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By MoonFlower, August 22, 2010 3:43 pm

The Office of the Attorney General of New York State has obtained a $640,000 settlement from FTD Inc. over their involvement with companies that tricked consumers into signing up for discount clubs with hidden fees. When completing an online purchase at FTD, consumers would be presented with a discount offer, but that they would be agreeing to transfer their credit or debit card information and to pay monthly fees was buried in fine print and cluttered text.

Under the terms of the settlement, FTD must also permanently end the practice of providing consumers’ billing information to companies that market discount clubs online. FTD’s $640,000 will go into a fund that will pay for consumer education, refunds, and the costs of the investigation.

FTD (a.k.a. “Florists’ Transworld Delivery”), headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, is one of the biggest players in the floral wire service business in North America. Two other big florist “order gatherer” companies, 1-800-Flowers and Pro Flowers, as well as many other well-known retailers, are also involved in what has been referred to as a “billion dollar web scam”.

According to the Attorney General, the scheme “tricked hundreds of thousands of New York consumers”. But New York is just one state – there are another 49 to go. The precedent may accelerate settlements in other jurisdictions.

The official press release is here. See our January 2010 blog post on FTD and 1-800-Flowers in Scam Probe for more background.

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By MoonFlower, January 19, 2010 9:46 pm

Scam. Fraud. Ripoff. These are the words being used by thousands of people who found “surprise” charges on their credit card or bank statements after making an online purchase. Consumers say they were unwittingly duped into third-party “e-loyalty” or “rewards club” programs, often costing $14.95 per month or more. Most people were unaware of it until they checked their bills.

FTD and 1-800-Flowers were summoned before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee to explain their involvement with these so-called “post-transaction marketing” schemes. Many consumer complaints have also been lodged against another major flower seller, Pro Flowers, over the same issue. These companies sold out their customers to various loyalty marketing firms, including Affinion, Ezsaver, Webloyalty, and Vertrue.

It’s not just limited to the flower business. Other companies cited as making money from the scheme include Buy.com, Priceline, Travelocity, Avon, eHarmony, Hertz, Pizza Hut, Victoria’s Secret, and others.

Here are links to more information, which in turn have further references.

• Online Florists: Whither the ethics?, Real Florist Blog at flowerchat.com
• Feds: Top e-tailers profit from billion-dollar Web scam, by Greg Sandoval, cnet.com
• Lawmakers Slam Deceptive Web Marketers, by Thomas Claburn, Information Week

Note that MoonFlower Florist is a member of the Teleflora network, which is not involved in these nefarious goings-on. In any event, since we have our own website, MoonFlower.ca, we have complete control over our own database. We absolutely do not sell or pass on any website visitor or customer information to anyone. At MoonFlower Florist, we truly value and appreciate your business.

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By MoonFlower, January 16, 2010 5:19 pm

You may have heard the news that economists are declaring that “the recession is over”. Hmm … doesn’t feel like it, does it?

Technically, meaning in the economists’ definition, a recession is a least two consecutive quarters of decline in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is also known as “negative growth”, although an increase is never called “positive shrinkage”, but that’s another story. Thereafter, as soon as a quarter comes along with GDP growth at or above 0%, the recession is declared to be over. In Canada, that happened in the third quarter of 2009, when GDP growth was 0.3%. That’s not a whole lot, but it’s a positive number nevertheless.

The trouble here is that real GDP growth in Canada over the last 10 years averaged about 3.1%. The Q3 2009 gain of a mere 0.3% is positive, but still way below average. If you’re used to 3.1%, 0.3% just doesn’t cut it.

What’s worse is that it’s difficult to see when things will get back to normal, namely, something like the good old average that we’re used to. For one thing, all those government economic stimulus and bailout programs won’t be around in 2010. Governments have also run up big deficits because of those programs, which taxpayers will eventually have to pay for. Plus, unemployment remains high, so there’s fewer income earners to foot the bill.

So here’s a proposition for economists. Instead of saying “the recession is over” when GDP just limps into positive territory, change the decision point to when GDP growth returns to the 10 year average, or even gets within 50% of the 10 year average for that matter. This is a much more realistic way of describing what’s going on. It would be good for your PR, especially after having so utterly missed calling the recession in the first place.

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By MoonFlower, August 8, 2008 11:09 am

The second installment of “Consumer Beware!” has now been posted on the MoonFlower Florist website. More to Watch Out For is about misleading claims, deceptive practices, and other spin that some “flower sellers” use on their websites. But the flower biz is just a case study – the same sort of thing goes on all over the Internet. Our advice to online shoppers: be suspicious!

Some of the main points are as follows.

• What you see may not be what you get. One deception is that the vase you see is actually not included and only available at extra cost.
• Beware of hidden and extra charges that are only revealed after you start into the order process.
• Beware of superlative claims like “top”, leading”, “premier”, “nationwide”, and so on. These are almost always bogus or detrimental to you as a consumer.
• Don’t trust even the small claims. It’s easy to put up an image that looks good but that has nothing to do with where your flowers are actually coming from.
• Free delivery? There’s no such thing. It really means “delivery included” at best.
• Free vase? Same thing, see above.
• “We buy direct from the grower” is another claim that’s just loaded with spin to the brim.
• Courier box delivery of your order may sound okay, but it can actually cause big problems, like dead flowers. And it doesn’t make for a great presentation – see the video.
• There are some links for further info and reporting problems if you’ve been ripped off.

Read the full story at Consumer Beware! Part 2, More to Watch Out For.

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By MoonFlower, July 7, 2008 5:58 pm

We have just posted the first installment of “Consumer Beware!” on the MoonFlower Florist website. This was more work than we had first thought, but here it is! Part 1 is on The E-Marketer Scourge, and it’s about what consumers have to look out for when shopping for flowers on the Internet. Actually, there’s some very good advice when shopping for anything online.

Here are the key points.

• It’s up to you to watch out when shopping online, because consumer protection legislation that applies in the bricks and mortar world doesn’t work the same way on the Internet.
• There are a lot of flower e-marketers (order-gatherers, telemarketers, virtual florists, etc.) online. They’re not primarily in the florist business – they’re in the sales and marketing business.
• E-marketers will pass your order on to a real local florist, but only after they skim off a 20% (or more) commission that they don’t tell you about. You will get much less for your money than you thought.
• There’s a whole list of suspicious signs to watch for that indicate an e-marketer.
• The main thing is to verify location, and there are some simple online tools you can use for this.
• Things got this way because traditional florists were slow to get online, but some are now fighting back, like us at MoonFlower.

Read the full story at The E-Marketer Scourge. And why “Part 1″? That’s because it’s such a long and twisted tale. Look for “Part 2″ coming very soon to a website near you!