EDIT: Since posting this, I have learned that the flowers did make it on time for the service, and I received a personal phone call from an FTD representative profusely apologizing for this mess. It does not change my mind about anything I wrote below, but I thought it was worth communicating.

This post is about the evils of big business and the continued loss of customer service in too many large American companies. It also includes a rant about one company in particular, FTD, a company that I hope to warn as many people as possible about. (As a side note, please do not leave a comment and tell me how I should never use on-line florists and should try to get local ones instead, yeah, figured that out by now, but thanks anyway).

I recently had an awful experience with the company FTD, who advertise themselves as “the flower experts,” and it got me thinking about how customer service seems to be a distant memory when it comes to large companies like this one. Customer service is a big issue for small companies who specialize in niche markets like crafting, but for many large companies like FTD, the customers’ needs are overshadowed by the “bottom line.” They are out to make a buck, period. If that means lying to customers and outsourcing jobs to other countries (the company is based in Illinois), so be it. Maybe their underhanded tactics will lose some customers, even a lot of customers, but thanks to the Internet, there are so many more suckers out there the customers they lose can easily be replaced.

Here’s my FTD horror story, and from what I’ve heard from others, it’s not unique at all:

My sweet 91 year old grandmother passed away recently, and the service is being held a few thousand miles away from where I live. My sisters are also not able to attend, so we decided to combine our resources and put in a donation to her local Meals on Wheels (which used to help my grandmother out before she had to move to a nursing home) and send a small plant to the service with a note about the donation. I volunteered to take care of all the details, and after searching on-line, selected FTD to purchase a small pink rose bush from.

I started to order it on-line but realized there was no information provided to tell me when the plant would arrive. I called the customer service number and asked about it, and the FTD saleswoman assured me it could get there on the specific date and time that I requested and proceeded to take my order. She seemed nice enough but was very difficult to understand due to her thick Indian accent, and I had to spell out practically every single word I spoke so that she could understand me. Of course, this should have been a red flag, but I persisted.

Finally, I completed the order, and a few minutes later received a confirmation email that included the note I asked to be included with the plan. Here is another red flag: most of the words were misspelled. For example, grandma was spelled granma. However, the email allowed me to go in and make corrections to the note, so that’s what I did.

I didn’t hear anything for a few days, and then I received an email with a tracking number. I tracked the package only to discover that the time I asked for delivery was not the time listed. I asked for it to show up at 10am, thinking that would be plenty of time for the 2pm service. Fedex had it listed as arriving at 3pm! I immediately called FTD, talked to yet another person with a very heavy Indian accent who asked me crazy questions like what was the address it was being shipped to! I didn’t have it with me, and asked him back, “Don’t you know where it is going?”

I finally got a chance to ask him about why the package was going to be delivered later than promised and was told that “FTD cannot guarantee delivery.”  I said, “So the woman who I talked to yesterday who promised it would be there by 10am either lied or doesn’t know what she’s doing; is that what you are telling me?” He simply replied, “Yes.” Un-freaking believable!

I’ve been going back and forth with the FTD customer service on-line email form too with just about the same amount of success. In fact, I can tell from the canned answers that no one has actually read what I wrote.

I do a fair amount of on-line shopping, both with large and small companies. Good customer service is more important than ever to me when I do not get to touch the merchandise. Some companies (QVC, Lands End, Jjill, Rio Grande, LL Bean, just to name a few) seem to have a strong understanding of how to acquire and keep good customers. It is because of this that I return to them again and again to shop.

Then there are places like FTD who are on the opposite end of the spectrum and personify much of what has gone wrong in American business today. Banks, mortgage companies, some car manufacturers, stock brokerage firms all have gone by the motto “customers be damned; take the money and run.” And what do we all have to show for this attitude? This has trickled down and negatively affected the national economy. Too many corporations have no ethical backbone and view the American citizen as a chump to be taken advantage of.

How can we fight against this?

I don’t think there is one answer. I know for me, the next time I call a company and the person on the other end of the phone has to have me spell every word I speak, I’m simply hanging up and moving on!