Bloom Is Off the Rose
1-800-Flowers Allegedly Shipped Moms Dead Flowers, Air
Everyone from veterans to the elderly are inquiring about the whereabouts of Mother’s Day flowers they say were never shipped—or were delivered already dead.
Alamy
Nothing says “I love you, mom” like a box of dead flowers.
The flower delivery service 1-800-Flowers enraged so many customers this past Mother’s Day that the Twitter hashtag #1800flowersfail began trending worldwide. Angry sons and daughters took to social media to call out 1-800-Flowers for screwing up their orders. The range of complaints included everything from dead flowers to no delivery at all to whatever this is:
Some people were delivered beautifully arranged bouquets of air.
Some fared a little better and received at the least some sort of plant.
And some did receive flowers—they just weren’t the ones who had ordered them.
Since Mother’s Day, 1-800-Flowers’ Twitter feed has consisted entirely of damage control as it answers angry Twitter users with apology after apology. Scrolling through the feed is an experience: Each Tweet is signed by a different employee—Renee, Ali, Katy, Lori, and Becky make up just a few.
The delivery service’s Facebook Page is also swamped with complaints.
”My 18 year old son who is a United States Marine living several hundred miles away from home ordered me Mother's Day flowers to be delivered to my work on Friday 5/8. They have still not been delivered and Mother’s Day has come and gone,” one user wrote.
Another gave a similarly sad story: “I ordered this arrangement for my mom in a nursing home over 900 miles from me. She got nothing. I have called with no help. She's 92.”
1-800-Flowers has had a history of reports calling out unfulfilled orders on important holidays, including this past Valentine’s Day and last year’s, too. So between this hashtag and the company’s 1.2-stars-out-of-5 rating on Consumer Affairs’ website, the question may now be, Why isn’t anybody learning from this?