Pink Lotus Florist

For the past couple of years, on my birthday, I have sent both of my parents flower arrangements. I read or heard this somewhere many many years ago, & thought, "What a wonderful gesture!" I include a sweet card on the flowers that say something along the lines of:

"I wouldn't be celebrating another birthday without having you as such an amazing Mother/ Father. Thank you for all that you've done, not just this past year, but for the past 27 years in shaping me into the woman I am today! I love you!"

For anyone that doesn't know me, I'm pretty particular re: my flowers. I want arrangements to look like something I would like in my home. I want the recepiant to say, "Wow! That looks like something Neelley would send!" And hopefully, it's followed by something like, "How beautiful!" (tehehehe) ;)

Well, since Dad works in Columbia, it was pretty easy deciding on a florist. Columbia has lots of florist, but one that I am constantly impressed by is "The Carriage House". I just love them! I have seen lots of flower arrangements out there from other florist & Carriage House arrangements just stand out like Cinderella amongst her ugly step sisters.

Well, it was easy as pie with Carriage House. Called & told them:

1- All white arrangement (to me, flower arrangements with all the same color are just so gorgeous! For our wedding, I told our florist- All WHITE- & not a lot of greenery! Period!!)

2- Not a lot of greenery. (I'm not paying for weeds the fill in the space. I'd much rather have a small arrangement filled with flowers than a huge one filled with leaves! )

3- Put it in a low square glass vase. Coffee table arrangements are just beautiful! Plus, low arrangements are wonderful in the middle of a dining room table, because you can still see your guests across the table. You just can't go wrong with low arrangements.

4- Classic look. I'm not the trendsetter type. To me, you can't go wrong with classic. If you don't think that Ralph Lauren would like to have it in his house, I probably won't either.

Well, The Carriage House did NOT disappoint. We went over to Dad & Phyllis' house Saturday night to go out to dinner & there sat the flower arrangement on the coffee table (just where I pictured it would be! :) )- Absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Just exactly what I ordered (however, John said that it would be hard not to get something exactly like that after the details I provided over the phone.... Whatever!!)- Plus it was HUGE! Filled with Lillies and beautiful white roses. And the best part about it, (it comes with living in a small town)- at the end of my ordering on the phone, I just said, "I'm driving down the road, can you just send me a bill?"
SURE! NO problem!! Gosh, I love it!

So, now on to Mom's arrangement- Since she works in Nashville, I needed to find a florist in Nashville. Called the local florist that John had used before close to our old Neighborhood, but John told me to hang up while it was ringing because he said that they were super expensive, and proceeded to tell me what some little arrangements that he had brought/sent to me while we were up there cost... Yeah, ok. No thank you.

So I get on my phone, see an advertisement for "Pink Lotus Florist"- Free local delivery. I thought, Wonderful! Got on their website, found a pretty bouquet I thought Mom would like. Ordered it & that was it!

Bouquet that I ordered for Mom:

Or was it? Since I failed to place the order before Noon, I knew that my flowers probably wouldn't be delivered until the next day. Oh well, at least she'd get flowers & they might be even prettier than the flowers in the picture. And I made special instructions for them to be delivered before 4 p.m.( telling them that she leaves then, but-really she leaves work at 5 or 5:30, and I wanted her to enjoy them while she finished up her day. )

Well, long story short- They got delivered the next day, around 4:30 or so. The delivery guy called & was SO rude & cussing up a storm with GD's, F bombs, & all words under the sun- because he was "lost". Not only did they charge me $12 delivery, but also charged my card later for a random mysterious $1.98 fee. ???

So needless to say, I wasn't a very happy camper at the end of the day re: their customer service. Then to top it off, my sister, Lauren, sends me a text that says, "Mom's flowers are pretty!" with the below picture attached:

WHAT THE HELL!!!???

When I tried to contact the company & complain, not only for the poor customer service, but the late delivery, over charge on my card, false advertising of 'Free Delivery', and horrible product delivery of what I actually ordered- All they said was, "Sorry, we compensated by putting in long stemmed roses instead of medium stemmed roses. " I don't think I said anything for about 20 seconds with my mouth on the floor! I followed with, "So, since you gave me an extra 4" of thorny stems on the end of each rose, you think that is equal to the garden lillies surrounding the roses in the picture on the internet- so you can put greenery in it's place??" No response. "Sorry Lady."

Come to find out there are MULTIPLE complaints re: Pink Lotus Florist. After doing some research on the internet, there are thousands of people out there that haven't even received their flowers yet (3 weeks after they placed the order!). Some have been charged 2 or 3 times for the same arrangement on their card, some ordered arrangements with 10 flowers in it & only received 1 flower in it filled with greenery. I was in shock! So, I contacted the Better Business Bureau on them- Hopefully someone might shut them down!

So there is my little rant. Pass it on to EVERYONE you know- Never ever ever use Pink Lotus Florist! And also, my lesson learned- Don't order anything over your iphone from a company that you haven't heard of without doing a little research first.