It is Valentine’s Day night! It has been a long few days with prepping vases, processing gorgeous flowers, and taking orders from my wonderful customers. As I sit back and reflect on the past few days, I am amazed at how much we were able to accomplish in just a few days. We procured beautiful roses
Gorgeous Ecuadorian Red Roses
Lovely Tulips, Iris, Sorbonne Lilies, Peachy/Pink Asiatic Lilies, soft scented Stock, and much more found their way into our coolers and out the door designed in vases. We hope everyone is pleased with their flowers and enjoy their gifts.
One thing does make me sad and it has to do with “middlemen”. The middlemen in our industry have left many flower buyers with bad tastes in their mouths. Some of the “non florists” who purport themselves as being a “Real Local Florist” when in fact they are none other than a phone bank of people who have never even cut a flower stem, have to many degrees ripped off customers, plain and simple. The idea of consumers paying a “delivery charge” and a “shipping charge”, and often a “premium delivery charge” on holiday’s busiest days to arrange a gift of flowers has become the norm of the online order gatherers. These delivery charges are never given to the Real Local Florist to fill their orders. Those charges are absorbed by the order gatherer to feather their own bank accounts. Why should a consumer pay a shipping charge when that order is not “shipped”, it is electronically sent to an affiliated wire service member who fills the order and that electronically sent message? the transmission charge is billed to the real local florist who accepts the order. And in the event that your floral gift is shipped in a box, I don’t believe that FedEx raises their rates at holiday times such as Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. (Just an FYI)
As I read some of the complaint pages on Facebook and on the internet, just minutes after I have closed my shop’s doors on Valentine’s Day 2012, I find many complaints on “non-delivered orders”. I will state for the record that none of those orders were attempted to be sent to my shop. I received no calls from any of the “dot com” online order gatherers to fill their orders. Maybe it is because I refuse to accept their orders and have for a few years because they are defrauding their customers, charging duplicate fees (delivery & shipping charges), holding back true delivery charges for their own profits, not providing their customers with the truths about supply and demand, or allowing their “affiliate” members what is needed to make a workable profit to produce the delivery asked for.
I am so very happy that I consider this holiday a good one. Product was beautiful, all deliveries but 1 were made (only one not home), I feel confident that our recipients have wonderful floral gifts, and will continue to fight for the Real Local Florist’s survival in the world of the internet.
I promise I will attempt to blog more because I like to talk and blogging is talking?? And I think that interaction about my flower world, my flower customers and my flower friends is needed in a world that blooms!!
2 Dozen Eskimo Roses
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