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1-800-Flowers is still dealing with the clean up after their catastrophic letdown towards an ocean of customers.  This disaster occurred on the second largest day for flower deliveries.   What adds even more fuel to the fire is that “Customer-No-Service” attitude.

Not only were orders left unfulfilled, or arrived days late, some customers received clearly wilting bouquets, or even roses with alluring dark brown fringes around the petals  – clearly close to its expiration date.  Nothing says more about your love than a bunch of dead flowers.  Today, several days after Valentine’s Day, some customers are still without their order.  A fiasco; more so because many had ordered up to 8 days ahead, paid extra for prompt & guaranteed delivery, and were holding a delivery confirmation!

Customers are angry.  Calls to the company were mostly ignored.  Some who were able to get through after 20 + minutes had suddenly a dead line.  The official answer from 1-800-flowers out sourced help line was “we were too busy to deliver”, and the executives keep silent…

After paying hefty prices for a service which never happened and then to receive the silent treatment just added insult to injury and they took to all methods of social media.  After all, there are ways to deal with non-compliant companies. 1-800-Flowers Facebook page grew by the second with upset customers and even there many are claiming that the company is deleting negative comments and complaints!  A spokesperson is denying that, however she can’t give an explanation as to how this is happening either.

Twitter is full of valid complaints and customers have now various tools to get their message out there.  A fairly new website, GripeVine.com, not only lets people blow off steam but also provides a forum for customers and business to actually work out issues.  A win/win for both parties: customer gets resolution and the business’s reputation doesn’t have to suffer with bad publicity.

If you’re getting the customer-no-service runaround you can also illustrate your plight by creating a YouTube video.  Some corporations are much quicker to respond to these sorts of gripes. as long as you hit the right note.  Don’t rant, just make your case, use satire to make your point, or use humor.

Many of today’s corporate America has the attitude of putting customers with complaints on mute.  One major offender has been United Airlines, they don’t even want to pretend to offer customer service, and have done away with all human contact customer service, suggested to all with complaints to write a letter or send an e-mail.  However, they should listen, the consumer does have options and these days with many small business owners eager to be creative and flexible are quickly picking up the slack were the big ones have been failing.  Just in the scenario with 1-800-flowers.  The twitter feed bursting with unhappy Valentine customers led up to a speedy response by a small competitor, asking if they were disappointed and ready for a dependable delivery.