1800Flowers pretty much sucks, but UPS rules. A near Valentine’s Day fail.

Posted By Hup | February 14, 2009

Usually this blog is all about happy, exciting and all around warm ‘n fuzzy stuff and I’m not one to openly complain, but after narrowly escaping a Valentine’s Day disaster yesterday I thought that I would talk about a not-so awesome experience that I had with 1800Flowers.com. It almost got ugly.

Background of the Situation
A few days ago I had made a note to get Stephanie a present for Valentine’s Day and I decided to get her some flowers, which I thought was a pretty solid choice. Now, I work up in San Francisco and Stephanie works in Palo Alto, so I don’t really have a way to get her flowers from Palo Alto during the week, so I decided to check out 1800Flowers.com. I figured that I could order her some flowers from there and have them delivered to her school on Friday, which would be the day before Valentine’s Day. It would be a great way for her to start her Friday, would brighten up her day and would be a romantically wonderful way to kick of the extended Valentine’s Day weekend. I found the perfect flowers to send (see pic below), made the order and even found a 15% coupon code — boo yah! The total for the flowers was a little over $40 including shipping.


Beautiful flowers for a beautiful fiancee’…perfect.

As a special touch I added a poem to the card that would be sent with the delivery and I had to get pretty creative considering that they only allow you to use 250 characters. Here’s what I came up with:

ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, GETTING FLOWERS IS MUCH BETTER THAN CLEANING UP POO. I REALLY LOVE YOU, YOU REALLY LOVE ME, PLEASE TELL YOUR KIDS THAT ONLY BOYS STAND UP TO PEE. I LOVE YOU, BABY! -YOUR FIANCE’

Oh, I even got a UPS tracking number so that I could see when it was delivered to Stephanie’s school. In my mind, this was going to go off without a hitch. I mean, the Internet always works, right?

Wrong.

The Valentine’s Day Exception
For once in my life I was actually thinking ahead, I had the flowers orders by Wednesday night and they were scheduled to be delivered bright and early on Friday morning to Stephanie’s school. Stephanie had no clue that the flowers were on their way and the plan was shaping up perfectly. I could already see it all playing out in my head:

  1. Stephanie would get to work in the morning and would suspect nothing
  2. A few minutes after the class kicked off there would be a knock at her classroom door — it seems that there’s a package for her (and they think it’s flowers!)
  3. She’d excitedly go and see what was delivered, while the rest of the teachers at her school wished that they had been sent some flowers, too
  4. The flowers would be opened and soon after I would receive a text from Stephanie saying how much she loves them (and how much she loves me)
  5. KA-BAMM! The Valentine’s Day weekend gets kicked off with a bang — nice work all around and big points for the fiance’

Like I said, this all was playing out in my head at the time. What can I say, it’s how I roll.

With all of this in my head I rolled into workout on Friday morning in San Francisco and was hoping that by the time I was finished there would be an ‘I got your flowers, baby!!!’ text waiting for me on my phone. Well, to my disappointment there was no such message and as I headed into work I thought that maybe it was just going to be delivered later on in the morning. No big deal and no reason to worry.

But, as I jumped online and hit up the UPS tracking system something didn’t look right.

As opposed to the ‘Delivered’ or ‘Almost Delivered’ status that I expected to see, I saw the word ‘Exception’. It was mocking me and staring me in the face almost as a way to say ‘No delivery for you!’. As I rolled over the little question mark for more information it told me something like ‘If you see this, your stuff didn’t get delivered — see tracking below for more info’. I did just what it said and just when I thought that this couldn’t get any worse I saw this written in the delivery tracking:

This is when I started to worry, as I remembered seeing something over on the 1800Flowers.com site that said:

Do you deliver to schools?
For security reasons, many schools do not allow flower deliveries. If you place an order for delivery to a school, we can attempt the delivery however, we cannot guarantee the school will permit the florist to complete it.

Even though I saw this before I had the flowers delivered I thought that there would be no problems delivering to Stephanie’s school. It’s not that big, there are literally only like 20 teachers that work there and every single one of them knows who Stephanie is. I figured that as long as the UPS guy could find the school (which I mentioned specifically in the address), I assumed there would be no problems getting the flowers to her. Well, apparently I assumed wrong and something got screwed up. As I began thinking about what all could have went wrong and how my Valentine had ended up flowerless I figured that the only way to get to the bottom of it all was to jump on the phone and do it the old fashioned way. Yes, my friends, it was time to call up some customer service hotlines.

This is when it began to get pretty interesting and when I found out how 1800Flowers.com and UPS operate from a customer service standpoint. Keep on reading to see how each of them dealt with my Valentine’s Day delivery disaster.

Calling 1800Flowers.com - A Lost Cause
The time was getting to be around 11:30am or so and I figured that I should probably go straight to the source to see if I could get to the bottom of what had happened to Stephanie’s flowers. It only took me a few seconds to find a number to call for 1800Flowers customer support. In their help section they not only listed the phone number, but they also had a nice guide to let you know what numbers take you to where once you’re connected. I thought that this was a nice touch and is something that is super easy to add to any website.

