MSE News: Flower firm fails lovers on Valentine's Day

The_Boss

Cuddly_toy wrote: »

I received an email advising my flowers would not arrive on Valentines Day, but the following day, and instead of a dozen red roses, 24 would be delivered.

Initially I thought that would be okay, but was furious to find out that 11 red roses had been delivered instead, not even the dozen I had paid for.

Have emailed them on Friday, but no response. Have attempted to ring them but get answerphone saying lines are busy then get cut off.

I won't be using them again, whatever offers they may give through this website.

Anybody else not had the two dozen roses promised?? Where do I stand now, as I can't cancel the order as some have already been delivered?

Email them again requesting a full refund - they've not delivered on their contract and goods are not as stated. Be polite though no matter how angry you are

Gambler

Dear Customer Please accept our sincere apologies for the problems you have encountered with your order. We can confirm we have processed a full refund and have arranged for an apology bouquet to be sent to you. Kind regards Customer Service Management Team

dacouch

Is Will Wayne an RnB tribute act?

lazyboy76

Only the third time I've posted on MSE but I'm so appalled with the lack of service from Arena Flowers that I feel compelled to do so.
It's now Monday the 18 of February and my fianc!e who recently excepted my proposal of marriage has not received her flowers. I have tried on several occasions to contact Arena Flowers by phone only to get fobbed off by the automated message. I have sent several emails but so far no replies. I have replied to the email send by the Will Wynne, Co-Founder Arena Flowers with cancel this morning, let see if I get my money back. I for one will never use Arena Flowers again.

chris_x

I am in the same boat .. ordered for Valentine's day and still nothing, no replies to emails, no phone response, order tracking link does not go anywhere .. nothing at all .. absolutely shocking excuse of a company.

I noticed on their Facebook page that they deleted all the complaints, no doubt trying to scrub out this sorry little episode from history.

LisaLou1982

I too have heard nothing.
I emailed on Saturday and still no response. According to the website, my flowers were delivered on 15th although there is no evidence of 24 red roses at my house! So god knows what theyre thinking.
When you click on the courier info, it just sends you back to the order page, which tells you they were delivered on 15th! Not much help there then!!
Still no refund for me either. Ive tried calling today and the phone lines are still down.

ursulahx

First time poster.

I'm one of the people who was let down by Arena, although I didn't go through MSE.

I've followed the company on Twitter for a long time and really enjoyed their bizarre and amusing tweets. It persuaded me to give them a go (which is the whole purpose of such an offbeat marketing strategy).

I've placed a number of orders through them and they have been excellent, so I had no hesitation about using them for Valentine's this year.

I got THAT email at lunchtime on the 14th. I did consider cancelling and running out and getting an alternative, but I still had a lot of goodwill towards the company at that point. Looking at their Twitter feed, I saw they had immediately shut down 'the funnyz' and gone into full-blown damage limitation. Their tweets were contrite and sounded genuinely upset. I know from experience that this is not the sort of service they usually give.

Having said that, I am still annoyed by several things:

(1) they dismissed the problem as affecting "a few" of their customers. From a raw headcount on Twitter and elsewhere this has obviously affected hundreds of people and I don't think they sufficiently acknowledged the degree of the problem;

(2) they promised delivery on the 15th by 6pm; then they were sending out tweets it would be by 7pm; then they said, "sometimes the couriers deliver later". Basically, the story kept changing. I know there is nothing worse than continually failing to keep a promise;

(3) even if the flowers had arrived, a 50% discount on future orders is just a carrot to keep people's business. When you've upset people that much an offer like this looks insulting, however well-intentioned it is;

(4) I didn't realise they used Yodel/HDNL, the single worst courier service in the country (by common reputation). This is enough to make me want not to use them again.

To their credit, they were transparent about why the phone lines were down (pulling staff off to deal with emails), and they did eventually get back to me promising a full refund. We'll see if it arrives.

The impression left is of a company run by smart people with low business sense. I'm exactly the sort of person they were trying to attract, and I wonder how they'll recover from this. If I see they're back to tweeting funny stuff within a week of this disaster, I'll be furious.

ursulahx

OK, I just noticed I wrote "pulling staff off". Go on, laugh it up... (*HEADDESK*)

The_Boss

ursulahx wrote: »

OK, I just noticed I wrote "pulling staff off". Go on, laugh it up... (*HEADDESK*)

This whole situation is laughable so it fits right in.

Will be interested to hear MSE's response to all of this. There is no blame to them for people taking up the offer but surely they need to investigate and feed back to all on the shambles since their last update as it affected/still affects many site users (I know you were not one) and they (as well as Arena) have fed back some dodgy information.

The_Boss

lazyboy76 wrote: »

It's now Monday the 18 of February and my fianc!e who recently excepted my proposal of marriage has not received her flowers

Does that mean she said no?