Ok, this is a tough one. Two days before Mother's Day, I decided to send my mother flowers. Usually, I use another nationwide, internet based flower delivery service conglomerate. My mother has used Leci's Bouquet quite often and is usually quite pleased with them, I've been the recipient of most of those orders and I have to say, they've been lovely.
I went to their website and chose a lovely, yellow, tulip bouquet with a thick yellow ribbon around the vase. I requested that they be delivered on Sat. and I unchecked the box that said, "it's ok to substitute for an equal value" as I really wanted the yellow bouquet.
My mother called me on Saturday evening to thank me for the lovely flowers. I was glad that they had arrived and asked her to take a picture of them. She brought the camera to my house the next day for dinner and when I saw the arrangement they had sent, I was horrified.
There was a paltry bouquet, in a vase that was too wide and too shallow for the tulips - they were drooping over the side and looked awful and worst of all, they were pink and white striped. It looked like a $20 arrangement and it was not that. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
On Monday I called Leci's and told them how unhappy I was. The woman who answered the phone asked for my name, the recipient's name and the order number. I supplied all of that information and she told me that she needed to pull the order and call me back. She asked for my patience, stating that it might be a couple of hours. I agreed. That was May 12th. On May 13th, 5 of the 12 tulips were already dead.
On May 21st, when I still had not heard anything from them, I called back. I related my story to Stephanie and she told me that they had hired temporary help for Mother's Day that had not been up to their expectations. I can completely sympathize as a business owner, things not going as you planned and employees not living up to your expectations. But that doesn't explain why it took over a week with no response. Why I had to make the follow up phone call. I can only assume that they were hoping that I would not follow through, but that's totally theroetical. Stephanie offered to send a replacement arrangement the following day and asked if it had to be yellow tulips, I told her that the "yellow" was more important than the "tulip".
The following day, Stephanie herself delivered a dozen yellow tulips to my mother and while I do appreciate the effort that she eventually showed, I still think it's a paltry amount of tulips for the price and as of today the buds still haven't opened. I truly hope that it's only because they're so fresh.
I really have agonized over this review, as I really hate to give a bad one. And to be fair, Stephanie seems to have gone the extra step to make this right, but who was it that I spoke to the first time? And really, they're not a brand new business, they've been around for quite some time. Maybe they're new to the online ordering game? In all fairness, their website is down now. Maybe that's where they ran into problems.
*Update* 5/26 The tulips never opened and died. read more