Month: February 2006

On February 19th I ordered a bouquet of flowers for someone.  Here is what they looked like:

They were supposed to be delivered on Monday the 20th.  I check the online tracking on the 20th and it simply said “Being Processed.”  Ok, that probably isn’t the easiest bouquet to do so I decide to be patient.  On Tuesday the 21st I check again.  My order still says “being processed” so I send in an email asking when my flowers would be delivered and recieved this response (Italics added by me):

Hello David,

Thank you for shopping with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

In response to your e-mail, we wish to inform you that we have sent a
message to our shop to confirm the delivery details of your order. 
Please be assured that we will get back to you with the requisite
information, as soon as we hear from our shop.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to
contact us at the address listed below.  Or you can contact us at our
customer satisfaction number, 1-800-468-1141.

Sincerely,

Rashmi Baweja
Customer Service Specialist
Custservice@1800flowers.com

Now flowers under most any circumstance I can think of are a time sensitive delivery.  Flowers arriving a day after your anniversary or a day after the funeral can cost far more in pain and embarrassment than the price of teh actual bouquet.  I have used proflowers.com, FTD.com, and Hallmark flowers without problems.  This time I used 1-800Flowers.com specifically because they offered next day delivery of this particular bouquet of tropical flowers.  I knew that the recipient liked hawaiian flowers so they got the job.

Wednesday, February 22nd arrived and the online tracking still said my order was “being processed”, but my credit card had been charged.  Since they hadn’t followed up with me as they said they would in the form letter, I called the 1-800 customer service number and was told that they recieved word on Monday the 20th (the day they were supposed to be delivered) that the florist didn’t have the flowers in stock and cancelled the order.  If I was told this then I could have made other arrangements through them or another company.  Instead I was never contacted.  When I contacted them on Tuesday, they send me the form letter above stating that they had contacted the florist and were awaiting a response.  Funny thing is the florist had already cancelled the order the day before.  So the order was cancelled, my card was charged, and no flowers were being sent or “being processed.”

In all fairness the customer service rep handled this situation very well.  She first offered to refund my money and send me a gift certificate.  I told her “I cannot picture a time in the future when I will ever be sending flowers no caring when or even if they arrive.”  She then consulted with her supervisor and came back offering to send another bouquet and personally call and apologize to the recipient.  This seemed like the best she could do and since she personally did not screw up my order, I felt no need to yell at her.  Instead I sent the folowing email to thier customer service email address:

I placed an order (W000253503398) with your company on Sunday
Evening February 19th. This was for a tropical bouquet to be delivered
the
next day. It was my girlfriends first day back at work after a hospital
stay and burying her grandmother. I had also been a bit of a jerk and
needed to apologize. I checked the evening of the 20th to confirm the
flowers had been delivered through your online tracking service. The
system said “being processed.” On the afternoon of the 21st (one day
late)
I sent an email into the automated customer service system. I was shot
back the following form letter:

Hello David,

Thank you for shopping with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

In response to your e-mail, we wish to inform you that we have sent a
message to our shop to confirm the delivery details of your order.
Please be assured that we will get back to you with the requisite
information, as soon as we hear from our shop.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to
contact us at the address listed below. Or you can contact us at our
customer satisfaction number, 1-800-468-1141.

Sincerely,

Rashmi Baweja
Customer Service Specialist
Custservice@1800flowers.com

Original Message Follows:
————————
2/21/2006 4:50:16 PM

Confirmation Number: W000253503398
Order Telephone Number:
Your Order Name:
Home Phone: 816-
Your Name: Dorian Grey
Order Date: 02/19/06
E-Mail Address: guyfromkc64118@yahoo.com
Category: Status Check
comments: I ordered these flowers based on a delivery dated of 2/20.
Today my order still says being processed. Can I get an updated
estimated
delivery date?



After work on the 22nd (two days late and an eternity in looking like a
jerk who didn’t even send flowers) I checked online, it still said
“being
processed” and had recieved no new email from your customer service. I
called your 800 customer service line and spoke to a very nice lady.
She
informed me that the florist had sent a message to the company on the
20th
stating they did not have the product in stock. This was One day before
I
got the form letter stating you had contacted the florist and were
waiting
to hear back and Two days before I had to call you and sit on hold to
be
told you couldn’t fulfil the order. You do understand that you aren’t
delivering furniture. Flowers are almost exclusively a time sensitive
purchase. They are also extremely emotional purchases worth more than
their actual price in many situations. I absolutely would not have
chosen
your company amongst your many competitors if I knew this was how my
order
could be processed. I don’t think many other people would either.

