William always bought his Valentine's Day flowers from Xpress Flower. The flowers were beautiful, and the presentation, I would say, rather modern. I came across a florist's Facebook advertisement and thought the bouquet was grand and gorgeous. I showed William the picture and told him to order from another florist this year.
And he did. But not from the florist I asked him to.
He ordered from Far East Flora since it is an established florist and enjoys fantastic reviews.
Unbeknownst to us, we were about to be very surprised for our Valentine's Day.
I came home on the eve of Valentine's Day to a supposedly pleasant surprise:
There was a carton box of pink roses waiting for me.
Except that the surprises were nasty.
Firstly, Valentine's Day roses are supposed to arrive on Valentine's Day itself, right? Where's the surprise when they come so early? At night too?
Secondly, I am not exactly a pink-roses person. Roses are beautiful but this shade of pink is a little old-fashioned and cringey. But well, he did spend a bomb on the bouquet, so I shouldn't complain about the choice of colours and flowers.
Thirdly, the bouquet looked like it was something from at least two decades ago. 20 years ago, or even 40 years ago, the trend for flowers would be something like this: roses with baby's breath. But now it's 2020! I have seen better flower fashion than this. This was as if the florist's flower sense was still stuck in the 1980s.
The nastiest surprise of all, though, was the flowers themselves. Upon closer look, the petals of most, if not all, flowers were curling and browning. It was a dying bouquet.
I asked William what he did to make Far East Flora send a bouquet like that. He replied,"What could I have done? I wouldn't have written 'Please send dying flowers' when I ordered them!"
I passed the verdict,"These flowers are not acceptable."
He said,"Okay, okay. I will give them a bad review (online)."
!!!
I yelled,"NOOOO! Go and ask the florist to change a new bouquet! How can they even use this kinda flowers?!!"
A sister of mine asked if William had kept the bouquet for three days before he gave it to me.
My sister-in-law was in my house and she asked,"Is the florist implying that your marriage is withering?"
At 10pm, William wrote an email to Far East Flora to complain about the state of flowers and asked for a refund.
I was rather impressed that the florist replied within half an hour that a refund was not possible but we could choose another bouquet and they would deliver it the next day.
So I deliberated between these two available ones and chose the one on the right. William requested for a 2-5pm delivery since we would be going out for a dinner at 5pm. The florist agreed and 'explained' that the roses could have been bruised during the delivery.
I told William he should rebut the explanation since that was such a lame excuse. How could every stalk of rose be bruised? However, he wanted to be nice and let it go.
Well, at 12.30pm on Valentine's Day, William informed me that Far East Flora called him to tell him that delivery that day was not possible. They could deliver it on any other day except that day and they would throw in a complimentary bouquet if he would allow them to deliver on another day!
Wow! We wouldn't expect something like that to come out from the mouth of an established and highly experienced florist. It was as if the florist did not understand the significance of flowers on a Valentine's Day.
Doesn't Far East Flora realise that they could spark a quarrel between a couple - over a missing bouquet on a Valentine's Day?
William asked for a refund. Far East Flora insisted that he had to pay the delivery charge of $10 - for delivering a wilting bouquet of roses that we didn't want!
William decided to go find another bouquet. He went to the nearest florist, which was Xpress Flower (again), and showed the florist a picture of the bouquet he wanted.
By then, the flower choices had become limited, since most flowers were packed in big bouquets for delivery and small bouquets for teenage or army boys buying for their girlfriends.
And of course, prices of flowers would have shot up to double their normal days'.
This was the last-minute make-up bouquet
And we loved it
I have since read about the Floral Garage and The Better Florist sagas and I think my situation is a little bit better than those disgruntled customers whose wives and girlfriends did not receive their flowers or the delivery was ridiculously late and the flowers turned out dying or haphazardly arranged but I am still very disappointed with the sub-par service and flower sense of a long-time establishment like Far East Flora.
Shouldn't a florist understand the significance of flowers and its delivery on a day like Valentine's Day more than an average person? Suggesting that a complimentary bouquet would be thrown in if they could deliver the flowers on 'any other day except today' only adds insult to injury. It only aggravates the situation and makes the customer angrier.
Like what a Facebook commenter stated on one of those erroneous florists' pages: Even if they have to cab around to deliver the flowers, they should for the damn money we paid.
No comments:
Post a Comment