I ordered a funeral arrangement to be delivered and wasn't told they couldn't fulfill the order until the AN HOUR AND A HALF BEFORE THE FUNERAL!

I order flowers often. I order flowers online regularly. I understand that next day delivery can be tricky. I placed an order for a flower arrangement for a funeral more than 24 hours prior to the date and time of delivery. Blooms Today specifically advertises that they are available for next day
Delivery and for funeral delivery, which often arises without much prior notice. I actually FOUND Blooms Today because they were linked to the Obit for the funeral that was published online. They took and confirmed my order. To my profound disappointment I got a call 2 hours before visitation telling me they could "not secure a florist" and would not be delivering the flowers. (Apparently they aren't florists themselves, but rather call around to local florists in the delivery area to fulfill the orders). When I called Customer Service I was told that since the order had been "just the day before" it was a "difficult time crunch to find a florist"- that florists "don't open until 9 am" which was why they were just calling me at 11 the day of the 1 pm visitation. However, I placed my order by 10:30 AM THE DAY BEFORE, they had that entire business day to secure a florist. I could have called around to local florists myself during normal business hours, if that is all Blooms Today does. This situation would have been more tolerable had Blooms Today let me know right away that they were unable to provide the flowers- or even not taken the order because of the timeframe specified in the delivery instructions, or the lack of confirmed florists in the area. That would have allowed me to use a different vendor. I had wrongly assumed that if Blooms Today TOOK the order they knew they could FILL the order. Again, they specifically advertised in connection with the Obituary and touted next day delivery. I would have even understood if they called me first thing in the morning the day of delivery to let me know of the cancelation- but instead they called me very close in time to the delivery, when it was impossible for me to make other arrangements with a different business. Their customer service rep Tara was less than empathetic, considering the nature of the order, then repeatedly insisted that I would have to "request that the order be canceled". I would actually have to say "cancel my order"- when Blooms Today were the ones that were unable to fulfill the order and should have graciously offered a refund at least and a refund and a credit towards a future purchase at best. Not that I would ever use them again, especially after Tara put me on a "brief hold" to cancel my order and then disconnected the call after several moments. I have given a second star for the kind tone of the second customer service rep I dealt with when I called back to get confirmation that the order had been refunded. I suggest not taking/confirming funeral delivery business if you do not know at the time the order is placed that you can fulfill the orders. And a re-examination of your customer service protocols that resulted in a very last-minute cancelation with no efforts made to truly apologize for the situation.

Terrible flowers! What a disapointment!

Well, I must say that I am glad that I did not actually place my intended order on BloomsToday.com this time! Part of the process of ordering flowers with the "50% off" discount is agreeing to trial memberships with Blooms Rewards and IdentityWorldwide.com. As everyone should, I read the "terms and conditions" and learned that, for IdentityWorldwide.com, I was about to enter into an "agreement" with AgillaPro, LLC.

It read, "These terms ("Terms" or "Agreement") shall constitute the agreement between Agilla Pro, LLC ("we," "us," or "Agilla Pro"), a Delaware corporation with offices at ******* John Marshall Highway, Haymarket, VA *******, providing a service called IdentityWorldwide.com, and you ("You"), the end user of this service…" The address herein is that of Blooms Today. A call to Blooms Today rendered the comment that IndentityWorldwide.com is a partner company and not one owned by Blooms Today.

So…I performed an internet search for AgillaPro and found NOTHING AT ALL, other than that the domain AgillaPro.com is registered to Flowers Today (a/k/a Blooms Today, FlowersSentToday.com, BloomsUSA.com, AmericanBlooms.com, LaurensFlowers.com, etc.). The registrant's email address was *******@BloomsToday.com. Another search revealed that this is John Morley and his phone number is *******206. Before John began Blooms Today, he was the Director of Business Development at FTD.com and also the Senior Manager of Partnership Marketing at 1-800-Flowers.com. So he must know the flower business. So…why, I wonder, is the company selling identity theft protection?
By the way, Agilla Pro is listed with the Delaware Department of State as an LLC, incorporated/formed on March 3,2010 - file number *******.

Now, it took very little thinking last night to decide against entering an agreement with an LLC with a name which cannot be researched! I would have to say that Mr. Morley has been rather more successful in manipulative tactics than in proper marketing, seeing how many folks have complained that they were unaware they were agreeing to charges of almost $25/month in order to obtain a one-time discount (of a maximum of $35.00) on a floral order.

This morning I called *******548, the number for IdentityWorldwide.com. I reached the Blooms Rewards call center and asked the representative about Agilla Pro, LLC, the parent company of IdentityWorldwide.com. She, understandably, admitted not knowing anything. I asked to be put through to a supervisor and the call was on hold for nearly 44 minutes before they disconnected it. I called back and repeated my question and Jody in the call center rudely explained that I would have to email the supervisor at *******@identityworldwide.com. I asked if it is not their practice to allow customers to speak to a supervisor and she repeated that I would have to send an email and hung up.
So it seems as though Mr. Morley is not very interested in customer service either, just marketing.

All of this, and I didn't even research Blooms Rewards. From the multitude of online complaints, it seems to be a rather useless program. However, I was focused on who it is that is gathering "customers'" identity information – a particularly frightening problem, especially in today's world.

If you want to order flowers, find an arrangement you like online and order directly it from a florist. The 27% or more that discount online floral services subtracts from the amount reimbursed to the florist is extremely excessive. It would be to everyone's benefit (other than to the online discount florist service) if we eliminated the "middle-men"

A VERY INFORMATIVE article/video from WRAL in Raleigh explains this is better detail: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/*******/
It reveals, the online discounters are"…making enormous profits from doing nothing more than taking an order…Once that profit is skimmed, Pender estimated he receives, for example, about $26 to fill and deliver an arrangement that cost the customer $55. The result for the online customer is a smaller bouquet. Buying directly from the local florist would have meant a larger arrangement."

COMPLAINTS:

One of hundreds of disgruntled "customers" who posted a complaint about the company found, "If you want to post on their Facebook page. You have CLICK THE LIKE BUTTON to post your complaint... they will remove it within a week."

But the following are JUST SOME of the sites where irate "customers" have submitted their complaints – I am taking the time to post this on each. Note that many folks did not take the time to read the "fine print" ~ the website is obviously misleading …no… deceptive. Read the number of instances of failed delivery. Read the number of disillusioned "customers" who were treated rudely. Then SHARE this!

http://www.ripoffreport.com/directory/blooms-today.aspx

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/bloomstoday.html

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews*******.html

http://www.viewpoints.com/Bloomstoday-com-reviews

http://www.flowercomplaint.com/BloomsToday_Complaints.html

http://blooms-today.pissedconsumer.com/bloomstoday-ripped-me-off**************.html

http://www.scambook.com/browse/index/company/4866/Blooms-Today

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/blooms-today-haymarket-virginia-
C*******. Html

http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/blooms-today/r/7577/

http://blooms-today-reviews.measuredup.com/3943

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blooms-today-haymarket (only the most recent post – from
Someone who lives less than 25 miles from Blooms Today headquarters – is a
Positive one)

http://www.gmtruckclub.com/forum/f*******/bloomstoday-flowers-review-warning-
50%25-off-~-bloomsrwrd-blooms-rewards-today-*******/

http://local.wnep.com/talkback/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2654