1-800 Flowers

Full review
My experience ordering flowers for Valentine's Day 2009 can be summed up this way:  Coupon Useless, Customer Service nearly Non-Existent, but flowers were beautiful.

In the end, it doesn't matter to me that the flowers turned out fine.  Service mattered with my order, and it took too long to get any.  I will use a local, reliable florist next time.  Ordering online did NOT save me money, or time, but instead wasted more than a half hour to get their call center rep (in India, I believe, from the accent) to get permission to apply my coupon.  It wasn't worth my time, or for that matter, not worth the time of the people they pay to answer the phone. 

I saw Jim McCann (CEO of 1800 Flowers) do his yearly visit on the Martha Stewart show to promote the flowers they have branded together.  At the end of the show segment they offered a discount coupon.

This is where my problems began.  If you are thinking of taking advantage of a coupon, my advice -- don't bother.

And if you anticipate having to call them, be ready for a wait for any sort of answer.  The poor young man on the phone had to get the coupon approved through his supervisor, and that took more than 25 minutes!! 

I tried to use my coupon online, but the 1800 flowers system did not show that it had been applied to my order.  It was "accepted", but it did NOT appear in the total calculation.  It was NOT deducted from the amount billed to my credit card . 

(Seems this glitch started in their IT department.)

So I had to call to get it applied.  It required 3 separate phone calls, and a total time of more than 40 minutes.  In the first call, my order hadn't shown up in the system, yet.  OK, fine.  Second call -- the rep saw the problem, then has to put me on hold to check on something.  After waiting for 5 minutes, our call is mysteriously disconnected.

Third call-- To begin, this individual did NOT understand the problem. He took some time to look up my coupon -- put me on hold for this. His finding-- my coupon had expired.  Yeah, duh.  It's a few days after Valentine's Day, and this was a promotion for Valentine's Day.  

Then he had to get permission to apply the coupon.  After waiting on the phone for more than 15 minutes, I asked him to get up from his desk and go to directly to his supervisor (who he had emailed asking for the permission)

Normally I would have just given up, but I thought that since the flowers were as promised, I would see what would be required just to get this simple task through their process.

Did I get the $10 coupon applied? -- ultimately, yes.  But it was NOT worth it for the headaches. 

I will not use 1800Flowers EVER again.  It's a shame that Martha Stewart isn't able to have her people manage everything with her name on it, because I don't think this is up to her standards.