09/13/2017
Something to watch out for when ordering flowers through 3rd Party who's not a Major Wire Service. Some of them may not give your local shop, whom was chosen to fill the order, the full retail value of the items purchased. As a side-note, all wire orders grant a nice 'Finder's Fee' percentage. So to not give the full retail, means that company is just pocketing the difference, plus their Finder. This also means your local shop has less to work with to make it to value while still trying to profit, if at all. In this example, the top image is the order we received, and the bottom image is what I recreated through that vendor's site. The service charge doesn't come into play as that is what they charge for their service to find someone to fill the order. But as you can see, the customer ordered $76.95 of product, but we only got $69.00 to work with, which will get discounted and divvied out on our statement. So it's either we put less in it, or we work to break even. Normally, when I catch this I ask them to give me the correct value. Sometimes they comply, other times they cancel and try someone else to fill it at their price. This is the reason we try to tell people to order direct from a local shop, or at least through a major wire service. We value our direct customers, and try to live up to the quality work they expect. But when these 3rd parties start cutting into the value, it becomes difficult for all shops to fulfill these expectations. The local shops are doing the work, have all the risk, and should get their rightful amount, and also, the recipient should get the value of what the customer ordered.