Kyle had a LivingSocial voucher for 1-800-Flowers, and thought that he would put it to good use sending a lovely arrangement to his parents to show that he was thinking of them at Christmas. 1-800-Flowers didn’t really want to cooperate, though. They e-mailed him twice to let him know that the arrangement had been delivered…but it actually hadn’t. Silly Kyle, assuming that one of the messages had to reflect reality. They’ve since promised him a refund and a $20 coupon that have never come.

He writes:

I am a long-time reader and follower of Consumerist and wanted to pass along a horrible experience I had over the holidays with 1-800-Flowers.

Since I wasn’t traveling home for the holidays to visit my parents, I decided it would be a nice idea to send a flower arrangement to them. I had recently purchased a gift certificate for 1-800-Flowers from Living Social and decided this would be a perfect opportunity to use this.

On December 16th, I went online and placed an order to be delivered to my parents on December 21st. I received an email confirmation and everything seemed to be in order. On December 21st, I received two emails from 1-800-Flowers entitled “Your gift has arrived!” indicating that the gift I sent my parents were delivered and received. Since they sent two separate emails I really thought that everything was okay. I called my mother the next day to ask her if she had received them and lo and behold they had actually NOT been delivered.

I called 1-800-Flowers on the morning of December 22nd and was told that no that had not been delivered (even though I had received two separate emails telling me that they were indeed delivered) and would be delivered on December 22nd. After talking to my mother later that afternoon she told me again that they were not delivered. I called customer service a second time and was told that they would be delivered that evening. Again – I spoke to my mother that evening and had yet to delivered. I called customer service a third time on December 22nd and was told that they would not be delivered on the 22nd and may not show up until December 24th. Since my parents were actually leaving for a vacation on the 26th, I decided out of frustration to just cancel the order and get a refund (as suggested by the customer service representative). I was told I would get a full refund since the order was cancelled.

I continued to check my credit card statement and did not see any refund for my order. A week passes and still no refund. I called 1-800-Flowers again on December 30 inquiring about my refund and was told that it had never been processed! So after one online order, 4 phone calls and two weeks, they have not delivered anything and have still yet to refund me my money. On top of this, my Living Social gift certificate has been wasted!

The final kicker is that each time I spoke to a customer representative they apologized and told me they would send me a $20 coupon for my next order…..guess what….after four different people told me they were going to send me one….I still haven’t even received one! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. And to be quite honest, I doubt I will every order from them again anyway, so I guess wouldn’t be needing a coupon anyway!

A highly frustrating experience and I will definitely stick to using a local florist instead of dealing with 1-800-Flowers again!

Yep, it’s almost always better to just call up a florist local to the recipient and dispatch flower arrangements that way. Ask local friends and family which are the most reliable, or check reviews on Angie’s List or Yelp. One startup we’ve learned about recently is BloomNation, which lets you browse the offerings of participating local florists and purchase right from the site, and also integrates Yelp reviews of the business right on the listings.

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