FTD Tech Fiasco Leaves Angry Valentines
Mercury Network experiences major outages during critical holiday period.
Word of an FTD Tech melt-down started brewing on florist message boards on Friday, February 9, when independently owned and operated flower shop owners started reporting orders sent through FTD's proprietary Mercury Network were not getting through to their stores. Some of the florists said FTD's Tech department was initially blaming the interfaces of Point Of Sale systems sold by third party vendors.
"After umteen phone calls finally a tech told me that all high-speed intranet members a gadget that is connected to host is down and that is what they are working on."
"We started the holiday on DSL and serious problems for two days, with FTD telling us it was our fault. We were fortunate enough to still have the old equipment sitting there so we went back to the good ol modem--which worked fine the rest of the holiday. We invested a good amount of time, effort and money in moving our system to dsl and to have it fail us during the holiday is a joke."
What ensued in the days leading up to and including February 14, Valentine's Day, was a catastrophic failure of the web-based Mercury Direct interface to the host computer housed in Downers Grove, IL - leaving FTD member florists to scramble as best they could to retrieve flower orders sold by FTD.com itself, other florists and via their own FTD-hosted websites.
"February 12 and 13 we had almost no orders sent to us from our web site to our POS system. We had to go to the web portal and print them out one by one. Each order we had to log in a second time to view the credit card information and hand writes the credit card #. Every order had to be typed into our POS system. The format they print out from the portal is hard to read."
Ironically, FTD members with older technology interfaces - dial-up MIMs and modems, were able to access the Downers Grove host. But their orders still had severe problems since the communications never made their way to the filling florists using web-based Mercury Direct.
"It's the new MNAPI system that frequently goes offline. Most of the time it's not noticed by the majority of shops - if it's offline for an afternoon in July, 80% of shops won't catch it, unless they become suspicious due to the lack of marketplace ad GEN messages. By our records, it was down on Feb 12, 13 and 14th."The biggest problem was that shops on dial-up were sending, but shops on Merc Direct weren't able to receive. Our orders were being bounced all over God's green earth, and resulted in many "That's not in our area" rejects."
FTD's Affiliate Order Gatherers Abandon Ship
Some FTD affiliates who also belonged to competing wire services like Telefora and 1-800-Flowers' Bloomnet, used those networks to send outgoing orders, with a number of florists expressed surprise at receiving Teleflora and Bloomnet orders from FTD's top affiliate resellers (order gatherers).
How much of an impact?
The numbers of lost, undelivered orders is unknown as of today but florists have shared their knowledge of the real and potential impact:
"From a very reliable source, there are two (flower) shops in one of the largest states that belong to FTD. One shop got 250 Mercury orders, the other 200 Mercury orders AT THE END OF THE DAY ON THE 14TH.There was no way to reject the orders. JUST 2 SHOPS, 450 ORDERS. IF THERE WERE JUST 1,000 FTD SHOPS WHO HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MERCURY, THAT WOULD BE 250,000 FLOWER BUYERS WHO MAY DECIDE TO NOT SEND FLOWERS AGAIN."
"To date (I) have spoken to over 70 florists that could not get orders through to us and several hundred coast to coast that suffered greatly."
FTD's Lack of a Back-up Plan
Information from former FTD insiders and tech savvy florists shows how such a catastrophic failure could have occured:
"(The) EFOS (Florist Electronic Order System) or the Real (OLD) Mercury System was not at fault.... It was the new interface that connects the internet to EFOS was the issue I have heard different stories, that it was hard ware, a Firewall that went bad. Too many orders for server to handle,... What ever...The issue is equipment goes bad, telephone lines or cables get cut, but there needs to be some type of Redundancy which is missing... But let me let you they have redundancy for FTD.COM's 3 call centers"
"It's going to cost FTD a bundle now but they are going to have to set up a different system with pods in several areas so that if a problem occurs in one area orders can be automatically be rerouted through another pod and continue on it's merry way to the final destination (the recipient). Phone companies have systems like that in place.......when a major phone line goes down all long distance calls are redirected, it may slow things down a little but it usually doesn't kill the system and if enough pods are used it would only effect a small section of the landscape. It only makes common sense, when we order flowers for a major holiday most of us don't order everything from one supplier to all come in on the day before (I sure don't). FTD did and now it's really going to cost them big $$$ to fix along with a loss in unhappy members that will likely resign after this episode......not to mention the ton of customers that will not trust the floral industry any more.....Not just FTD but all flower vendors will suffer because all FTD's eggs were in one basket."
A Failure to Communicate
Frustration from florists abounds at FTD's inability to inform them the system was non-functioning.
"What I am finding appalling is the lack of them letting us know somehow there was a problem - but then again - how are they going to do that? By Mercury?"
