I tested this myself: yesterday I followed a Teleflora.com link on a website to see how much it would cost to order from them instead of ordering the same thing from Ravenna Florist & Greenhouse (we are a Telefora member). TF offered $10 off the order. I picked an arrangement that sells for $79.99 on our website and on Teleflora's website. Teleflora charged $14.95 for delivery and $5 for wire service fee, then applied the $10 advertised discount and tax. The total came to $86.95. If you had called us and said "I want you to deliver this $79.99 arrangement to my friend in Irvine", it would have cost $86.89. The catch is that we would have made you a $79.99 arrangement and delivered it for $1.99 plus tax. If you had placed the order on Teleflora.com, they would have sent it to us for $69.99 and given us $5 for delivery. You would have gotten an arrangement of less value. Teleflora would have kept the extra $14.95 that they got from you, plus the 20% of the order that they keep from us. We would have kept $60 of the amount you paid Teleflora.
This is how ordering from a dot com online works. You as a customer will get a lot more for your money if you call a florist you know directly. You may argue that we are not convenient like a dot com is, but, we also have a website that you can order from 24/7. If you want to send something out of town, you can call us to do it for you, but there will be an additional $3.50 wire service fee. We have the lowest wire service fee around. In other towns, florists charge $5 or $7.50 or even $10 wire fee for sending oders for you. The cheapest way to send out of town is to Google florists in that town and call them directly and place the order yourself. Many people feel unsure of themselves when it comes to ordering flowers and feel better if they call us and have us do it for them.
Sometime in the near future I predict there will be no more wire services. It is already a common occurance that we have to google a town to find a florist to send an order to because there are no florists in a wire service in thoses towns. Also many florists have gone out of business in the last two years and there are some towns who don't have a florist at all now.
On a similar note, FTD.com is also out there soliciting orders like Teleflora, but the difference is that FTD is drop shipping flowers in a box to customers instead of sending the order to an FTD florist in your town for same day delivery. So, if you order from FTD, you have to be sure it is sent to a florist that day instead of shipping the parts of an arrangement in a box that will arrive in one or two days. And the same issues of high fees and the value of your arrangement by the time it is completed still apply.
The real thorn in my side is proflowers.com and bloomstoday.com and wesleyberryflowers.com. These companies are order gatherers-they never see a flower-they never make a flower arrangement. These people don't know the difference between a rose and a carnation. Proflowers call us every week and ask us to deliver to Stanton, Clay City, Beattyville, and Booneville because there are no wire service florists in those towns. Their operators do not speak English well and do not understand when we tell them we don't have specific high end flowers in stock that they are asking for. They will call back repeatedly and ask for the same thing we just told them we couldn't do.
I have to say in defense of 1800flowers that I learned on Undercover Boss that they started out as a florist with a storefront and they still operate a lot of shops. They do also have a huge business as order gatherers and they own a candle company, a pottery company, a candy company, and Bloomnet, which is a wire service like FTD or Teleflora.
Tha gist of my ranting here is that floral customers should talk to a local florist when they want to send flowers. Don't be sucked in to online ads for saving money on flowers!!
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