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Petals Decorative Accents / Petals.com -- Customer Service as Fake as Their Flowers -- Equity Owner Restructuring Into the Dirt -- Ridgefield Connecticut
My mother has been waiting since last winter for any restitution from a mail order gone bad, in a story echoing that of many others I have read from orphaned customers. In mid January 2007 a paper check for $165.80 was sent for a wreath and some faux azaleas. When nothing came after a month, she called several times over the following weeks to inquire, and was usually given the "on backorder" excuse. This she took on faith at first, given that she was a happy returning customer, the product was consistently of good quality, and shipments were packed with great care to avoid damage. Well, even my trusting mother thought a whole quarter of a year was a bit much for "backorder" status.
She stepped up her phone call campaign in the summer and soon found herself roadblocked by a perpetually busy service line, no matter what part of the business day she dialed. She says she must have tried fifty times since the whole mess started. Once in a great while a real human would respond with apologies or vague references to a "restructuring", but no product or refund was on its way. In August I first learned of the problem when she requested that I reach this bunch online. (Her office gear stopped advancing at the electric typewriter, you see.) I saw an apparently active web site and twice emailed a complaint within two weeks. Each message was ignored.
Prior to my second email I did research which turned up dozens of customer complaints dating back to late 2006 which paralleled my Mom's story, particularly the part about being stymied by a lack of direct customer service. I tried both of their toll-free service numbers at strategic times and heard what others were mentioning, the recorded greetings and immediate disconnects. This is what I reported in that second email:
"I called your 6000 line today at 08:00 EST sharp, at the posted start of your business day, and again at 08:41. Your recorded greeting advised that I call "during normal business hours". Either you have late sleepers in the CS room or you are dodging calls in prelude to a bankruptcy. Your 3825 line uselessly only refers to the website before brushing off the caller."
This condition remained the same for most of September. I offered to find the Attorney General and/or consumer board for the appropriate state, but this was dicey since I had seen Petals associated with addresses in both Florida and Tennessee. I advised my Mom to keep pecking at them anyway; she might get lucky and crack their shell. She finally did in late September, and spoke to a human who told her to expect a refund in "two weeks". Well, careful readers of the many available public complaints have heard this "two weeks" promise before, and none of those were honored. I warned poor Mom not to get too excited, but it was at least encouraging that the main service number (ending in 6000) was staffed again.
To no one's shock, four whole weeks passed with no refund and no updates. Mother was too busy with family social events for quicker follow-on, but at my reminding managed to get another audience on 25 October with a live CSR. Mind you, this was through the 6000 line again. The 3825 line still dumps the caller after announcing the company URL -- yeah, big help there. It took several minutes of waiting in the hold queue, suggesting a minimal staff. This time the lady gave a more plausible lie, stating a refund would be issued "in a month". Note the lack of clarity in this, no number of business days or due date given. The CSR also did not provide a name, and I chided Mom for not asking.
Some of the other complaints have reported passing references by Petals reps to a "merger" or "reorganization" and the like, but no more detail which could help explain why so many customers are being mistreated. As it turns out, Petals has withered on its own vine for years. Should we get steamed enough we could just take a day trip from neighboring Little Rhody to the actual 'head of the head', so to speak: the firm in Connecticut which bought out the Petals assets several years ago. Petals itself was once a component of the long defunct "Interiors" conglomerate. If I read this right, Petals has been a cursed property from the start, at least from an ownership perspective.
Consequently, for this report I have provided the address of Southridge Capital Management, the equity firm which rescued Petals from bankruptcy in late 2003. Here is a relevant article quote:
"Prior to filing for Chapter 7, the marketer of artificial flowers and other home accessories had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May. At that time, Petals listed $32 million in assets and $40 million in debt."
Evidently 40 mil is a stiff bill to pay on sales of silk flowers, so here was the firm's solution as reported in August 2006:
"Petals Decorative Accents of Ridgefield has completed a reverse merger into a shell public company that it acquired last month, turning the privately held Petals into a publicly traded company overnight."
Hmmm, we can see how slick that deal has turned out ...... The share price maxed out at $1.20 last November and has held steady at a mere thirty cents most of this year. (ticker symbol PDEC) Also Petals has been recently slacking on overdue SEC filings. I'm thinking we should swing a bigger hammer to burst out our refunds before it's too late.
