Flowers

In the process of cleaning out some files, I ran across this transaction that I meant to write about and never got around to. Several years ago, my husband sent some flowers to his mother in a hospital far away from us. The florist service offered a $40 off special, so he went for it. The bill struck me as a bit weird. The flowers were $40 off, bringing them from almost $70 to just $29.99. But then they charged $3.99 to tell her who they were from. And $4.99 for a vase. And ten dollars to take them to the hospital. And another five to take them today. And then they charged $9.40 for the pleasure of selling them to him, even though the order was placed online with no input from a real person. And the transaction total was less than what he ended up paying, because of sales tax which didn't appear on this bill. 

 

The florists I know include all that stuff, and charge you the quoted price with state sales tax being the only extra. 

 

The real kicker is that she didn't get the flowers for another two days, because they were sitting at hospital's front desk. The delivery person had just left them there without getting anyone's attention, and who knows what happened after that. By then they were wilted, so I assume that they forgot to charge him for water in the vase. We didn't find this out for a few days. 

 

One thing I always told my daughters is to never use a "service" for flowers. Call a local florist in the town the recipient is in; they are easy to find. Now that you can use a credit card over the phone, or any kind of online payment, there's no need to pay a middleman.