Meadow Surprise may not be all that it's hopped up to be...

For the life of me I can not figure out why people still use wire services. (True, I have one at the shop as a service to my customers, but I am VERY specific about what I send out and even what I'll accept as far as what I'm willing to put my name on) The big companies...you know the ones (I don't want to say their names for fear of being struck dead in my sleep by the flower shop Gods) which claim to delivery fresh flowers straight to your door, are not only lying to you, but are also taking your money. It seems like all I ever hear from customers are horror stories of non-delivery, dead flowers, and unfriendly customer service representatives. Once and for all let me break it down for you....

1. When you call up and order flowers through any of those companies...the flowers which you order won't be magically coming from a warehouse, where they produce 5,000 "Meadow Surprises" a day. In fact they will be coming from your local flower shop. Yup, the one in your local yellow pages listed under FLOWER SHOP.

2. The lovely human on the other line at said big name wire service, most likely doesn't know the difference between a rose and a lily, let alone what's in season in every climate at every second of the day. So when you place an order for #45668 Lovely Lilies there is always a note that comes to me at the bottom of the order which states. "It is ok to sub. with other flowers of similar color"....is it really though? The customer orders lilies, and it's ok for me to send a vase full of roses just because they're pink? Um, yeah I don't think so. THIS is why you get something which never looks anything like the picture you saw on the website. Another reason it never looks the same?.....keep reading.

3. You spend $75.00 on "Awesome Autumn", a big showy arrangement filled with large blooms, only to hear that a vase of 5 flowers was delivered to your wonderful grandmother who surely deserves more then the $39.99 arrangement which came through the computer system. Truth of the matter is, not only does the wire service take almost 30% of what you spend to cover "fees" but they neglect to tell you that a delivery fee is also going to come out of what you spend, as well as the cost of the vase...so after all is said and done, and everything has come through the system almost half of your money has gone down the tubes.

4. You come across "Bitchin' Birthday" on the site, its cool, and filled with tropical blooms, unusual greenery, some modern touches and is tucked inside a sleek modern vase...only to find out that "Bitchin' Birthday" turned into "Birthday Bummer" and was a typical urn shapes vase filled with some mums and a piece of grass here and there...you know for the touch of "funk". Sad to say that a lot of florist who receive the orders have never even handled some of the flowers in the pictures...orchids are totally a no-no at their shop, they've never really used anything other than a fern because thats what they were taught with, and well....they're old school. Listen, I'm not getting down on a classic old school florist, they've been open for 20+ years, they're obviously doing something right, but they may not know the techniques or carry the flowers needed to really fulfill your order.

Ordering online is easy as pie. I get that....you can eat your lunch and click away without ever having to talk to anybody, but why risk your money? Why send something to a loved one which says "You're the best, so I sent you this AWESOME arrangement!" Only to find out that the awesome arrangement SUCKS? It takes three seconds to google search a florist in the area you're trying to send something to; so why not call up a local shop, ask what they have in stock, have a friendly conversation with somebody who most likely really wants to make you something beautiful and support a hard working local florist?