NSpectr3
Westerly, Rhode Island
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
NSpectr3
Westerly,Rhode Island,
U.S.A.
Twelve Months To Refund Victory -- Petals Decorative Accents / Petals.com --
#3Author of original report
Wed, March 05, 2008
Sometimes the impossible happens. Early last month my Mother placed her eleventeenth call to Petals Decorative out of a weary sense of duty, still hoping for something better than an empty promise on that refund. A male voice, rare for them, answered and claimed a check would be sent right away. "I've heard that before", said Mom, but the man was insistent .... and to the surprise of all, correct. By the next week, a paper check for the full amount paid in January 2007 had arrived, issued 15 February 2008. That was maybe better than any Valentine gift.
Mother was showing off her victorious check to me the moment I got in the house, and gave me about twelve percent (one for each month?) for my trouble in tracking and filing complaints. She also buried all their catalogs in the trash the same day, still lamenting Petals had lost her trust. Offering superior product means nothing with bad business behavior like she endured. The nice part is I never had to resort to contacting the Connecticut Attorney General or any other such external arm twisting. Any longer and I would have driven out to Ridgefield myself to beat my fist on the CEO's desk.
The take-home lesson in these disputes is to be polite, firm, and persistent. I see only one other refund report filed here, but I imagine Petals will be cutting checks the rest of the year until they catch up. It's hard to "restructure" and "rebrand" when you tow around a damaged public image.
NSpectr3
Westerly,Rhode Island,
U.S.A.
No Refund In Sight, Still Sending Catalogs - Petals Decorative Accents / Petals.com - Ridgefield, CT
#3Author of original report
Sat, November 24, 2007
It's been ten months since the order was placed and unfilled, and one month since my initial report. You may correctly guess my folks have yet to receive a refund, no longer want the undelivered items, and Petals isn't responding to any contact efforts. For what little it may be worth, a detailed BBB complaint was filed with the Wallingford, CT chapter in late October, which they have also ignored. Come Monday the 26th, the "in a month" deadline for a refund, promised verbally, will have passed. I predict the same box of nothing will be sent instead.
Curious items have turned up in my latest round of Petals research, namely a recent Customer Service job offer. Here's the search engine snapshot from a classified ad posted to New London, CT, followed by an ad posted to nearby eastern New York state:
// BEGIN QUOTES //
Customer Service Representative
Reply to: hr@petals.com Date: 2007-08-16, 8:42PM EDT
Customer Service Representative Petals Decorative Accents an established home decor retailer located in ...
newlondon.craigslist.org/csr/398884845.html -
----------
FROM Yorktown PennySaver (NY)
CUSTOMER SERVICE REP
Home decor company in Ridgefield Ct looking for experienced customer service representative to handle a variety of phone and on-line requests. FT/PT. Fax resume: 203-438-0321 or email to: hr@petals.com
// END QUOTES //
Note they want a "representative" singular, and the posting date tracks somewhat near the breaking of "radio silence" Petals had maintained all summer. If the present slow response time to phone inquiries can indicate such, I'm inclined to believe one CSR is all they have. The poor dear wasn't told how that "variety" of requests might include so many demands for corrective action, and that her job was to lie outright to everyone with a service problem.
The big laugh of Thanksgiving holiday came by surface mail, conveniently timed to arrive on retail's Black Friday. It was the shiny new 20 page "Holiday 2007" catalog from Petals. (edition UP7-1109) It is impressively printed on heavy glossy stock and festooned with photos of their Xmas merch in red, green, and gold. Apparently we get free shipping with a minimum $75 order and possibly another fiver for ordering online. Such generosity! Such gall .....
A notable change from the last known catalog last year is the listing of store locations on the back cover. Two are in New York, one more each in Tennessee and Delaware; this corroborates locales noted in other recent complaints. Better still, Petals finally acknowledges its Ridgefield, CT headquarters in the return address. The toll free 6000 line and URL both remain on prominent display.
Mom is in a state of disbelief at "the nerve of those bums", and rightly so. Mailing lists are forgivably impersonal, but the implied assumption of customer loyalty to Petals is insulting nonetheless. Their CFO Gregory Powell, hired away from Spiegel as part of the Petals restructuring effort, has had a year to settle into his job. It would not now be too soon to ask how his ledger supports a mass glossy catalog mailing while quietly ignoring untold numbers of refund and damage exchange claims.