rickshangle.com

I ordered two sets of flower (mother, mother-in-law) to be delivered yesterday. Mothers Day… makes sense. FTD probably sells a lot of flowers on Mom’s Day, one (admittedly one who is totally outside the floral biz) may guess.
I received this message mid-afternoon yesterday from FTD… twice:

>Dear Valued Customer
>
>We regret to inform you that due to the holiday rush, we were unable to find a >florist in your area available to fill and deliver your order.
>We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and we will be >issuing a full refund of all charges made to your credit card as a result of your >order
>
>In response to this issue, by clicking through the following link >http://www.ftd.com/love you will be entitled receive $15.00 off on all orders placed with >FTD.com through 05-31-2006.
>
>Once again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.
>
>FTD.COM.
>Customer Service

Fume.

Note to FTD: You do one thing - deliver flowers. That is really your only competence. If you can’t do that one thing, you are devoid of value.

If you take my order, and say the flowers will be delivered on Mother’s Day (which I realize is probably the 1st or 2nd biggest business day for you), deliver them. Just deliver the flowers.
If you don’t think you can deliver them, don’t take my order in the first place.

And… if you can’t deliver them when promised (i.e. do to some insurmountable problem, like nuclear war), deliver them asap after… but for God’s sake don’t…

Note to FTD #2: When you decided you couldn’t do my order(S; 2x) on time, you cancelled them and emailed me halfway through the day of target delivery to notify me. How does this make sense? Can you deliver me some of the crack whoever is in charge of this policy is injecting?
Look - if you had not delivered yesterday, but just sent me a note saying “sorry - the flowers will be delivered Monday; here’s 20% off this or your next purchase”, I’d probably be 80% less angry at this moment than I
am.

But how is “if { can’t deliver on date –> delete order completely }” the appropriate default behavior/rule? Where is the logic?

Note to FTD #3: $15 off all purchases through the end of the month, and you’re refunding my money on the two orders you didn’t deliver/cancelled! That’s big of FTD, and the discounts would perhaps be applicable were I ever using them again.
Such bulls***. I realize this probably isn’t very entertaining to read. I’m a little too enraged to form coherent sentences containing anything approximating wit. I do want to nuke FTD from orbit, though.

rds