When I was made aware of this gross mishandling I was understandably
upset. Your customer service rep was very apologetic and seemed
legitimately concerned. I knew it was not her fault personally and felt
no
need to get upset with her. Her first line to try and fix this was to
offer me a refund (no flowers were being sent) and a gift certificate
to
try your service again. I am not sure there is ever an occassion when I
will send flowers and rather save a few bucks than pay and know they
will
arrive on time. She placed me on hold to speak with a supervisor and
offered to send another bouquet and call to apologize. There really
isn’t
any point in sending the flowers now. The damage has pretty much been
done. It’s not about a monetary loss.

It seems there are only two ways I can make a positive of this
situation.
The first is that someone higher up that a front line customer service
rep
whose supervisor didn’t even get on the phone to address this
themselves.
Someone needs to own up to what seems to be a fundamental flaw in the
way
you do business that allowed the ball to be dropped this bad in my
situation. I would like to know that you are now aware of this
situation
and specific changes have been implemented to fix these flaws. This is
the
option I would greatly prefer.

The second option to turn this into a possitive is to make sure that no
one else makes the mistake I made. I have alot of free time on my hands
being single and will do everything in my power to turn this very
letter
into a cultural phenomenon. I will do what is within my power make sure
that this letter finds it’s way onto every message board and inbox I
can
find. People should be aware that this is an acceptable business
practice
in your mind to make informed decisions on whether to shop with or
invest
in your company.

The damage is done in my situation. Hopefully this situation will get
the
attention of someone who could prevent it from happening in the future.
My
only goal is to see some possitive change come from this situation from
no
one ever having to be handled this way again. I hope it can be
addressed
from your end to prevent me from needing to address it.

Sincerely,

Dorian Grey
Guyfromkc64118@yahoo.com

PS Please remove my name immediately from your electronic membership
program under the address listed above.

I feel this was a very fair letter to send.  The damage was done in my situation and I wanted to make sure no one else ever had the same problem I did.  Either that was through them fixing the problems or me making sure no one I could contact would ever use them again.

I recieved the following reply:

Hello David,

Thank you for shopping with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

We apologize that your last experience with us was not a good one and
that it had caused embarrassment to you.  We understand the value of a
gift as and how the unsatisfactory delivery of your order would have
caused disappointment to you and to the recipient. 

We feel that your recent experience with us didn’t measure up to the
standards of service that we like to provide.  We can understand your
disappointment as the order was for a sentimental purpose. 

You are a valued customer and we hope you will give us the privilege of
serving all of your future giving gifts.  We value you as our customer
and appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to
contact us at the address listed below.  Or you can contact us at our
customer satisfaction number, 1-800-468-1141.

Sincerely,

Nitin Sharma
Customer Service Specialist
Custservice@1800flowers.com

I bet most of you could guess that this sent me through the roof.  All they thought my comments were worth was a short form letter.  I decided to give them another chance and did some research.  I found an email address for the corporate director of communications.  I sent me letter to her and using the same format for email address sent it on to several more corporate employees.

The next day I recieved a call from Julie Kaufman the Director of Customer Service.  We spent 25 minutes on the phone discussing the failures of her system and what they could have done better.  At the end of the call I was assured that my money had been refunded and that a new bouquet was being sent.  Then I got to see the bouquet:

Now I never claimed to be an expert, but that bouquet looks cheap and tacky.  It is the kind of thing you send for the retirement of a 70 year old woman.  The others were sleak and exotic, those look like you picked them from your neighbors flower box.  If I was making up for a screw up I would probably try to send something of the same style or at least something that cost as much money as the ones I screwed up.  But I digress

Ms Kaufman did send me this letter:

Dear David,

Once again, I want to extend my personal apologies for your experience
with us at 1-800-Flowers. However, I want to thank you so much for your
time and clarification on the phone today.

