Real Florist vs. Phone Booth Order Gatherer

Okay, for the past couple of weeks, I've found myself explaining to customers the difference between sending flowers from a real "brick and mortar" florist and calling a "phone booth" florist.

What is the difference? I think the best description and information to figure out the difference comes from www.floristdetective.com, which gives consumer Information about alleged deceptive and misleading florist advertising and marketing practices.

Basically, you call one of these "phone booth" listings and they take your order, keep a percentage and then send an order to a "real" florist to fill and deliver. We are given the percentage of the order and expected to fill it to full value. For years, local florists have subscribed to wire services to be able to help their customers by finding shops in other areas when they needed to send a gift to another town or state. Now, with the internet, our customers have the ability to find local florists to where they want to send on their own using such sites as locateaflowershop.com or localflowershop.com.

Don't get me wrong, we love to help our customers and still send wires daily for them. Some of you like getting credit toward your flower buyer club account, and not having to spend the time finding a shop. We are happy to do it. That is why we have a wire service fee instead of taking the fee out of the amount we are trying to send to the other shop to fill the order. We want you to get what you pay for.

So, call us or use the search sites that I mentioned above. Either way, you will always have your order go to a "real" florist. In these economic times, we need to make sure our money is used in the best way possible. We are here to help. Feel free to comment or even call us to find out more information!

Have a great week...and Happy New Year!