Michelle placed her Mother’s Day order from a site that appears to be a fake local florist, aggregating orders and sending them to local shops affiliated with wire services after taking their cut. She didn’t know that, though, and chose an arrangement based on her mom’s love of purple roses. Got that? Purple.

Here’s what Michelle ordered:

Here’s what the florist delivered:

“Clearly this is an example of what an arrangement of leftover Mother’s Day flowers look like,” she writes. “In addition to looking NOTHING like the arrangement I ordered, the flowers themselves don’t even come close to matching (and half of them were dead).”

The arrangement that Michelle thought she had ordered looked familiar when it landed in our inbox, though. Where had we seen it? Just a few hours before, submitted by another reader who chose this arrangement because his mother likes purple flowers.

Yes, Mike’s mother likes purple too. There are some purple flowers in there…somewhere. Mike reports that he got a partial refund and a gift card, which isn’t so bad, but kind of frustrating when he very thoughtfully picked out something in her favorite color.

This arrangement is out of the FTD catalog, but maybe FTD should consider making it clear that the color palette won’t necessarily be what you see on the site. “We reserve the right to throw in whatever colors we have lying around” would be a very accurate disclaimer.

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