To reiterate from our conversation today, please be assured that all
issues brought to us from customers are looked at very seriously and we
determine how we can meet and exceed our customer expectations in the
future. Your frustration points – non-delivery; web site tracking;
appropriate/accurate information; and e-mail responses and appropriate
escalation of e-mailed issues – are all in an internal review. As we
discussed, the issues and coaching in which we can take swift and
immediate steps will be addressed as such. Those which are larger
projects will continue to be investigated to see how we can resolve or
provide a much better experience without impacting your out-of-pocket
in
pricing. Thank you again for your personal experience perception as
this
is such key information for us.

Per your conversation with Marsha (the associate which you expressed
did
an “pro” job when you spoke with her), a delivery was sent today to Ms
XXXX, as well as a refund on your account. In addition, I have put
in
process a $30 Savings Pass, good for one year, which can be used toward
a future order either online or telephonically. You will be receiving
this in the mail.

We absolutely realize that our growth depends on our ability to meet
and
exceed your expectations. I am so sorry that we failed you at the most
fundamental points in your first experience with us. I know that
trusting us at this moment may not be first on your mind, however we
would appreciate the opportunity to earn your trust again in the
future.
I hope you will take advantage of the Savings Pass and allow us that
chance to be your florist of choice.

Kindest Regards,

Julie Kaufman
Director, Customer Service
1800Flowers.com

So this pretty much ends it right?  Flowers were delivered, they addressed my concerns, and the gift certificate (what the hell can you get for $30 even if I did ever use them again).  So I just move on and get past it right?  Actually there was one more thing, the most basic thing, they could screw up.

It has been 9 days since i ordered, 8 days since my order was canceled, 6 days since I found out they weren’t sending them and they charged my card.  Yet they still haven’t deciding that giving my @#$&$%@#%^&$%$^ money back was a priority.

This is not over this is pretty far from over.  As Ving Rhames said to Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction when he got free after being ass raped, “Naw I’m pretty fuckin far from ok”

I got my first random response from someone who saw my site from a blogring.  Ok so I find that relatively cool.  Random Strangers dropping by should always feel free to post a thought or two.

So recently the four month anniversary of my last drink past.  On that day I was locked up in the State of Missouri’s Weekend Intervention Program. A 48 Hour weekend class designed for repeat drunk drivers.  Four months earlier I got my second DWI.  I got my first in ’97 shortly before returning to college.  That was my last night of drinking and for all intensive purposes the last drink I will ever have (Blvd Pale Ale if you were wondering).

I am not someone who makes the best decisions after they have been drinking.  It was not the only time I had done it, but it is a rare thing.  I blew a .096.  To put that in perspective I am 5’11” and weigh 170.  This allows me to drink 2 beers each of the first 2 hours and 1 beer each hour after that and still blow below a .08 (MO legal limit which was lowered from .1 a few years ago).  I was drinking about 2 an hour.  Now I have been drinking for about 12 years.  I am a seasoned social drinker and and can handle a 2 beer per hour pace for quite some time without showing any effects.  Unfortunately that is due to a tolerance to a higher BAC not that alcohol effects my BAC less rapidly.  In other words I can have a higher BAC without it effecting me as quickly.  I wasn’t out of control, my friends would have no reason to think I was impaired.  I learned in this class that the police know that at that time of night on that highway 6 out of 10 drivers are impaired.  So just randomly picking they do have better than a 50/50 chance of catching a drunk driver.  If they can profile the car they can raise these odds significantly.  I got caught and went to jail.

This is where life really begins to suck and a fate you might think twice about before putting yourself in.  The sheer cost alone is absurd:

• Bail $500
  
• Tow and Impound $165
  
• Lawyer $1,500 (this is super cheap for a good lawyer, but we have known each other 15 years and I was almost his son in law)
  
• SATOP Assessment $245 (this is mandated by the state to determine what treatment class you are subject too)
  
• SATOP Class $400 (This also could have been much worse the alternative i was first referred too was $1000 and 12 weeks, 3 nights a week for 2 hours a night.  You can’t get your license back til you complete this class.)
  
