Update On The Flower Disaster

At 1pm, I still had heard nothing from FTD about the delivery of Lay’s flowers. I called their 800 number again, and just had it on the speaker phone on the desk while I continued to work. Two hours later….At least I wasn’t hearing other conversations this time.

I did some searching on the web and made a call to FTD corporate. After mentions of the credit card disaster, I was put through to Brenda Robertson (V.P. of Customer Service) and Keri Wolfe (Chief Financial Officer).

Based on information from Ms. Wolfe, it is clear they use a third party call center for in-bound orders and customer service calls. (At least it appears to be U.S.-based.) She explained they were working with their contractor on the situation, but tried to tell me it was an isolated situation. Sorry, I just don’t buy that, given that I made three calls over two days, and each time overheard multiple conversations. Also, noting that the CFO sat in on this call, it is clearly of great concern to them.

If you placed a phone order with FTD over the past several days, you need to contact the credit card company that you used to place the order.

Oh, and the customer service call was finally answered after two hours and 28 minutes.

Finally, I received flowers at about 5pm. Ms. Robertson spent an hour attempting to get one of their florists to answer her phone call with no luck. She finally called there district representative who went by a florist and picked up an arrangement and brought it down to me. I appreciate their efforts, but as I feared, the arrangement is thrown together with whatever was laying around the shop, and it shows. Some will open fully in several days, and some will be dead tomorrow…they are already drooping.

All-in-all, it was a very disappointing experience, and I will NOT be using FTD ever again.