For Customer Service, call 1-800-716-4851.

* Press 1 for assistance with using this website
* Press 2 to place a new order by phone
* Press 3 to check the status of an existing order. Please have your order confirmation number ready. (Note that the online order tracking form will always have the most up-to-date information).
* Press 4 if you do not know your order number or have any other questions regarding your order.

I had to press ‘4′ due to the fact that I had already erased all of the order confirmation emails that they sent me from both my laptop and my Blackberry to ensure that the surprise wasn’t accidentally ruined by leaving my email open. Not that Stephanie looks at my email all of the time, but we share laptops and we have the same type of Blackberry, so I can never be too careful. :)

I was quickly put on the phone with a nice woman who worked in their customer service department and I began to tell her about how my Valentine’s Day flowers weren’t delivered at my fiancee’s school and I had no clue why. She explained to me that a lot of times the flowers get denied by schools due to safety issues (allergies or terrorism?) and that if they get denied delivery then there’s nothing they can do about it. The woman also said that once a delivery of flowers was denied, they would be shipped back to wherever they came from, which I think is in Florida or something. This didn’t sit with me right for some reason and I continued to ask some questions to see what the deal was.

Me: So let me get this straight — if the flowers are denied delivery, then basically they get sent back to some warehouse and I have no way of getting them back even though I paid like $40 bucks for them?

1800Flowers Lady: Yep, that’s correct. Even if we could get them back to you, they’d be dead because the flowers don’t last more than a day or so when they’re shipped.

Me: Is there any way for them to be re-routed to my home address, which is a few miles from the school?

1800Flowers Lady: No, there’s no way to re-route them and like I said they’re already on their way back to our warehouse and there’s no way to change that.

Me: Hmmmm….that really sucks, doesn’t it? What if I repay the shipping, can you resend out the same thing to a new address? Any way to get another one sent out without me paying another $40 or $50 bucks? There just seems that there has to be a better way to handle this.

1800Flowers Lady: We clearly state that we hold no responsibility if a delivery gets denied — it’s on the website.

Me: Yeah, well, this really sucks…there’s no way to get a refund or to see where the package is at right now? Also, the flowers were being delivered with a vase — is there any way to get our hands on that even though the flowers will be dead?

1800Flowers Lady: No, there isn’t…can you hold for a second, please? I’m going to go talk to my manager about all of this.

[4-5 minutes on hold]

1800Flowers Lady: I’m sorry sir, like I said, there’s no way to re-route the flowers and we can not offer you a refund. However, my manager told me that we can offer 20% off if you’d like to order something new.

Me: Ummm…no thanks, I don’t want to order anything new and it wouldn’t be delivered the way (for Valentine’s Day) that I wanted it to be anyways. So, yeah, I guess that you’ve answered everything that I needed.

1800Flowers Lady: OK, is there anything else that I can help you with today, sir?

Me: Nope, that’s it — thanks for your help.

1800Flowers Lady: Have a great day sir and thanks for calling 1800Flowers.

[click]

At this point I was getting pretty upset and it was now my life’s mission to find these flowers any way that I could. I also started to wonder why someone at Stephanie’s school would ever deny delivery of flowers that were addressed to her. I just couldn’t see that happening.

So, when Stephanie called me around 1:45pm I had to ruin the surprise and tell her that I had tried to send her flowers, but for some reason someone at her school had denied their delivery around 9:45am earlier that morning. She said that there was no possible way that anyone would do that at her school — especially on Valentine’s Day. After we hung up she asked around and called me back to confirm that they would never deny delivery of flowers, so the school wasn’t the problem.

At this point this whole thing had almost become a big game and I was bound and determined to somehow get it all figured out. Since 1800Flowers offered no help at all and honestly had gotten me even more upset due to the way that they handled the situation, the only call that was left was to UPS to find out exactly what happened to the mysteriously missing Valentine’s Day flowers.

Calling UPS - The Pros Take Care of Business
After calling 1800Flowers and talking to Stephanie, UPS seemed like my only hope in recovering my current failed attempt at Valentine’s Day awesomeness. Before calling UPS I was thinking to myself, ‘UPS is like one of the biggest companies in the entire world and they are shipping like billions of packages a day, there’s no way that they’re going to be able to help me. Trying to get a real person on the phone to help me is probably going to be a complete waste of my time.‘. Man, was I way off.

When I called UPS I quickly made it through some voice-activated menu options and hit the standard ‘0′ button that almost always takes you to a real, live and talking human. I was put on hold for a few minutes and then a woman greeted me and asked how she could help me today. I told her all about the situation, how the package was denied delivery, how I’m not going to be able to get my money back and how I am going to feel like a complete Valentine’s Day failure if we can’t figure something out.

Her calm and cool response to all of my rambling was awesome:

Sir, we are always up for doing anything to help spread love around this world of ours and I’m sure that I can help you out — do you have your tracking number?