• SATOP Re Assessment $120 (more on this later)
  
• Fines: $1000
  
• SR22- $50 per month I believe for 2 years.  $1200
  
• License Reinstatement fee: $45
  
• Probation: $25 per month for 2 years: $600
  
• Increased Insurance: Killer.  I estimate about $75 per month increase for me lasting 2 years: $1800

This is alot of money.  You also are going to lose your license for 30-90.  Bumming rides really gets old after a while.  You can lose your job just for getting one in many jobs.  If you live a fair distance from work bumming rides or catching the bus can be impossible.  If you go to apply for a new job and they do a criminal or driving record check they will see it.  You lose an entire weekend to this class.  Lights out time, locked in a hotel room with a stranger, and basically in custody for 48 hours.  Taking off for court is always a joy.  Getting life insurance just got more expensive if possible at all.  You also do 2 years supervised probation so you will be taking off a couple hours one day a month to make a visit and pay a fee, maybe you’ll even get a random piss test..  Community service is also a great time.  These jobs aren’t real fun and 40 hours taking of your job to go clean kennels at the pound for free is not the ideal use of time.  Your third drunk driving charge in your entire life gets you charged with a felony.  Now you are doing jail time (federal pen) and after your release you are a convicted felon who can’t vote or own a gun.

So it just doesn’t seem worth it to drink anymore.  I’m not saying anyone else shouldn’t, but weigh the consequences.  I just choose not to drink.  It is a conscious decision.  I don’t meet the DSM-IV criteria for dependency so I don’t consider it a disease.  I am absolutely not “powerless to control my drinking.”  I do not need a higher power to save me from drinking.  I may still have the urge to drink, but I am capable of making the decision not to act upon it.  I may see a beautiful woman walking down the street and have the urge to see her naked, that doesn’t mean I am powerless to prevent myself from ripping her clothes off.  Humans are more evolved creatures for having control over their instincts and impulses.  Unless someone holds me down and pours booze down my throat I must make the purposeful decision to drink, therefore it is not a disease. 

The entire system is so filled with this Alcoholics Anonymous rhetoric.  Everyone seems to buy into this idea that alcoholism disease.  That an alcoholic is powerless over it and if you want to quit the best way to do so is to go to AA meetings and work the program.  AA works on a 12 step system.  The first step is to admit that you are an alcoholic and admit you are powerless to control your drinking.  Step two is to accept that the only way you can quit drinking is to get help from “a higher power”.  AA stays away from saying “God”.  They say your higher power can be anything you want it to be, yet in step 7 you ask this higher power to humbly remove our short comings and in step 11 you try to reach a higher level of consciousness towards god as you understand him.  Higher power sure sounds alot like a god to me.  My big problem is that the whole system sets people up for failure.  You start out telling someone they are powerless to control something and they become a victim of circumstance.  They can’t just stop drinking, it’s a disease.  When they give into temptation it has to be because their higher power wasn’t looking out for them.  Now that one drink with a friend or to calm their nerves before a date has turned into a whole bender.  Another common AA line is “one is too many and a thousand isn’t enough”.  These people have been taught to think this is their natural pattern of consumption due to their disease and now they are on a binge that lasts until something bad happens and makes them see the need to quit.  Not to worry AA will welcome them back with open arms.  You see the system didn’t fail them, they failed the system.  Instead of them seeing AA as ineffective in stopping them from drinking, they are told that the program works and the reason they drank again was because they didn’t follow the system.  Their line is “it works if you work it”.  No one seems to question this at all.  No other system in the world is judged by this standard.  If anyone in the program starts drinking, it is that persons fault for not following the program.  The program can never be wrong.

Granted I have only been sober for slightly over 4 months, but it can’t be any longer, it has only been four months.  Hope you learned something from this.  Hell if you made it to the end you are quite the trooper.

I’ve really had it with women.  If I hear one more woman complaining about how all men are jerks and how tough it is to find a good man I will verbally berate them within an inch of their life.  The self centeredness of women (particuarly the ones that spend their time in cyberspace) is absolutely absurd.

For evidence lets take a trip down my recent dating past.

