FTD Web Gifts

[David]

Up until yesterday I had the FTD Web Gifts on my web site. This week I have had 2 messed up order by the Web gifts department at FTD and decided to take them of my web site. I would be interested to hear of other peoples experience with them.
On one had I thought it was good to have gift items on my site that I wouldn’t normally be able to carry in the hopes of getting some incremental sales. On the other hand I have been worried that I would possible loose a full price local delivery order that was substituted by a gift item order that I only get a small percent.

 

[Rhonda]

And thennnnn.........in the monthly statement package, their "newsmagazine" has them now codifying all member shops with their "fresh flower specials" for same day delivery. Buy from freshflowers and you too can participate.....
Glad they thought over my "85% of all online products .com features are drop shipped" line from my termination letter. Gee, didn't know I'd have such an impact !! LOL............but at least they are offering their members to carry the normally low priced drop ship flower "bokays" either wrapped or vased.

 

[carol]

Thanks for the heads up..I read the article but missed the part that says I need to opt out if I don't choose to participate.. gosh I hate this new opt out rather than opt in.. the world seems to put their hand in your pocket unless you remember to ask them to 'opt out' of doing this stuff.
I need to make a call and opt out now before the nonsense begins

 

[Connie]

Naw, I won't say it.....:fdevil:

 

[Kobe0007]

We have the FTD Web Gifts but very, very, very, very rarely sell them. I would say once every 4 or 5 months we sell one.

 

[Mac]

We were quite active with webgifts back in 2005, but decided to pull it due to so many mistakes between FTD and their Vendors. At the time there was only 1 or 2 people at FTD handeling all the relays between their Vendors.

They told me at the time they were understaffed; and their Vendors were overloaded too as other marketers were also utilizing the same drop ship methods from the same vendors.

 

[carol]

And thennnnn.........in the monthly statement package, their "newsmagazine" has them now codifying all member shops with their "fresh flower specials" for same day delivery. Buy from freshflowers and you too can participate.....
Glad they thought over my "85% of all online products .com features are drop shipped" line from my termination letter. Gee, didn't know I'd have such an impact !! LOL............but at least they are offering their members to carry the normally low priced drop ship flower "bokays" either wrapped or vased.

I'm thinking that perhaps Mike S has discovered that he needs real florists afterall... Perhaps it has just dawned on him that many, maybe most people ordering flowers want them for same day or next day worst case.. which is not possible for his direct ship program..so to satisfy this large large group of customers calling his 800 phone line or internet site he is reaching out to florists (again) to fill these orders..at ridiculously low prices since that is what he has trained his customers to expect.. By having all floirsts opted in to this program his .com site has plenty of florists to send the orders to..and can say on the phone.."but you are coded for this program so you have to fill this order"
And that may explain why he is once again writing in the newsletter.. he has been absent for many months now pushing this task off to other VP's.

 

[lori042499]

This is my take on drop ship..

Proflowers, 800-flowers, etc. all have drop ship items. This is the area that gets most of the complaints. The companies themselves probably take the orders properly and are very good at customer service. Then the order goes to some company where they slap a label on a stack of boxes. Then it gets delivered by yeat another company who could care less about their name and or the company or customer who originally placed the order. This my friends is not how a real florist operates. We care about each and every order we take, make and deliver. this is why we have in house delivery so we can monitor the process from beginning to end. Drop ship is no good for our business because of the high potential for mistakes. If we do the drop ship thing, we will be going backwards in terms of Customer Service or at least spinning our wheels trying to fix the blemishes. Is this what we want to do to ourselves or do we want to concentrate on providing beautiful flowers and wonderful same day delivery with a side of great customer service that only our small businesses can???