Blame and Apologies
Most disturbing to FTD member florists are reports of consumers being told far-too-late that their Valentine's Day flower orders would not be delivered, and of an FTD spokeswoman blaming non-deliveries on lack of 'product availability'.
Sadly, many florists reported having the flowers and staffs in place to fill those orders - it's just that FTD technology Failed To Deliver consumer's purchase requests.
"Sorry does not cover the losses the shops incurred and we feel for the smaller shops that took a severe beating.""Who was hurt in this whole mess up was any CONSUMER that made a purchase from FTD.com, OGs (order gatherers), or FTD florists.
FTD's technology failure and lack of communication with consumers and florists - both of whom trusted FTD to handle orders effectively and efficiently - looks to make this the most complaint-filled and costliest Valentine's Day in the ninety-seven year history of the company.
1 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: FTD Tech Fiasco Leaves Angry Valentines.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.flowerchat.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/381
[...] it’s no surprise that FTD affiliates would be looking for secondary affiliations after the Mercury Network failed during Valentine’s Day holiday, losing tens of thousands of [...]----- PING: TITLE: Don’t use FTD.com - » Feb 23, 2007 Network Failures was the excuse… this time. URL: http://dontuseftd.com/ftd/2007/02/23/feb-23-2007-network-failures-was-the-excuse-this-time/ DATE: 02/23/2007 09:39:18 PM IP: 72.22.70.25 [...] read the article FTD Tech Fiasco Leaves Angry Valentines, and dozens others relating the story about technological failures of the Mercury Network, I am [...]----- PING: TITLE: Don’t use FTD.com - » FTD Tech Fiasco Leaves Angry Valentines URL: http://dontuseftd.com/ftd/2007/02/22/ftd-tech-fiasco-leaves-angry-valentines/ DATE: 02/22/2007 11:15:28 PM IP: 72.22.70.25 [...] orders sent through FTD ’s proprietary Mercury Network were not getting through to their stores.read more | digg [...]----- PING: TITLE: The Bitch Girls :: Interesting URL: http://www.thebitchgirls.us/?p=6473 DATE: 02/22/2007 08:03:52 AM IP: 64.111.122.18 [...] don’t claim to know how true it is, but here’s a report on what contributed to the complete failure of FTD on Valentine’s Day. I know I am not likely [...]----- PING: TITLE: Real Florist Blog » Blog Archive » Fallout From FTD Valentine’s Day Tech Failure URL: http://realflorists.flowerchat.com/2007/02/21/fallout-from-ftd-valentines-day-tech-failure/ DATE: 02/21/2007 07:00:22 PM IP: 67.19.224.74 [...] FTD Tech Fiasco Leaves Angry Valentines [...]----- -------- Read More
One thing that could have saved "part" of the day, would have been for FTD to communicate to both their florist members and consumer customers alike that they were having technical issues. They chose to not notify anyone.
There are florists that got hundreds of orders at or after closing time on the 14th that they had no way to deal with. There are consumers that are still getting delivery confirmations daily, now 7 days after the holiday, and in some cases on undelivered product.
I feel bad for the florists, but we are a strong bunch, we will recover. What really makes me mad is the arrogance of FTD to continue to take consumers sales and money, even while they knew they could not get the orders out.
It's a very good case for using a local Real Florist for all your floral needs. We are professionals, we are florists! FTD is not a "florist" they are a greedy middleman broker of poor service.
Use a Local Real Florist, you know you can get your hands on me, and I know you can too!
As an FTD dues paying member, I FULLY EXPECTED more from FTD, and NOT less!!
Every business, ESPECIALLY the florist business, deals with calamity, and flirts with near disaster from time to time, BUT, in the face of it's "customer", each business MUST respect the trust given those customers, and MANY of OUR customers were let down by FTD, and Black Valentines, will be long remembered by florists, as the holiday that FTD would NOT acknowledge it's internal failures!!
It's so sad, that such a high profile "dis-organization" could lack such respect for it's OWN customers in a way, as to deny that THEY were entirely responsible for the V-Day meltdown, and quickly take charge, control, and admit to it's antiquated equipment failure!!
Order transmittal is ESSENTIAL to many florists, and is an integral part of the florist business...it's too bad that FTD's lack of integrity, has lost them the internal trust they ONCE had from florist members, and their customers!!
With OR without FTD, florists will deliver, one way, or another, on behalf of their customers, as the TRUE PROFESSIONAL component of the florist industry!!
