Oregon

The Flower Exchange

I am a DIY'er and knew when I first started my wedding planning that I would be doing all the flowers myself. We got married on the beach so the only flowers I would need were the bouquets and boutonnieres along with some aisle decorations. I did my research and found The Flower Exchange to be the best deal for my money. Unfortuantely the best deal does not equal the best value. I received my flowers the Friday before my wedding and upon opening them found that quite a few of the miniature calla lilies were rotting. The stems were complete mush. I called The Flower Exchange but they had closed for the evening so I left a message explaining what happened, along with my number and a request they call me back. The next day I started working on my flowers and found several more of the calla lilies had rotting stems. I had to throw away over half of the miniature calla lilies I had ordered. Thankfully I had enough for the bouquets and boutonnieres but the aisle decorations had to be forgotten. We got married out of town so when we got home we immediately unpacked and repacked for our honeymoon and left the same day. I realized on the plane that I had not gotten a call back from The Flower Exchange. I figured I would just contact them when we got back because we were not in the country and I didn't want to pay the crazy international cell phone rates. When we got back I immediately called and was informed that per the Terms and Conditions I was supposed to email them within 24 hours. I told I had called the same day I received the flowers and that I didn't see anything in their Terms and Conditions about emailing and they hadn't sent anything with the flowers to indicate what should be done in case of problems. The person I spoke to told me to email them the details of what happened along with pictures and he would see what they could do. After getting off the phone I found their Terms and Conditions online and read them. There was nothing in there about emailing. It just said they had to be contacted within 24 hours if there were any problems. I emailed them what they requested and never heard back so I called again a week later. I was informed that they did email me back and she said she would resend it. I gave them until the next day and when I still didn't receive an email from them I called again. This time they put me through to the owner who informed me I didn't follow their Terms and Conditions and would therefore not be given any refund. He was extremely rude and didn't care that the flowers they sent were garbage. I am kicking myself for not printing out the Terms and Conditions that were on their site because when I went back to their site after talking to the owner to print the Terms and Conditions I noticed they have since changed them. They have added the emailing part to them and now I'm not sure what can be done. I am going to call my bank and hope that because I used my Mastercard debit card as a credit card to purchase the flowers they will fight this for me. But in the meantime I am warning all of you that The Flower Exchange is very shady and the flowers are crap. Several of the large calla lilies I ordered were bruised and over half the miniature ones were rotten and beyond usable. I hope no one else has to go through this because believe me it was not fun.

Re: The Flower Exchange

  • edited December 2011
    I'm really sorry you had such a terrible experience with them.  I agree their website is hard to navigate and I had to do quite a lot of digging to find their terms and conditions.  But I've found that to be true of many online vendors.  I have used them several times for different events, and overall have been very pleased with what I received.  Just this week I received gorgeous hydrangeas from them :)   The one time I had a problem with an order (an item was missing) it did take a couple of months to resolve it to my satisfaction.  I worked directly with Gustavo (he was great) and on the next order I placed he was able to credit me the amount I had spent on the missing flowers and provided me with an additional 20% discount for the hassle.   For other DIY brides out there- anytime you are shipping flowers, there is going to be some loss so try to factor that in when you order.  Callas especially are delicate and do not handle transit stresses well.  It's also a good idea to have your flowers show up a couple of days before you plan on using them.  This gives them a chance to re-hydrate properly and also gives you time to find replacements or have a new shipment sent if something goes wrong.Hopefully no one else has to go through what you experienced :(
  • edited December 2011
    I'm glad you've had better experiences with them. I have talked to several people including the owner and none of them will work with me. I was very pleasant and understanding and just wanted some kind of resolution. I wasn't even asking for a reimbursement. Unfortunately I received absolutely no resolution and no one was sympathetic to the problems I had. I ordered almost double what I needed but when over half of the flowers are not usable it doesn't even matter at that point. Also I had them shipped 2 days before my wedding allowing time to get them re-hydrated. I did EVERYTHING their website said to do but when the flowers arrive already rotting there's nothing you can do to save them. I used almost all online vendors for my wedding and only had one other issue. There was a huge difference though with that vendor...they took responsibility for the problem and fixed it.
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