When running an Internet business, trust is one of the most valuable commodities a business has. That’s why I was so surprised to discover that Teleflora seems to operate on what appears to be an unscrupulous business model.
For my wife’s parent’s big wedding anniversary she ordered this:
What they actually got was this:
Besides the fact that it only had a handful of the roses, the most ridiculous part is that the little white flowers they included rather than the ones in the picture are actually those little white flowers you see in the field. I.e. it appears they just took whatever flowers they had on hand and ran outside to the field and picked some of those little white flowers.
The flower order was over $100. So this wasn’t some cheap flower arrangement.
Ok, you might say, people make mistakes. Call them up and ask for a refund. So my wife does and their response, after leaving her on hold for half an hour, was a 25% discount on future orders. That’s it.
And that is what makes it a scam in my opinion. It appears that Teleflora’s business model appears to be to rely on people just tolerating this kind of thing. The no-brainer thing would have been to give her a refund and keep her future business.
Look closely at those two pictures and add that they won’t give my wife a refund and it’s hard not to conclude that part of their business model is to simply not deliver what they promise and pocket the difference.
There’s a lot of legitimate web-based flower deliver services. Teleflora does not appear to be one of them.
