioned having flower allergies of her own, and then arranged for a much nicer bouquet of roses to be sent to my fiancee, plus waived the service charge on the original order. That’s above and beyond what I had asked for, which was just a simple re-send of the original assortment as described on the site (that is, lily-free).

Another bonus: Quality must go up *after* the V-Day rush, because the lilied assortment was so pretty we plan to give it to my mother. So, free gift for her!

A happy ending, and one to counter all of the anti-wire service, pro-local florist posts we’ve had for the past three weeks. For future reference, it might have been better to call up that local florist directly and say, “I need some roses for my fiancée, and she’s allergic to lilies, so don’t use any.” That doesn’t guarantee competence or perfection, but at least the shop would know, and there are fewer places where the information could get lost.

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