FTD Flowers

Full review
Look, it can happen to anybody. It happened to me, of course, so I'm writing about it, and you're reading about it. But it can happen to anybody.

It's not like I did this at the last minute, either. I put my order into the FTD website back in January. Nothing fancy, a dozen red roses in a stylish pink vase. And that was it. I expected that the roses would be delivered to my wife at her office on Valentine's Day, and that was that.

And, of course, they never showed up.

Well, look, these things happen. It's got to be -- it must be -- a tremendous challenge for FTD to ship millions of roses everywhere across the country on February 14th. Even farming out work to local florists, FTD still has to rely on sending out roses via delivery services. I know this, because that's what was supposed to have happened -- FTD sent the roses I ordered via DHL. I have a tracking number and everything.

Okay, so there was some kind of screwup somewhere. That's okay, isn't it? We can give FTD.com some kind of slack for screwing up, it's not like you and I don't screw up ourselves, right?

So I check the tracking number on the DHL website. Nerts. call FTD's 800 line. Busy signal. Another busy signal ten minutes later. I call DHL and they can't do anything but apologize; they're looking at the same tracking information I am and don't know where the flowers are, either.

I finally get through to FTD's 800 number, and the recorded message says that due to unexpected call volume, they aren't taking anyone's calls at all. On Valentine's Day. You gotta be kidding me. How could anyone in the florist business not expect high call volume on Valentine's Day? And are there really that many people who didn't get their flowers delivered calling in and complaining about it?

I kind of think there were.

So I called FTD again next morning. I was on hold for thirty minutes. I finally had to hop in the shower. They finally did pick up; my wife talked to the FTD guy who apologized, gave us a 15% discount, and said that the flowers would be delivered that day.

Which they weren't. I had to call back the next day, where a very apologetic FTD person said that my order had been scanned into DHL but not, for some reason, actually shipped. I got a full refund this time.

Look. It can happen to anybody, this kind of thing. I am not saying that FTD is a horrible, horrible mess, or that their customer service line is a miserable, wasteful agony. But there are some things you should know if you live in this world. One is that you are going to screw up. Two is that you should plan accordingly. Three is that you should deal with your local florist instead of going through FTD, every single time.