Anne tried to send some flowers to her stepmom last week, but changed her mind after she saw the final price, which at $64 was too much for her budget (the tulips she picked out were listed at $29.99, but all the additional fees doubled the price). ProFlowers sent her an email offering her a discount if she’d complete her order, so she went back but discovered the tulips were sold out, and she abandoned the shopping cart a second time. Now her bank account has over $100 in “pending charges” because ProFlowers pre-authorized the full amount of each transaction and they can’t seem to reverse the authorizations. It’s been a week and she still doesn’t have her money.

I’m sure you’ve been flooded with Valentine’s Day flower delivery disasters, but here’s a disaster that happened without me even placing an order:

On the 13th (day before Valentine’s Day), I went to Proflowers.com to send some flowers to my stepmom. I intended on getting the cheapest arrangement because I don’t have a lot of disposable income, and it turned out to be tulips for $29.99. So I proceed in processing the order, and get to the confirmation page, which displays my total as over $64 (9.99 for rush delivery, 9.99 for the vase, blah blah blah), so I close out of the window (there is no “Cancel Order” button) and go about my business. A little while later I get an email from ProFlowers saying they noticed I didn’t complete my order, and they’ll give me a free vase and 10% off to complete it. So I log back in, go through the whole process again, and get to the confirmation page, and the total is about $54.

Still not what I was hoping, but if I wanted to pay less, I shouldn’t have waited. So I hit confirm, and it tells me they’re out of the arrangement I wanted to get, and I should choose another, more expensive arrangement. I feel overwhelmed and a little scammed, so I close the window again, and order them from somewhere else.

I get yet another email promising the same free vase and 10% discount, which I ignore.

Yesterday, I log into my bank to find two pending charges on my debit card for the totals for the orders I DID NOT CONFIRM on the ProFlowers website. I immediate call customer service ($100 is a lot of money to me, and to not have it is very hard). The woman in customer service sounds genuinely concerned, takes all my information, apologizes profusely, and assures me I’ll get a call soon from someone who can fix this.

I wait all day, no phone call. I miss a call at work (today, 4:16 p.m.), from ProFlowers, telling me to call a number for someone who can take care of the charges on my account. I call them back, and a woman again apologizes profusely, and starts to take all of my information and tells I’ll get a call soon from someone who can fix this.

I said, but I’ve already submitted this claim and gone through this process. They HAVE called me, and told me to call this number and someone would help me, and now I’m just having to start all over? Meanwhile, there’s over $100 seized in my checking account that I absolutely did not authorize?

She was, again, profusely apologetic, and asked me to hold while she researched another method of recourse, and continued to apologize when she said this is the only thing she can do. I asked her what was going to happen when I keep going through this process and the charges naturally drop off my account, and she said, “Honestly, that’s probably what’s going to happen.”

So, not only has ProFlowers captured and processed my credit card number without my consent, they’re giving me the runaround until the problem resolves itself.

Somehow, not okay in my book.

No longer a ProFlowers customer,

Anne

Yesterday, Anne sent us an update that things were still unresolved:

FYI – after six phone calls and seven days, the charges for over $100 are still pending on my account for orders I didn’t place. Even one of their account specialists told me they “need to modify their card verifying process so it just takes a $1 or something.”

Because the banks were closed yesterday, they told me to call back this morning (a week after the charges were made) and they would take care of it, except the phone number is going straight to voicemail. I’m now overdrawn in my account as scheduled payments have come in.

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