Girl Number One:  Met a girl online (notice the trend begining) who seemed pretty cool.  Could tell pretty quick that she was a little bit nutty and into some pretty freaky stuff sexually (being smacked around, calling me daddy, being yelled at, etc), but she seemed like a good kid.  Note: I will refrain from posting any identifying info so if she reads this she won’t think I am trying to expose her.  Well in November she invites me over.  I made the mistake of letting things get to physical at her request.  We end up going out twice over the course of teh next month and she stands me up a few more times than that.  She is out of town visiting a friend for a good portion of that month.  When she returns we haver plans to go out on the first Saturday night.  Now she has started saying I love you and all this stuff that seemed incredibly premature, but I did care about her as a person and while the l word wasn’t close to coming out of this mouth I did think she was pretty serious.  She had insisted that I wasn’t dating anyone else so I complied.  Night of the big back to town date comes around and she calls and cancels.  The next day she lets me know that it is because she was out having sex with some guy she just met.  Pretty cool eh?  Well I guess that would bug me if not for the fact that the friend she was visiting proposed to her (they were banging the whole trip) and she mentioned that the first time we hooked up she had been banging some other guy hours earlier.  Classy stuff.  I am a perhaps too nice of a guy when I tell her that if she has a crisis she can still contact me.  Happens again a week later with some suicide trip because her mom wouldn’t let her borrow the car and I had reached my limits.

Onto girl number two.  She was the one who convinced me to start one of these things.  We were spending hours chatting (8 hours at the longest sitting) then one day she just up and disapears.  Sure she was still online, just decided not to talk to me.  She posts on her Xanga about how evil people can be in relationships with no comprehension of the irony that she had just done the same to me.

Girl Number Three.  She wasn’t a bad person, just had no sense of dating etiquette whatsoever.  We went out on a friday night for the first time and had a great time.  Sat neither of us had plans so we hung out again.  The next weekend she had her son so I took them both to Chuck E Cheese.  Problems that are forseeable at this point are that 1) she is already having me meet her son, and 2) every conversation we have is about the relationship.  Everyone has questions on where they stand when a relationship is new and I have no problems discussing them, but this is literally all this girl ever wanted to talk about.  The third weekend we went out one night and that was it.  The following weekend she had her son so nothing happened, but a few days later she wrote me this note ending it because she didn’t feel an emotional attachment developing on my part.  What the hell, after 3 weeks am I supposed to be proposing marriage and saying i love you.  I let that one go right away.  She said she wanted to remain friends, but that is a pointless proposition.  No one really wants to remain friends to hear about the next person you are dating and I prefer my friends to be a little less needy than that.

Brings us to girl number four.  This one is probably the biggest kicker.  i can handle being cheated on.  Heck I can handle being lied to.  This one was just a bit more cruel than the others.  We start talking an really hit things off.  I mean this was going amazingly well and I had fallen hard.  So after a couple weeks she drops a bomb on me and tells me she is married.  She had specifically told me she wasn’t previously, but she now says she didn’t think it would get this far and so she didn’t have the need to tell me.  She continues to tell me that she filed the papers long ago and that he refuses to comply.  They haven’t lived together for a while and he now lives a couple states away.  I decide that it isn’t that big of a deal and look past it.  So the next day i was expecting to hear from her and didn’t.  Didn’t hear from her the day after that either.  Now I am getting nervous because things were going so well and I was going to be without phone or email access for the entire weekend.  Finally on the third day in the afternoon I get an email from her mom that she was in the hospital and that she had sent her mom home specifically to see if I had written and to let me know what was going on.  I went from nervous to straight out worried.  2 days in a hospital is not a good thing.  I move heaven and earth to get the opportunity to call her on Sat night and her mom tells me she should be getting out of the hospital Sunday.  So Sunday night I run home to talk to her.  Nothing.  Now I am really worried.  Monday I run home to talk to her.  Nothing.  Now I am a bit paniced.  Tuesday (Valentines Day)  I run home to talk.  Nothing.  At this point I am calling every hospital in the area surrounding her house and checking the obituaries (literally).  The hospitals couldn’t confirm or deny that she was a patient for privacy reasons.  Wednesday (today) I run home.  Nothing.  I call her work hoping someone there might tell me what hospital she was in so I could at least send flowers and a card.  When I call her work a familiar voice answers.  She is back at work.  No call, no email, no nothing to let me know that she wasn’t dead.  I talk to her for a minute and she said it was her first day back at qwork and she hadn’t had a chance to get online.  No “I’m sorry i worried you”, no “when can I call you back”, just “I am staying with my folks and haven’t been able to get online, but you can call this weekend if you like.”  I thought women had put me through everything in the past, but having me worried that they are on deaths door and then not showing any concern for the hours of lost sleep and stress.  This one takes the cake.