Flora Flora takes hidden fees out of online flowers
Filed under: Shopping, Economizer
If there's an online industry that likes to add to your purchase price with fees more than Ticketmaster, it has to be online flower-sale companies. It's nothing for a $30 birthday celebration bouquet to turn into a $50 purchase by the time you hit the pay now button. Once you add in delivery fees, which can change on a daily basis, and other miscellaneous extras, you can easily spend another $20. But now a new company, Flora Flora, is shaking up the world of online flower sales with a pricing model that has no additional fees.The company, which is part of the ShoeBuy business, launches today with "what you see is what you get" pricing on all of their flowers. The business model of avoiding extra fees and showing the true cost from the beginning may seem obvious to me and you, but in the flower market it's a rather "fresh" one.
A change like this would have been easy to do by simply charging way more up front and including free delivery, but, in a comparison of Flora Flora prices and those at 1-800 Flowers and Teleflora, the initial price was very close for similar arrangements. Ultimately, this would lead to a lower overall cost at Flora Flora and a more enjoyable flower picking experience. They even offer same-day delivery for orders placed before noon and no sales tax on purchases outside of Massachusetts.
Not only is Flora Flora keeping things simple by showing prices up front, but right now if you order at Flora Flora after getting hit with a hidden fee at another flower site, you can get 10% credited back to your order. You just have to email the site's name and a description of the fee to hiddenfees@floraflora.com. Flora Flora also offers a Seal of Freshness Guarantee that offers a 25% refund if you don't think the flowers last as long as those purchased from other retails.
Personally, I'm excited by this upfront pricing policy because there have been several times where I started to order flowers on other sites and simply gave up after the purchase price began to rise. If you want to try Flora Flora and need someone to send flowers to, you can always send a bouquet to your favorite blogger; I hear he likes orange ones!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-05-2009 @ 3:18PM
Heather said...
I have a serious problem with these on line flower companies because they are being totally deceptive to their so called customers. If people would stop waisting time trying to order flowers to be delivered to someone by using these sites and just order from a local florist they wouldn't have these hidden fees. Because more offten than not the internet company knows nothing about the product they are selling so the customer isn't even sure that the pictured arrangement they paid for is even going to be what the recipent will recieve. Cut the middle man out by calling the local florist in the area that you want the flowers sent to, that way you know exactly what they have and what they can get for you to be delivered and you will be a satisfied customer without all the extra fees and you will be helping out the local economy.
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11-09-2009 @ 8:21AM
Ken Bolt said...
The public is indeed totally mystified by the florist industry as are most writers. They select pretty pictures and compare prices. They think that selecting the lowest price is the wise thing to do because they think that the same image is going to delivered for each price they viewed. Might seem logical but they forget or ignore that every order is hand made TO VALUE. The floral designer takes a quick look at the image and then uses flowers, greens, labour, delivery and a container that add up to the dollars allowed on the order. Spend less and you will receive less. Spend more and you will receive more with more flowers allowing for a nicer fuller design.
Even Josh in this article assumes that all he has to do is compare final prices. I would challenge him to send 3 to 5 orders to the same lady for the same day through Flora Flora, F T D.com, Just Flowers.com and a couple of REAL flower shops like ours at
www.brantflorist.com. Order the exact same image of course but at different prices. I would love to read his article after he does that as I would ask him to include photos and a breakdown of contents. He would soon learn arrangements are not made on a machine with the exact same recipe in every one delivered.
The biggest shame is all the order gathering broker web sites that have no flowers, no designers, no delivery vans but they do have a pretty slick web site that automatically gathers and sends flower orders to REAL florists to actually fill the order. They make about 35% of the order.....big money for a negative contribution. Think of it...what do they contribute of value? The florist actually doing the work gets the balance...about 65% net.
As a florist I am amazed at how gullible the public and most writers are about these facts. Well, maybe writers get paid to schill for floral web sites.............
I challenge Josh to publish these facts and to carry out the experiment described above. Ken Bolt Brant Florist
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