Sigh... where to start? My issue is both due to the Edible Arrangements company as a whole, and the individual store that my order got sent to. I had used this service twice previously with generally good outcomes, and many of the things I noticed recently shows how the company as a whole has gone down bigtime. For certain, I will no longer use them ever again.
So, I had placed an order via the EA website for a fruit arrangement, this was the same exact way I did previously, and one interesting/odd thing was that they started allowing for a tip to be added to the service total during the process of ordering. Usually, tips should be done afterwards, at least that's what I remember from previously, but I figured I would go ahead and add a tip beforehand, so that there isn't any hassle during/after the fact.
After the order was successfully placed and paid for entirely, I received several emails from the EA company, oddly enough they sent me a recent email with an old order (their system is clearly flawed/lacking). But around the same time they emailed me the current order, so I figured everything was fine. I saw that my order was assigned to this local store in San Gabriel, which made sense since it was the closest to where I wanted the item delivered to.
I had placed the order several days prior to when I wanted the delivery, so I was fairly certain there was no issues with timing. Additionally, I knew that it happened to be fairly close to Mother's Day, however my date of delivery was quite a few days prior to Mother's Day, so I figured this should also not be an issue. Reading through some of the reviews about this local store scared me slightly, but based on previous good experiences with EA as a whole, I thought it'd be fine.
When the day arrives, I am on the lookout for a confirmation email from the store or company, as I've always seen a confirmation email, none came. So, I wait a day, thinking that the person I sent the item to would let me know about it one way or another. This never happened. So, waiting two days past the delivery date, I ask the person receiving the item if she got something or not, and she said she did not. She did mention that she received a call the day before, but that's it.
So, at this point I'm not really certain what to do. I try calling the store first, but the person I spoke with told me that I would need to talk to the manager of the store, which he was not in at the time. So, I went to the EA website and opened a ticket, thinking that would go through corporate people. I received no reply there. Continued trying to call the store, finally on the third call and mentioned to the person I was talking with that I was having extreme difficulties in reaching the store manager, she suggests that perhaps I can email the store directly, which would go to the store manager. So, writing down the email of the store, I go ahead with that idea.
Got a reply to the email the next day, the person did not apologize or give a reason for why the service was never carried out, simply told me to call and that it would be re-made and re-sent. However, as it was a birthday gift and timing is somewhat important, I replied saying I didn't want a redo, but rather a full refund. Needed to wait a full 3 days for another reply, and they refunded the money, but only for the base amount, and not the tip amount which I had already paid for as well.
Had to go back and forth (with a lot of delays in the replies coming from them) for more than a week only to find out that the store is unable to refund me the tip amount, and that I would need to go through corporate. At this time, I had already opened a dispute with PayPal (as that's what I used for payment), and decided to just let PayPal deal with it from then on. And after a bit of time, PayPal ended up fixing the issue completely for me.
Really sad to see this company fall as bad as it has. At no point did anyone from the company contact me with any sort of apology or resolution. And the local store manager is downright terrible. read more