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Mission....Not Accomplished

I am generally a laid back person, at least on the outside. I tend to keep any fretting and fuming well concealed. Every once in a while, though, a bug gets under my skin and I undertake a mission just on the sake of principle.

If you read my blog much, you know I made a resolution to celebrate all holidays and birthdays with gifts on time this year. Frankly, I've done pretty well so far. So it went with Mother's Day as well, with me ordering a corsage for my mom as well as Ma-in-law on time. Imagine my dismay on Sunday when we called to wish the Ma-in-law a Happy Mother's Day, to learn that Hobe Sound Florist had not delivered her corsage! I checked my credit card statement, saw that I had not been billed for it and assumed they'd gotten too busy to follow through. I made a call to the flower shop on Monday and didn't get an answer. I assumed again, that they were closed on Mondays.

Tuesday I saw the charge come through on my card and called the florist and got a lady with a foreign accent, who told me to call back to speak to the owner in an hour. An hour later I called back, and never got an answer. Wednesday when I called, someone picked up the phone and hung it back up immediately, without answering. I sent Ma-in-law over to the shop to speak to the owner and wah-lah....they apparently don't work out of the store front any more. Thursday I called several times and never got an answer. Also Thursday, the flower shop attempted to deliver the corsage and my Pa-in-law refused it and asked that they credit my account. By this time, I was getting a bit steamed. Friday I came up with the brilliant idea to call from my cell phone since I'd convinced myself there was a conspiracy going on and they were screening my calls. My suspicions were confirmed and a nice gentleman picked up the phone and asked that I call back and talk to the owner. When I explained that I'd rather not hang up since I'd probably never get a hold of another person, he took my complaint and offered to credit my account.

All seemed well until this past Tuesday when on a whim, I decided to make sure they were going to follow through. I made a call to the shop and they had disconnected their phone number!! At that point, I went to the bank, made a fraud complaint with Visa and they credited my account. Now for those of you who know me well, returning things is not generally something I bother with and spending a week pursuing a credit of $37 -- well, not my typical behavior. But I'm working on behalf of all the daughter-in-laws who have their act together in time for Mother's Day.

On Thursday afternoon I noticed that the charge on my account was actually from All In Bloom, and the phone number attached to the charge was different from the phone number from Hobe Sound Florist. I decided to take a chance with that route, and don't you know, a nice woman answered, took my complaint and told me to call the owner that afternoon.

I didn't get to it again that day, but called today (now this has been 2-1/2 weeks since I originally placed the order and almost 2 weeks since Mother's Day) and Miss Snooty answered the phone. She wanted to know why I wanted to talk to the owner, argued that I must not have actually spoken to anybody before since I didn't have their names, but then didn't want to give me hers. She said that she couldn't believe that I actually placed a corsage order for Mother's Day because they were entirely too busy to make corsages. She also said that the original phone number was in perfect working condition and that anybody in the shop could have and would have credited my account if I'd actually spoken to them. I told her that she had just given me great news. I said "Miss Snooty", you have just solved both of our problems! I want my credit and you don't want me to bother your owner. You do my credit and I won't need to call back.

You better believe I am going to be watching that account like a hawk for the next couple of weeks and if that credit doesn't come through, I'll call back once more, this time from Muh Main Man's cell phone-to tell them that Visa is looking for them. And who wants to bet that Miss Snooty is actually the owner?

Comments

PandaMom said…
Don'tcha just love todays "customer service"??? ; )
Unknown said…
Oh my GOODNESS! The same thing happened to me too! I ordered my mother's flowers from All In Bloom. Mom was to get her flowers on Friday before Mother's Day. I called wishing mom a Happy Mother's Day to only to find out she never received her flowers! I called All In Bloom ALL day on Monday, NO ANSWER! I called on Tuesday and cancelled the order. What do ya know? Mom received flowers Tuesday! I tried calling the company back and NO ANSWER! That's IT!!! I called my credit card company immediately and made a dispute with the Florist. The credit card company took care of it as I had such hard time getting through to the florist! That is very frustrating, I KNOW!
Melanie said…
Oh yeah, I'm betting that Ms. Snooty is the owner.
Sounds pretty suspicious to me, given what Debbie said in her comment! I wonder how many people they tried to rip off!
Anonymous said…
This just might work....I'm going to forward this to my Mom and let her know this is why her flowers didn't arrive for Mother's Day!

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