I gave her my tracking number, she looked it up and told me a little more detail on what had happened with the package and proceeded to apologize for the mix up, which admittedly felt pretty nice at this point. After her explanation I asked if there was any way to speak directly to the driver who was denied the delivery, expecting to be told no. But, to my pleasant surprise she said that there was a way to do it and after asking for my direct number she told me that the driver’s district manager would be calling me in no more than an hour to explain what had happened to the package.

‘Wow’, I thought, ‘this is what I’m talking about’. I told her thanks, hung up and looked at the clock. It was 2:45pm.

At 3:30pm I got a call from the district manager:

Me: Hello?

UPS District Manager: Hello, this is Carl from UPS. I hear that you need some help with a delivery that was denied this morning?

Me: Hey man, great to hear from you — do you have any details on what happened? Why was it denied? I talked to my fiancee’ and she said that no one at her school would ever deny the delivery of flowers, especially on Valentine’s Day. Where did it get denied from?

UPS District Manager: Our driver actually attempted to drop the package off at the hospital’s loading dock, which is right behind the school and they denied it because they do not accept personal deliveries.

Me: So it wasn’t delivered to the school?

UPS District Manager: No sir, it wasn’t and I’m not sure why, but we apologize for the inconvenience. What we can do is ship the package back out to you the first thing Monday morning free of charge or you can come pick it up at the warehouse today anytime after 5:30pm. The warehouse is in Menlo Park, which is about 7 miles away from the original drop-off location.

Me: Well, the Monday thing isn’t going to work, because the package is flowers and they’ll be dead by Monday. But, did you say that I can pick them up in Menlo Park? I was told that it was already being shipped back to Florida or something.

UPS District Manager: It’s definitely not going back to Florida — it will be in Menlo Park in just a couple of hours if you want to come pick it up.

Me: Awesome! This will work and I’m so happy to hear that I can pick it up. How late is the UPS warehouse open?

UPS District Manager: Open until 9pm.

Me: Sweet — we’ll be there after 5:30pm then, thanks so much for your help and have a great weekend.

UPS District Manager: You too and thanks for using UPS.

So, as you can see, the package wasn’t a lost cause after all and Stephanie picked up her flowers after she got off work on Friday. It’s not as cool as her getting them delivered to her during school, but way better than not having them at all, wasting $40 and having a huge Valentine’s Day fail.


This looks much better…thanks UPS!

Thanks to UPS (and no thanks to 1800Flowers) my Valentine’s Day present was still delivered (picked up) and Stephanie absolutely loves it. Of course, the card that she got me with the Pugs on it is pretty sweet, too. I love how things just seem to work out sometimes, even if it takes 10 phone calls and half a workday for it to happen.


I think that these flowers were worth the hassle, don’t you? Cute Pugs…

Maybe in another post I’ll talk about ways that 1800Flowers could have sucked less in this situation, but it’s Saturday and time to actually celebrate Valentine’s Day so I’ll see you all a little later. Have an awesome weekend!

Filed Under new/random experience, palo alto, random thoughts

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    6 Talkies! to “1800Flowers pretty much sucks, but UPS rules. A near Valentine’s Day fail.”

    1. Crystal on February 14th, 2009 9:29 pm

      Just so you know I had a similar situation with 1800flowers, my husband ordered gerbera daisies and when I got them they were horrible, all dead, broken just horrible and I was so sad that he had spent all of that money for those flowers! Finally, after talking to about 10 different people I got his money refunded and they sent out new flowers! A couple of years later I decided to try them again and sent my office manager a bouquet for her birthday, when I got them they were so small and looked nothing like the picture!! Bottom line is… I won’t ever use them or recommend them again!!
      Glad Stephanie got her flowers though!

    2. swell on February 14th, 2009 10:37 pm

      glad you had such a great experience with UPS. generally, i find them to be super-helpful, but they gave me the run around a couple weeks ago when they told me i could pick a package up at the wrong location.

    3. Austin on February 15th, 2009 5:58 am

      Wow, what a runaround in this story! Glad it all worked out for the best, happy Valentine’s Day to you both!

    4. Linda Bogle on February 15th, 2009 11:45 am

      Last year I had a similar experience. UPS had an exception the package was damaged. No flowers on Valentines day I did however get them a couple of days later. Crazy

    5. MLDina on February 16th, 2009 6:15 pm

      Glad your situation worked out! I had a similar run in with a chocolate company. I ordered chocolates two weeks prior to Valentine’s Day for our company- and they never came! When I called, I was told the card I used was frozen and no, they couldn’t next day air the delivery even though they never contacted me.

      I DEFINITELY think companies could read this post and learn some better customer service techniques. It wouldn’t have been hard to re-attempt delivery of the flowers, or offer a replacement. Glad your situation ended up working out, though!

    6. The Powers of Flowers : Hup and Steph on March 31st, 2009 12:12 pm

      [...] night I decided to surprise Stephanie with some flowers (which I try to do on a regular basis), so I thought that it would be a great topic to shoot a quick video about. Hopefully we can do [...]

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