RosesOnly are a bitter disappointment
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I have been ordering a box of 12 long stemmed roses from RosesOnly in Melbourne for 9 years now. It started on my first date with the wonderful woman who is now my wife – on Valentine’s Day. I turned up to our date at the thai restaurant with an enormous box of Roses, and got a lot of irritated stares from the guys at neighbouring tables. R however, was very chuffed, and the box came with all sorts of little extras – some chocolates, perfume samples, vouchers and a little booklet about how to care for the roses, plus a cute teddy bear. The package wasn’t cheap but it was worth every penny for the look of delight on her face and her enjoyment as she poked through the various accompaniments and sniffed the flowers.
Since then it has become a tradition – I get the same box every Valentine’s day. I’ve loved doing it, as it’s something a bit more special than a bunch of flowers. I have even put several friends and colleagues on to the service, but in the last few years as the company seems to be growing, their service and quality have begun to decrease. The last couple of boxes have been a bit off – the roses were nowhere near the quality of the earlier years, and there was less and less being included in the box, while the price was still going up. Today, however, they failed me utterly.
I ordered the box of 12 roses a week in advance, noting with dissatisfaction that only a tiny sampler of lindt chocolates was included and nothing else. I paid the extra fee to have them delivered on the day too, which their terms of service say guarantees that they will be delivered generally between 0900 and 1700 on the Sunday, but absolutely no later than 1900.
At 1840 I rang the service line and waited for 30 or 40 minutes, at which point I was put through to someone who put me on hold again to eventually tell me “the driver had just left the city”. While the city is a 25 minutes drive away from my house, it wasn’t until 2030 that there was a knock at my door.
When I answered, I was overpowered by an incredible stench from the scruffy indian delivery driver, who laughed when I asked him why the flowers were an hour and a half late according to the maximum delivery guarantee. He then demanded I sign a torn and scrunched up piece of paper that was so soggy it looked as though he’d been keeping it in his underpants. When I shut the door on him and shamefacedly presented the flowers to my wife (who was a lot more tolerant during the entire day and this debacle than was I) insult was added to injury. I neither know nor care what the driver had been doing all day, but it was obvious the expensive package I had ordered had been sitting in a van since early that morning – the roses were already well wilted, and the chocolates so melted that you couldn’t pick them up without goo running out of the wrapping.
And almost half an hour after the driver left, my hallway (which he didn’t even enter) still stinks of him. I know, I know, compared to the problems of the world it is a tiny thing, but dammit I paid very good money for both this product and the service, and I am beyond disappointed. RosesOnly will get none of my money from now on, and I will recommend against everyone I know using them.
When we stayed at the Windsor hotel, I ordered 12 roses and got a beautiful boxed package there – I will find out who their supplier was and append it to this post for future reference.
UPDATE: I did get an email back and then a follow up call from a very nice person at RosesOnly, who apologized profusely and said they’d lodged a complaint with the courier company. She offered me a full refund but also offered to send my wife 2 dozen new roses instead, which I opted for. The new roses duly arrived the next day, and were massively better quality than the Valentine’s day ones, so R was quite happy with them. I appreciate that someone at RosesOnly made things right, I guess it’s a lesson in making sure that every step of your supply chain has the same values as your business in terms of service. Still undecided as to whether I’ll go with them next year or not, we’ll see.
