"I ordered a dozen roses and a stuffed bear to be delivered to my wife at work on Valentine's Day. I paid $15 extra to "ensure delivery on the holiday."

She didn't get it, even though two other deliveries from 1800flowers got to other customers at her place of work.

I never got a call or email to let me know that there was a problem.

I started calling customer support at 5:15PM PST, and the system would answer, tell me that "all of our gift advisors are currently assisting other customers…. Thank you for calling 1800flowers.com – Goodbye." and then hang up. At the same time, I logged in to the “online chat” system at number 678 in line.

I auto-redialed 282 times until they finally answered at 10:27pm, and put me on hold for 27 minutes.

At 10:54 “Leslie” finally answered my call, and was polite and conciliatory at first. (by the way, I was still number 96 in queue for the “online chat support” at this time.)

"Leslie" offered to refund 50% of the cost, and would call me tomorrow after she talked to the florist if it was possible that my wife might get the flowers sometime on the 15th. I DID consider accepting the offer, but began to wonder if I would end up redialing for another five hours the next day, so I decided to try to figure out if I could really trust the company to follow up in a reasonable time. (NOTE: that by the time I really got done with thinking about this, I did have serious doubt that I’d be able to convince myself to trust them, but I continued on:

I POLITELY pointed out that I’d been calling since five, and that I was concerned about getting the promised call back, and (NOTE: I checked my audio recording of this whole conversation, and was surprised to find that I was indeed, very polite, even after “Leslie” began to get snotty…)

Then I said: (still polite) “I mean, you know, I can’t be on the phone all day waiting to see if you guys delivered the order…”

“Leslie” interrupted me and said: “We are going to call YOU Mr. .” To which I replied: “Sure, When?” (polite, but firm at this point.)

It went downhill from here, including a lecture about: “I also have a lot of other customers; there is a high call volume today, IT IS A HOLIDAY.”

(She didn't mention that it was their single most money-making day of the year, and that they should probably be reasonably staffed, so that people might decide that they had decent service and maybe order from them on mother's day, etc...)

I told her to cancel the order, at which point she informed me that it would be up to five days before I get a credit. I told her she had 24 hours, as it only took 6 hours for the original charge to show up in my account. In an angry tone, she said: " no sir, it takes to to five business days for that credit to process… I don’t have any control over how that process is…"

I've used this company before, and the delivery got there fine, and even though it wasn’t EXACTLY what I ordered, it was ballpark, so I thought they were OK, but when there's a problem, if you’re lucky, you’ll get through to the moron night staff to treat you like crap and lie to you.

Do NOT do business with this company, if there are any problems with your order, you'll regret it. I hope I get my money back, but I’ll be surprised if it’s that easy.


Update:
Immediately after my phone conversation, I sent an email to customer support requesting a call back or email from a manager to assure me that I was going to get my money back.

On the 17th, after hearing nothing, and confirming with my bank that there were no credits pending, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

On the 24th, I finally got a call from 1-800-flowers, stating that they were calling because of the BBB complaint. She apologized and then said, I see you sent an email, but it looks like we never replied, and added that they're "still trying to find out why the florist did not deliver" then she said that they issued a full refund on the 15th. (It did show up in my account about 5 hours after I complained to the BBB, on the 17th.) She argued with me a bit because apparently It was wrong of me to call the bank and stop payment on the original charge, even though it took me more than 5 hours, to get through, was treated rudely, and never got a response from management when requested.

She then offered me a 10% off coupon for future purchases. I said I wouldn't be spending money with them in the future, so that would be pointless. She then offered a free delivery of flowers. I didn't ask what price range, but I did say: "So that I can give you free advertisement for your bad service?" And she said "I guess there's noting we can do for you then..." and hung up.
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"I like many or the other people here purchased the guarantee for V-Day delivery. At 5:00PM on the 13th I finally decided to call them. After getting hung up on more times than I can count I finally did get hold of some useless lady who informed me that the florist would not answer the phone so she would send them an e-mail and call me back. Not sure how she knew they would not answer the phone, perhaps they thought all companies modeled their answering service after 1-800-Flowers. Not surprisingly I didn’t get a call back as promised. Now in a queue, I am number 845. Stay away from these guys. I should have learned from my last mistake when the last bouquet I ordered was not as described. STAY AWAY."

"My husband recently purchased flowers, chocolate covered strawberries and a pair of silk pj's from this retailer online. He ended up cancelling the pj's as I told him it wasn't my style when he hinted. The chocolates came first in this hideous box from fed ex and was only dropped at the door with a tacky post it with his message to me. Then at 6pm I still hadn't gotten my flowers so he tried to call the company but couldn't get through. They hung up on him. So he tried to do a live chat through their site and the line was so long we probably would get through until a week later. So finally we e-mailed them and still have not recieved a response. I did get my flowers at about 7pm but they were wilting and very poorly arranged. On top of that, upon returning from dinner we find a box at our door again. It's the pj's he cancelled two weeks prior. And we still can't get in touch with them to send them back. We will never purchase from them again."

"I ordered flowers for my wife from 1-800-Flowers.com to be delivered on Valentine's Day. I even paid the extra $15.00 to "guarantee" they would be delivered on Feb. 14.

Guess what? I receive an email from them at 8:00 pm on Feb. 14, informing me that my order wouldn't be delivered on time.

Inexcusable. I urge people to never do business with this retailer."

