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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.

Comments (1)

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!