On behalf of REAL FLORISTS everywhere, we apologize for ANY inconveniences and loss of faith as a result of FTD's failure to be straight up with both us, and you...FTD's "travesty" and dishonesty has NOT gone unoticed
A friend sent me ftd flowers for Christmas. They were ugly! She asked me to take a picture of them and email it to her which I did. She hit the roof!! She emailed ftd with a picture of the flowers she ordered and the picture I took of the ones received. They sent two more bouquets until I got the right one. My son sent me flowers last week for my birthday......the same thing! I emailed him the picture he got in touch with ftd and they delivered the exact ugly flowers again. I told him to get his money back. DON'T EVER USE FTD!!!!!
After umteen calls to tech told me they would put me on call orders ha ha what a joke! Ican only say that they sent me a bill for all the flowers and product they sent me witch excited 3,000 dollars over what i had coming from orders filled now they can see how it feels to have me in their pocket FTD YOU WORK FOR ME AND YOUR FIRED!!
I am a florist in Boston looking to connect with any/all FTD florists negatively affected by the FTD system failures during the most recent Valentine's Day holiday. It is time that we florist members band together to go after FTD to make this right by all of us. They are taking a very arrogant stance with no plans to provide credits on missed or auto-forwarded orders, nor credits for floral purchases we made to support historical order counts which didn't materialize due to system failures, nor are they planning to provide refunds on monthly membership fees for a system that we expect to be operational for the entire month and wasn't. FTD has chosen NOT to take the high road with this situation and make it right with it's member paying subscription base. It is time for some legal support to get FTD to act financially responsible to all affected members.
James,
First you need to align yourself with people that may be able to help you.
Next join Flowerchat.com
Also visit the FloristDetective.com
There are plenty of unhappy folks that got hurt by the FTD machine
I am a Canadian florist operating out of Vancouver B.C. I am looking for any florists who have had problems with FTD's clearing house. Last year they made a programming error and began to deposit another flowershop's funds into my account for several weeks to the tune of more than $30,000.00, lumping the amounts in with my own. I was in between bookkeepers and crazy busy with mother's day and didn't catch the mistake until they stopped making deposits altogether. They held about $8000.00 of my own earnings to 'correct' their error without informing me that it had happened at all. When asked for clear accounting of their mistake they proceeded to ridicule my bookkeeping skills and to make suggestions that they were going to sue me for the money, and have since begun to tack on penalties and interest. When I try to communicate with them rationally I get very mixed responses that leave me completely powerless. It has definitely taken it's financial toll on my business; I have recently hired a lawyer to negotiate and clarify the amounts owed, and to keep them from contacting me directly, as they had been harrassing me and my staff daily. This has been going on for a year. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
FTD is trying to force our small shop to pay for a lemon computer that had many mechanical problems. They used aggressive sales strategies to sell us on a new system that did not live up to their promises. It was constantly breaking down. We had to replace so many parts that we asked them to take it back. They refused. It doesn't work and we lost all of our valuable information when the hard drive went out. In addition, the tech support group did not offer the support needed. We have lost so much because of this system. We ended up replacing it with a simple Dell POS and are finally starting to recover our customer and sales information. If anyone else has had a similar experience, please post. We will be taking this matter to an attorney. I feel that FTD bullied us instead of making things right. In the end, FTD is hurting florists and the entire industry with this attitude.
I am a small florist that trusted in FTD. Feb. of 2005 I trusted in my FTD rep and signed up to put the FTD mecury in my shop. My problems started soon after i signed up the the computer. My rep was fired from the company.
About a month into getting my computer I started to have communication alerts and other problems. I called FTD tec. and would be on the phone for many hours. The longest I have writen down was for 7 hours of my 8 hour day. (who knows how many orders i lost of people trying to get through) They would temporarily get me up again. I did this for about a year. During this year I did not get a new rep. so after going through several people in the company and getting one of their top people they totally put blame on me. I begged them to just make it right or just take the computer back and I would still be a FTD member. They still put blame on me and could not work with me. I later hired an atty. and May 2007 sent the computer back which the took back. We thought things were over.
Almost a year later the week before Valentines Day 2008 they served me with papers saying I broke my Contract. I was sick...one of the busiest holidays for a florist and they spring this on me. Mean while after I sent the computer back I moved on and got a Dell point of sale and getting along great.
I guess I am sharing my story so if there is anyone out there that can relate it would be nice to know. I work so hard and put in so many hours and take PRIDE in what I do and to have delt with a company that does not share those values as I do saddens me. FTD is not there when I am Working at my shop long after I have closed working on a funneral, or prom etc. to make that moment for my custmers special or important for them. I just think that just because they are a large company they should not get away with how they treat their florist who work hard for them or the general public that spent money and placed trust in them. And they should be held accountable.
I just left the last blog
my contact info is Michelle gardengate@iowatelecom.net If you want to contact me.