Wanting to support a local business, I convinced my teen daughter to order her prom date's boutonniere from Lovin' Florist. I dropped her off to pick it up while I drove around since parking can be tricky on a busy Sat. afternoon. She came out holding the boutonniere stuck in floral foam. I told her it should be in a floral box and she agreed and thought it was odd but figured they're the pros and supposedly knew what they were doing. I sent her back in while I circled around more. She came back out holding the flower as before and carrying a box you'd use to transport a vase of flowers. They told her they didn't have any other boxes for it and it shouldn't be put in a box because the flower could bruise.
Also, the price was $26 - more than double what we've paid Kroger in the past for comparable, if not better, and they put theirs in a box.
If she'd been driving alone, she'd have had to put the flower in the cup holder and hoped it didn't fall over. She looked online and found Hobby Lobby sold the box for $1. So instead of heading home to start getting ready, we headed to Hobby Lobby to search for the box. Overall, an additional 20 minutes or so we hadn't planned in the day.
I called the Lawrenceville Lovin' Touch store and asked for the manager or for Brandon, one of the owners I'd exchanged business messages with in the past. They said he wasn't there and no managers in, but maybe there'd be someone at their other store. So I called the other location and asked for Brandon. Not there, but they said Michelle was, so I asked for her. I explained the situation including the fact we paid double for something with the expectation of at least equal but hopefully better quality/service/experience than Kroger. Her response over being given the flower with no container was, "Oh no! That's not right!" I told her I had pics and she asked me to text them to her so she could handle it. I texted the pics of what we were given along with the receipt for the boutonniere box. After about an hour, I texted to make sure she'd received them and she said she was with a customer but would definitely take care of it.
That was Saturday. On Monday she texted they apologize for the inconvenience and spoke with the employee regarding inappropriate packaging and to be sure it never happens again. I then messaged Brandon to make sure he was aware of the situation, but no response back.
You would think anyone working at a florist would have the basic training to know how to package any version of floral upon sale, especially a boutonniere at prom season. It wasn't "inappropriate" packaging, there was NO packaging, costing us extra time and effort...and $14 more than if we'd gone to Kroger who has always done it right in the past. So much for trying to support local business. We didn't expect it to be free, but we certainly thought there'd at least be a partial refund or something in lieu of the added effort and expense and, quite frankly, incompetence of apparently the only employee they had on duty that day.
The flower itself was pretty. The stems weren't covered in floral tape and ribbon as we're used to, but maybe that's not the norm. Just disappointed because we expected a better level of service and better experience considering the price. read more