I wanted to send Vickey some flowers last week and decided to give ProFlowers a try.  Boy was that a big mistake.  First, let me show you what I thought I was buying:

I was having them delivered to her work.  Let me just state right off the bat that the entire point of sending them to her work is to make her feel special and appreciated.  Beautiful flowers arrive to the building's front desk, she gets a call, and picks them up at the desk.  Well, at least that was the vision I had in my mind.

So Friday arrives, which is the day they are scheduled to be delivered, and after awhile I realize that I haven't heard anything from her about receiving them.  Of course I hadn't alerted her that she would be receiving them...they were supposed to be a surprise.  At some point I decided to check the ProFlowers website to see if I could tell if they had been delivered yet, and if not, possibly when they would be delivered.

Sure enough, once I was logged into their site, I could see my order and they had a track order button so I clicked it.  I was just stunned when it took me to the UPS website and I could see it had been sent UPS and had already been delivered to her building's mail room and received by Lewis.  I am sure it must have made Lewis's day to receive flowers from me.  Not knowing her building's mail procedures, I wondered if it was possible that mail deliveries inside the building had already been made for the day, and could her flowers possibly sit there all weekend in the mail room.  I decided I had better call her and let her know to go get them.  She was a bit confused because she doesn't even know where the mail room is in her building.  So she went looking for the mail room, went to the wrong place, but by the time she got back to her desk, she noticed that she had missed a call.  The mail room person didn't leave a message, so had she not been trying to find them and keeping an eye out, she probably would have never noticed the missed call since they didn't bother to leave a message.

Last year I had a check from my company's credit union sent to me to buy a new car and that check bounced around my building for days before it finally made its way to me.  In fact, the credit union was on the verge of putting a stop pay on the check and reissuing it when it finally arrived.  So I already know that something sent via a company's mail room can be unreliable in terms of how long it takes to arrive.

While she was trying to track down the flowers, I was on the website trying to find out what happened.  I was not aware they would send the flowers via UPS.  I expected a florist to deliver them.  After looking around the site, I did see where they explain this.  It wasn't made clear to me when I was buying them though because I would have never bought them from ProFlowers had I known this.  I will return to this point later.

So, Vickey finally tracks down the flowers and they are in a cardboard box.  It requires her to put water in the vase, add the plant food, cut the flower stems, and place the flowers in the vase.  Now, this isn't a big deal, but she is at work.  It isn't like she has the kind of scissors there that you would want to use to cut flower stems not to mention that she is working.  I wasn't trying to buy her a hobby kit, I wanted a vase of arranged flowers to be delivered.  Also, since it was all in a box already and she was planning to bring them home that night anyway, it made the most sense to her to just leave them all in the box and bring it home that way and put it together at home.  Of course this totally defeats the purpose of sending them to work, right?  In a way this is a bit unfair to complain about because she could have put it all together and it was for her convenience not to, but that wasn't what I wanted.

So in the end, I guess what really matters is how gorgeous the flowers are, right?  So let's take a look:

Hmm, not so good.  These flowers look pretty sad.  They are very droopy.  Now we could blame this on our flower arranging skill, but again, I was expecting them to come arranged.  For the $80 I spent, I am pretty sure I could have had beautiful flowers delivered by a local florist that were arranged very nicely.  Let's look at some more photos:

Just ridiculous!  And these are not the exceptions!  Most of the flowers are like this.  They are nowhere near as full as the picture shows.

So here are just a few points I want to make.

1.  I clicked on and purchased the picture at the top of this post.  That is what I was buying.  Sending me a box of flowers and a vase is just unacceptable.  It would be like ordering a Big Mac from the photo on the menu board at McDonalds and them bringing you a bun, a couple hamburger patties, and some condiments.

2.  I don't think the quality and quantity of the flowers compares to their photo on the website.  I haven't counted them though.

3.  Here is the part that I can't figure out and bothers me most.  Who would want their service?  By this, I mean, I am assuming that some of their customers are satisfied with their service and product.  There are certainly a handful of radio show hosts endorsing this company.  But for the life of me I can't envision when this service is what anyone would want.  In fact, I am surprised they can even employ women at that company.  It strikes me as the kind of service and product that some flower-hating men would create.  I would expect women would say, "I'm not working here.  No woman would want flowers delivered like this."  Of course, there goes my sexist attitude!  So, I don't see their service working for sending flowers in a romantic situation.  So what are the other times I send flowers?  People in the hospital and funerals.  OK, I have a sick friend or family member and perhaps they are in the hospital.  Maybe it is even serious and they are unconscious.  So I send some flowers from ProFlowers and the box can just sit there in their room until the flowers die or the patient gets well.  AWESOME!  Money well spent!  OK, let's say it's a funeral.  Exactly who is going to have time to open the box and arrange them?  Yeah, I see that working well.  So, I just can't figure out when I would actually find their service useful.

Let me just say one thing in their favor.  When I called up and complained, they did give me a refund.  So I want to give them credit for that.  They also offered to replace the flowers so if I had been happy with this type of delivery and my only dissatisfaction was the health of the flowers, I believe they would have taken care of that.  Now in truth, I didn't really want a refund.  I usually don't like accepting refunds in situations like this because I think people often just think you are complaining because you are trying to get something for free.  But when I was on the phone with them I realized that they would never give me what I really wanted.  What is that you ask?  For them to stop masquerading as a florist.  That's what I really want.  But that would mean virtually stopping their business and I know they aren't going to do that.  So I accepted a refund.

All I can say is that I can't imagine me ever using them again.  They just don't fit any need I have to send flowers.  But, perhaps this will work acceptably for you and they may make an excellent florist for you.  After all, they can send beautiful flowers almost anywhere in the country*.

* Some assembly required!