A couple of months ago, I purchased a deal from Plum District for flowers from From You Flowers¹.  The deal came just when I was trying to figure out what to send to my mother for Mother’s Day, so I decided that this was a sign from the universe that my mother needed flowers.  Once I got the voucher, I went straight to the From You Flowers site to select a bouquet.  They offered delivery on Mother’s Day.  I ended up paying about $30 over the cost of the original Plum District voucher, which was fine by me.

Then Mother’s Day arrived, but the flowers didn’t.  Thanks, guys, for making me look like a bad daughter who forgot about Mother’s Day.  I wrote to both From You Flowers and Plum District the next day to enquire about the missed delivery.  The flowers arrived later that day.

In response to my mail enquiring about the missed flower delivery, Plum District apologized profusely.  They even noted that they’d seen my tweet on Mother’s Day about it.  They offered me both a refund of my original voucher purchase and a $10 credit on my account.

From You Flowers, on the other hand, took a different approach.  They noted that the florist was unable to make all of the requested Mother’s Day deliveries, and said that the driver was supposed to have apologized to my mother for the late delivery.  Now, I get that Mother’s Day has got to be a very busy time for florist.   But I ordered a week in advance, and they offered the Mother’s Day delivery.  They should know how many deliveries they can handle, and not accept more orders than that.  I know I’ve called florists in the past and had them tell me that they didn’t have a delivery available on the requested date.

What really annoyed me about this is that From You Flowers touts their “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” on their website.  Here it is:

From You Flowers, LLC offers a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. We strive to make your experience buying flowers online with us amazing. Whether you are looking for discount flowers, same day flower delivery, or cheap flowers we promise to ensure great quality, personable customer service and one-of-a-kind florist arranged bouquets.

If you are not satisfied with our service for any reason feel free to contact us. We will either refund your money or redeliver a new product. The choice is yours! Problems are rare, but when they occur From You Flowers is available 24 hours a day to help you.

It took a couple of emails where I quoted this policy to them, but they finally did issue a refund of (wait for it!) $3.43, 10% of the purchase price (not including the Plum District voucher).  They didn’t even refund the full cost of the delivery ($14.99) that they didn’t make on-time.  I didn’t realize that their statement that they would “refund your money” actually meant that they would issue a partial refund.

This experience shows an odd dichotomy between how the two sites handled the exact same issue.  Plum District, which doesn’t have a satisfaction guarantee² issued an instant refund and gave me a credit to boot.  From You Flowers, which does have a satisfaction guarantee, took more than a month to issue a $3 refund.  I wasn’t expecting anything from Plum District.  I don’t view it as their fault that the florist didn’t make its commitment.  I wrote to them to let them know that the florist hadn’t lived up to their end of the bargain, in case this is an issue that others experienced with the merchant.  On the other hand, I wasn’t expecting to get entirely blown off by From You Flowers.  I wasn’t expecting the full price of the flowers to get refunded (although I think that their satisfaction guarantee at least implies that it would be), but I did think that it was fair that they refund their delivery fee since they didn’t make the delivery on-time.

There’s several lessons learned here.  First and foremost is likely that I should’ve just called a florist in my mother’s town to order flowers directly instead of going through a middleman like From You Flowers.  I also should’ve done my homework on From You Flowers and discovered that their 100% satisfaction guarantee isn’t.  And finally, there’s the open question of whether using a deal website like Plum District really is a good idea for either the merchant or the buyer.  I have to give credit where it’s due and say that Plum District far exceeded my expectations in dealing with the problem, but perhaps the problem is one that’s bigger than this individual interaction.