Complaint Review: Flower Delivery Express - Commerce Michigan

My mother, a woman who is not internet savvy, has used this service and unwittingly been taken advantage of. They run a scam on three fronts.

1. The bouquets of flowers that appear to be akin to at 800flowers.com for a lower price. They first list the 'original' price and then strike through it and show a lower price (around 30% lower) in red that is their price below this first price. The first part of the scam is that you are charged the full price for the bouquet but are told you get the rebate price. What actually happens is they charge you the full amount. You never receive an email receipt so you don't realize it (if, like my mother, you don't really know how to use the internet).

2. The second part of the scam is that they communicate to the local florist assembling your bouqet that you only paid the lower price for the bouqet (not the full price you've actually paid) so the florist assembles something for you based on that knowledge so that it is much smaller than what you believed you had paid for (in this case the 'Best' option for the Birthday Garden bouqet: http://secure.flowerdeliveryexpress.com/product.asp?id=539210&rcid=84&point=1). The bouqet that arrived on my doorstep looked absolutely zero percent like the one in the picture online that was ordered. For starters, the vase was less than 6 inches tall and there were four largeish flowers (something that looked like a black-eye Susan and four small Dahlia) with filler and a few rosebuds. This was bought for the price of $60.99. The bouqet that was delivered looked like a large corsage, not a $61 bouqet of flowers. When I called the florist to complain, they told me that they had received an order for a $40 bouqet in my name, not a $60.99 bouqet, which is what my mother had ordered.

3.  When I tried to contact customer service at Flower Delivery Express, I was given an auto-prompt that told me to leave my details and a customer service rep would get back to me (this is when I pressed '2' at the beginning when it said to press '1' for new orders and '2' for existing ones). When I called back and pressed '1' because I knew I would get a live person (they wouldn't want to leave scamming money out of people to an answering machine would they but they certainly would for those who are trying to collect), the woman on the phone said she could only take orders, not see existing ones. There is no live customer service. When I tried to call the local florist back, the woman there all of a sudden said she would have to take a message and couldn't see past orders either. Very suspect indeed. The local florist in question was Park Florist in northern California, FYI.

Furthermore, there was never an email receipt issued (the order was made over the phone and one was promised) so the only record that exists is the credit card record (thank god there's that) and a confirmation number which I will use to try to figure this all out if I can ever get a live person to talk to. Naturally, there was never any 'rebate email' received either, not that it would have mattered as the rebate is, in fact, just a 'discount' to use on their site again to continue the viscious cycle. 

This is 100% a scam service that feeds off of the unwitting who, emboldened by the pervasivness of the internet, try to have a go at finding a florist online to, say, send flowers to loved ones who no longer live local. They have search engine optimized to show up in searches for florists and 1800Flowers so that, next to such reputable businesses, they too seem reputable. They are anything but. 

I will be pursuing both Flower Delivery Express and Park Florist until this is resolved. Sorry for them that my mother has four internet savvy daughters on her hands to help her out.