"I'm jumping on the bandwagon - this is the worst. I ordered a huge arrangement/gift basket for my fiance with the flexible delivery of 2/14/06 preferred, but 2/13/06 acceptable (I placed the order around noon on 2/13 and he gets off at 1:00 so if it came on the 13th it would be waiting for him the following morning at work). As of right now, still no flowers and the absolute worst is that their customer service number is just hanging up on me without letting me speak to anyone and the website won't let me log in to track the order and they've already charged my credit card. If they attempt to deliver them today, I've advised my fiance not to accept delivery because I WANT MY MONEY BACK."

"I purchased flowers for Valentine's Day to surprise my wife at work. The flowers were charged to my credit card almost a month earlier. The flowers did NOT arrive.

I called the next day and was on hold for over 1.5 hours (hmmm...why are so many people calling on February 15? Surely it cannot be a busy day to ORDER flowers.).

I will NEVER do business with this company ever again and advise other potential customers to do the same. In the future, I will call a local florist and get them to deliver the flowers."

"This company must be avoided at all costs. Their site is nice and they advertise well. But that's where it all ends. 1800flowers.com promised same day delivery for Valentine's Day at a cost, and I agreed to pay. I placed the order in time only to find out at 7:15PM on Valentine's Day that the order was not able to be delivered that day. So they waited until I was on my way to dinner to send me an email saying they would deliver a day late and send a $15 refund. After waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I spoke to an utterly useless and careless customer service representative. He had no answers as to why they promised a product and delivery date, but could not meet that date and ended up wasting my time and efforts to purchase a nice gift. SO I cancelled the order completely and asked for a full refund. What good are flowers the day after a holiday? What a horrible company to deal with."

"I always check reseller ratings, but failed to this time. BIG MISTAKE. Ordered flowers for V-Day on 2/12 and it was guaranteed to be delivered TODAY 2/14, but nothing. It still says my order is being processed. HORRIBLE company, stay away as far as you can, in fact, advise everyone you know and don't know to stay away.

2/24 - Still never received the flowers. Now I have to waste my time going through the refund process. It just gets worse and worse. "

"Product was no delivered, also when called to customer service first tried to get help and was kicked off phone repeatadly, and secondlywas on hold for 1.5hrs, "

"Oh, The worst .com site I have ever dealt with. My order supposed to be delivered guranteed (with extra fee) by feb 13th but guess what, no sign of 1800flowers as of yet. There is no customer service as it just hangs up on you bcz its busy, online chat room sucks as it drops the connection when it comes close your turn. I have learned my lesson doing buisness with this horrible site but my advice to you just stay away from this company."

"odered for delivery day before v-day to make sure they got there. as of 12pm v-day they still havent gotten there. customer service is non-existant. voice line doesnt work - says call cannot be completed after going through automated prompts. will never do business with them again. what a waste of a holiday...supposed to be nice"

"I have purchased from them several times, and I have never had an experience like the people below. For this last order, my flowers arrived right on time, and the person I sent them to said they were the most beautiful flowers she had ever seen. She told me they ended up lasting more than two weeks, and some lasted even longer than that! :D

There's only one time I needed to call them--I bought the "birthday flower present", and the person I gave it to said that on the 7th day some of the flowers didn't look too good. I called them, and they immediately sent out a replacement, no questions asked. The person I gave them to said that these lasted a lot longer.

I will buy from them again. They know how to treat their customers. Not sure why my experience is so different from the folks below, but I've never encountered anything like that."

"Ordered flowers for same day delivery, did not happen. Had to call and was told florist did not have flowers I requested. So I was given 20% off and was told flowrs would be of equivenlent size and quality. Flowers were delivered, but were not even close to what I selected in size color or type. Girlfriend brought back flowers, for something diffrent, but still was not equivelent to what i payed for. Called agian asking for money back, no deal. 1800 flowers actualy called my girlfriend and basily harrasesd her on the phone. Called again demaned my money back or new flowers and no deal. So poor service poor value and poor customer service for 1 800-flowers dont use them go to your local flower store."

"WARNING - Do not use these guys for any major holidays. They do not deliver! I ordered a flower + gift arrangement on 12/22/2005 from 1-800 Flowers online catalog for my elderly father for Christmas. I received an email notice from 1-800-Flowers confirming the order and the delivery date of 12/24. At the end of the day on 12/24 I got another email from 1-800-Flowers just like the first only now with a delivery date of 12/28. I checked with the carrier (UPS) and they showed the package had arrived in the desitination city on 12/24 at 6:00AM. UPS told me the package wasn't delivered because they told 1-800-flowers long before my order date of 12/22 that they would not guarantee delivery before Christmas, yet 800-Flowers took a $20 delivery fee from me and promised they would deliver before Christmas. I can't even believe they just casually said the flowers would arrive on 12/28, six days after they were shipped. Can you imagine what flowers would look like being delivered six days late? They exhibited what seemed to be very little concern about the situation, in essence, saying "sorry, but they'll get there on the 28th. Nothing we can do". Well there's something I can do. Never buy from them again!"

"This was my last order from these guys. This order - 12 yellow roses. To their credit, this time they delivered yellow roses. In the past, when I ordered white roses, they delivered red. The problem with this order is that the roses were half dead on delivery. By the next day, they were ready to be thrown away. This is not uncommon for them. I don't think I have had an order that was 100%. Usually the flowers are old and die completely within a few hours. I have gotten the wrong color roses and once 11 instead of 12. Each time I call customer service and they deliver again. The second delivery has always been ok but who wants that hastle every time. I want my gift sent correctly the first time and I want a high quality product, not dead flowers!"