Complaint Review: Florist Of Abington = Flowers With Gifted Elegance

On 6/15/04,we ordered a delivery of flowers to Abbington hospital, which never arrived. Consequently we have been contacting the store to have the $50+/- charge removed from our mastercharge account.

The belligerent staff refused to identify themselves or management and refused to acknowledge our request. We had to call our bank to cancel the charge card, although the charge had already gone through.

Meanwhile I found out that "Flowers with Gifted Elegance" operates in all of Pennsylvania and New Jersey under the guise of local non-existing stores.

You will find them through verizon's superpage directory, entering the search words "florist, flowers" and a town and state and clicking on local. You will get a florist which contains the town name, a local phone number and a location map without an address identification.
Calling the local number and following the telephone prompts, you will end up with "Flowers With Gifted Elegance", Tel:800 258 6473, web: www.fwege.com

I personally verified this by calling the following stores:Florist in Bethlehem ( 610 954 7858 ),Easton Flowers ( 610 253 4999 ),Allentown Florist ( 610 791 2008 ),Florist in Harrisburg ( 717 236 6670 ), Florist in Pittsburg ( 412 242 3842) just to list a few.

This practice was prosecuted in the state of Delaware, refer to attorney general press releases:
http://www.state.de.us/attgen/main_page/pressreleases/2002/floral.htm apparently the mastermind of the scheme is a Thomas Meola of Randolph N.J.
The criminal charges are:1-Deceptive Advertisement
2-Theft by Deception
Needless to say the rip-off continues to flourish in PA, NJ, NY among other states.

Johann
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.