Fallout From FTD Valentine's Day Tech Failure
Florists and consumers alike continue to react with anger and disappointment brought on by FTD's failure to deliver both flowers and orders during Valentine's Day week.
Left in the wake of the FTD Mercury Direct failure are thousands of customer orders that never reached florists for fulfillment - or Valentines to express love - during the busy holiday period.
On the florists' front, some long-time FTD member flower shop owners have reported taking down their logo signage and scraping decals from windows and delivery vans. As Mike of Holden's Florist, Dundas ON said in his comments to the previous article:
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!!
On the consumer front, FTD continues to take a beating in shopper rating sites such as BizRate, The Consumerist, Yahoo, Epinions and PlanetFeedback.
One flower buyer has been so angered at FTD's lack of delivery and poor customer service that he created DontUseFTD.com in protest. Eight days after placing his order, he finally got through to FTD's customer service.
“Yes, we’ve been working 14 hour days trying to catch up.”, she said. “There was a weather related emergency and DHL could not deliver thousands of orders.”DHL? There are several, if not dozens, of florists within blocks of the address I wanted flowers delivered too. Why on earth would you SHIP them?
I returned, “I doubt they would have been shipped. I do have my order number if that would help.” and she took my order number and began typing away. “Oh”, she said, “this order was handled by a florist, let’s see what happened. Oh, I see, the order was rejected. We have been trying to contact those people for days, we must have missed you.”
One florist rejecting an order would have been no big deal if FTD's technology hadn't failed - but with the Mercury Direct break down, many rejected orders disappeared into a dark hole and didn't reappear until well after they could be re-routed for prompt delivery.
(Does anyone else think the CSR's explanation made it sound as if the non-delivery was a local florist's fault?)
FTD's Valentine's Day 2007 menu was promoting far more lower-priced, high margin, DHL delivered boxes of flowers (even though they looked like arrangements on FTD.com) than florist-delivered, professionally designed flowers. So while local florists were heroically getting flowers to Valentines through near-blizzard conditions in many parts of the country, FTD's DHL delivered boxes, primarily shipped from Miami, had much further to travel - and missed many Sweethearts on their big day.
FTD could have contacted their customers about the weather delays - or placed a notice on their website, or sent out an email broadcast - just as thousands of local florists did - but instead, FTD chose to leave calls and emails unanswered and Valentines in the dark - for days.
This holiday debacle won't soon be forgotten.
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It looks like I was a victim of this mess as well... flowers showed up two days later and were nothing like what was ordered. More here:
http://www.sacforums.com/index.php/topic,558.0.html
It's interesting that the FTD item you show as being ordered (in your post) could have been delivered by a local florist or via DHL from the Miami drop-ship location - depending on the date your wife ordered the flowers.
FTD will try and drop-ship whenever possible because its far more profitable for them. It also means you get to put the arrangement together yourself. The item is still showing on FTD.com -
http://www.ftd.com/528/catalog/product.epl?product_id=07-V1&index_id=product_roses and you'll note the description says "Delivery is available by a local FTD® Florist, or by FedEx®, DHL® or UPS® in most areas".
It may be that Sacramento shops were sold out of that container, or that the Mercury failure left FTD unable to get the order out to a local florist or that FTD decided send it drop-ship to maximize profits.
It's odd their email would say 'We will contact the florist immediately regarding the details of the delivery' since they were the 'florist' on this one.
As you know, there were no snow issues in Sacramento ;) - so delivering two days late with a substitution is unacceptable - no matter the excuse.
We hope you are able to obtain a full refund - and will consider ordering from a local florist in the future.
I AM A FLORIST IN DOWNTOWN ST. LOUIS MO. AND SUFFERED GREATLY AT THE HANDS OF FTD.
WE WERE PREPARED TO DELIVER UP TO 1000 ORDERS FOR FTD AND ON THE SUNDAY LEADING UP TO IT, I NOTICED NO ORDERS WERE GETTING THROUGH THE MERCURY SYSTEM. I CALLED AND CALLED AND NO ANSWER. FINALLY I CALLED MY FEILD REP JOHN CALHOUN AND HE SAID THERE WAS A TERRIBLE COMPUTER PROBLEM. BUT SHOULD BE FIXED SHORTLY. SO WE HAD HUNDREDS OF ARRANGEMENTS MADE AND READY TO GO SO WHEN THERE SYSTEM WAS FIXED WE COULD JUST ADDRESS THEM AND GET THEM OUT THE DOOR. WE THAT NEVER HAPPENED AS WE ALL KNOW. FTD REFUSES TO TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS. THEY OFFERED TO INCREASE MY "RATING" WITH THEM SO I COULD GET MORE ORDERS IN THE FUTURE. I SAID " THANKS BUT YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT" THEY REFUSED. AND ON TOP OF THAT THEY SENT ME A BILL FOR ALMOST 11 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THE FLOWERS I PURCHASED AT THE FLOWER EXCHANGE.
WHAT A LOT OF NERVE. I HAVE NOT FILLED ANY ORDERS FOR THEM SINCE THAT FATEFULL WEEK IN PROTEST OF THEIR LACK OF TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR SYSTEM FAILURE.
I URGE ALL FLORIST TO SUSPEND THEIR SYSTEMS UNTIL FTD TAKES RESPONSIBILITY.
RILEY
Yes, we did get a full refund, thanks :)
...and we will definitely go local from now on...
FTD contracts out substandard, ill equipt, unprepared people to send out orders and ruin peoples occasions. When the event is over and the flowers are wrong do you think FTD cares?!..... NO, they don't. Then they say "send them back, we're sorry." My flowers were 2days late, dead and had the wrong ballons.... "Get Well" instead of "Happy Mothers Day".
Thanks FTD and City Wide Flower Center of Las Vegas NV. 4460 S. Arvill Ste. #4
It's Thursday and they still havent picked up the dead flowers and wont issue a refund untill they get the WRONG order picked up.
Needless to say we wont be ordering from them again.