Reader Greg is not thrilled with FTD’s offer of $10 off the flowers that were not delivered for Mother’s Day. Why? $10 doesn’t even cover the $18.99 in shipping and fees he was charged.

Greg says:

I will admit I am a procrastinator when it comes to gifts, but I had plans to go out to get flowers for my wife yesterday (5/8) until I saw an FTD.com email in my inbox stating that delivery was still available for tomorrow. Great, can place the order online and save a little time.

I went through the whole ordering process. They confirmed that delivery was available for Sunday May 9 for my zip code. The site took my order and sent me a confirmation email stating Deliver on: Saturday May 8, 2010 or Sunday May 9, 2010. Perfect, right?

Wrong. No flowers today. I even taped a sign to my front door while we were out about where they could put the flowers if we weren’t home as their delivery policy said delivery people may leave the flowers in the safe place if we weren’t home.

So I start going through my inbox wondering if there was any notification about what was going on.

Well, the first thing I see is an email from ftd.com sent at 6:20am May 9 saying I could still order by noon and get delivery. I didn’t go through the ordering process obviously so it might have notified me that delivery wasn’t available for my zip code, but they were still touting same day delivery this morning.

Three hours later at 9:20am May 9 I receive the below email. Well before the noon cutoff they had advertised in the 6:20am email.

“Please accept our sincere apologies. Despite our best efforts, due to exceptionally high seasonal demand with our member florists, we regret we were unable to fill your order as requested. We very much appreciate your business and would like to offer you $10 dollars off your existing order to be delivered on or before Monday, May 10th. We truly understand how important each order is to our customers, and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please reply to let us know if you would like to cancel your order, or have it delivered on or before Monday, May 10th. [redacted] VP Customer Care”

$10 off my existing order for not having flowers for my wife on Mother’s Day! You have to be kidding.

Luckily my wife was very understanding, but as I said in my email to them, somewhere it is written that you don’t make promises you can’t keep. They seem like a company that makes promises it can’t keep. I consider this the last time I do business with them.

P.S. You know, the interesting thing is that they charged me $18.99 in shipping and service fees. So the $10 rebate doesn’t even cover the fees.

Other florists take note: This is a good example of how not to do this.

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