As a general rule, I give the companies I spend my money with some latitude to make mistakes. I’ve worked retail, and I know that sometimes people fuck up. I generally gauge my reaction to the situation on how they handle the situation. Take Home Depot, for advantage. As most of you are well aware I have had several major problems with the installation services from Home Depot. The store associates, however, have been stellar (and the one who wasn’t was fired after I complained about him). While I may never purchase an installation from Home Depot again, I will continue to do business with them because of the quality of their store-level employees.

Some services, however, leave very little room for forgiveness when an error occurs. Services like, oh I don’t know, flower delivery.

I’ve used Proflowers.com on several occasions in the past, and I have been happy with the results every time. Being a loyal customer in that regard, I ordered a dozen roses and some chocolate to be delivered to K. today. They were supposed to be the finishing touches on a series of little gifts and surprises that I left around the house for her today. The icing on the cake, as it were.

Well, some cheap bastard in Jacksonville thought they could save money by shipping both my package and one being delivered to ORLANDO using the same tracking number. The packages were labeled correctly. The names and addresses were recorded and put on the boxes. The problem is that UPS doesn’t pay attention to any of that when they deliver something. It’s all done by bar code.

Number of Packages : 2. Number of Bar Codes : 1.

Guess which package had the bar code?

K’s flowers are now in the possession of one Candace Stewart of Altamonte Springs, FL. If she is the jealous type I feel sorry for the person who sent her the other package, and I hope for his sake they were equal to or better than the ones I purchased, because he’s going to have a hard time explaining who “Gekko” is and why he wants to be with her until starlight’s end (and no, there was no signature…no need for one).

To say that I’m pissed is an understatement. I’m getting my money back, but they can’t turn back the clock and deliver the flowers that I ordered on the correct day. As of midnight tonight it is gone for another year.

So…We have an incompetent shipper and very little effort to make me happy beyond giving me a refund that will take 3-5 days to process. What does that add up to, class? Anyone? Anyone?

One customer who is done with Proflowers, and a post in his blog discouraging any of his readers from using their service as well.

Schmucks!

Depite the fact that the circumstances of the day have been largely crappy, the fact that I got to kiss a very silly half-awake netgoth this morning and see how happy she was to find the little presents I hid around the house for her keep me from being completely irate. In fact, to tell the truth, I’m downright happy right now.

Amazing how someone can have that effect on you.