Flyingflowers.com is, as one can guess from the name, a flowers delivery service based at www.flyingflowers.com. On their website they boast that they are the “UK’s favourite postal flower service” and have “over 1 million satisfied customers.”
After short registration process, you can become a customer of flyingflowers.com, and order flowers and gifts and make use of the services provided by the website. The website is easy to use and attractively laid out. Items can be ordered either via the website itself or by telephoning the company on 0870 191 3400. Ordering by post is also an option if you have received a flyingflowers.com catalogue, which includes a postal order form. Catalogues can be requested by clicking on the relevant link on the website.
***FLOWERS
All flyingflowers.com’s bouquets come with “free UK delivery by first class post and are delivered in a gift box complete with a personal message card, flower food and care instructions.”
Flyingflowers.com separates the bouquets available into classic value bouquets, ultimate bouquets and international bouquets. There is a further section for plants.
- Classic value bouquets These bouquets are available from £9.97 and currently there are 12 different bouquets available. These bouquets feature flowers such as carnations, asiatic lilies and chrysanthemums.
- Ultimate bouquets These are described on the website as “hand-tied flower bouquets delivered by courier, in designer wrap and presented in a stylish gift box.” They are ideal for those who need next-day delivery as this is offered on all ultimate bouquets, as long as the order is places before 2.30pm Monday to Friday. However, the free UK delivery for ultimate bouquets excludes the highlands and islands. Currently there are only eight bouquets available in this section, but the styles and colours of bouquets available ranges considerably so that there is something to suit most people. Two examples of ultimate bouquets currently available to buy are:
Joy (£27.00) – “Freshly modern bouquet consisting of bright orange germini, pink roses, funky green chrysanthemums and perky tana yellow set off by bear grass and fern.” - 5 x Pink Roses - 4 x Yellow Tana - 4 x Orange Germini -
2 x Bear Grass - 3 x Leder Fern - 3 x Salal - 5 x Green Bloom Chrysanthemums
Raspberry (£34.00) – “Simply beautiful - this gorgeous confection of pink large headed and spray roses, lilies, pink and white carnations and fashionable green chrysanthemums, all enhanced with eucalyptus.” - 6 x Pink Roses - 6 x Spray Roses - 3 x Pink Carnations - 3 x White Carnations - 5 x Pink Lilies - 5 Bay Blue Eucalyptus - 5 x Green chrysanthemums
Often when buying bouquets, the customer is given the option of purchasing as “add-on,” such as a teddy, ribbon or balloon.
Currently there are several offers on both the classic and ultimate bouquets allowing the buyer to have 50% extra blooms free on selected bouquets. This type of deal is quite common on flyingflowers.com. Another deal which has been offered to customers in the past is, if they will recommend flyingflowers.com to two friends by entering their email addresses onto the website, the customer will receive 10% off their next bouquet order.
- International Bouquets Flyingflowers.com offers bouquet/gift delivery to Eire, parts of Europe (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Holland, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark), USA (excluding Canada), Australia (excluding Tasmania), New Zealand and South Africa. The customer is asked to allow four working days for delivery for all of the above areas, except Eire for which it is two. The flowers available for international delivery depends largely on the destination, with flowers such as carnations, Asiatic lilies, South American rose, oriental lilies, orchids and gerbera included in the bouquets. Prices range from £16.99 (Europe) to £34.99 (USA) and there are some bouquets and gifts available for international delivery which are not available for UK delivery.
-Plants The plants available to buy are currently begonia, bonsai tree, rose, hydrangea, gardenia, rose and lily, pink flaming katy and gerber with ivy, and mini orchid. Prices range from £14.99 to 20.99.
***GIFTS
Flyingflowers.com also sells gifts, including wine (prices starting at £17.99), balloons (all £9.99 or £11.99), new baby gifts (prices starting at £19.99), packs of pampering toiletries (prices starting at £11.89) and hampers of goodies such as fudge, chocolates, biscuits and marmalade (prices starting at £16.99). One gift is worth commenting on - the essential baby bouquet gift set is quite a unique gift – it’s 7 baby pairs of baby socks (age 3-6months) rolled up together to look like flowers and gift-packed into a bouquet shape. It comes in pink, blue or yellow and costs £23.00. The classic baby bouquet gift set is an expansion on the same idea, including 5 pairs of baby socks and two baby sleepsuits.
There is also a range of personalised gifts available (prices starting from £9.99), on which you can have your own message printed, including chocolates, balloons, teddy bears and polo shirts. Flyingflowers.com helpfully divides all the above bouquets and gifts into the categories, allowing the customer to narrow down the gifts to browse through. The categories are Gift Sets, Thank You, Anniversary, Summer Gifts, Happy Birthday, Special Offers, Congratulations, Thinking of You, Gifts Under £10.
***OTHER SERVICES
Other services offered by flyingflowers.com are:
1. Business flowers. Ideal for supplying an office with fresh flowers every week or sending flowers to colleagues, employees or customers. Further information on this scheme is available by contacting David Murphy on 01376 575058 or DMurphy@flyingbrands.com.
2. Affiliate programme. By becoming an affiliate of flyingflowers.com, you agree to display a banner, text link or product feed to their website from your own website. In return, flyingflowers.com will give you 12% commission on all sales made by someone clicking on your link to their website. You can find out more about this by following the link in the relevant section of flyingflowers.com or by contacting Ana Nikacevic, E-Commerce Coordinator, at anikacevic@flyingbrands.com.
3. Free reminder service. If you are already registered with flyingflowers.com, you can sign up to this service which will send you emails reminding you of special dates that you want to remember. Signing up requires visiting this section of the website and entering your email address and flyingflowers.com password.
4. Recommended sites. Flyingflowers.com provides a list of websites of their key partners which they think will be of interest to their customers. These website are on topics such as audio books, gardening, birds, collectables and cards.***MY EXPERIENCE
So, the question is, am I one of flyingflowers.com’s one million satisfied customers?
I first encountered flyingflowers.com via an advert in a newspaper over 2 years ago, around the weeks approaching mothers day. I believe it was advertising a bunch of flowers (carnations I think) for £9.99 including delivery. It seemed like a pretty good deal so I looked up the website.
I actually ended up purchasing a bunch of scented stargazer lilies and pink roses from their "Ultimate collection" for £28 (free delivery). I ordered them to be delivered to my mother in time for mothers day.
Unfortunately the bouquet never arrived. I emailed flyingflowers.com expressing my disappointment and asking for a refund. They replied within a few hours apologising and saying that they had put a full refund back on my card, which indeed they had. Even though I was obviously disappointed with the flowers not turning up, I was impressed with the speed with which they administered my refund.
A few months later it was my mum's birthday, and I decided to give flyingflowers.com a second chance and ordered the same bouquet again for my mum (as she especially likes lilies). This time it arrived and mum was pleased with it. I did have some problems with the website seemingly duplicating my order, but an email and phone call to flyingflowers.com’ customer service team confirmed that only one order was being processed.
The next time I decided to use flyingflowers.com the bouquet arrived, nicely packaged in a gift box, and there were no problems with the transaction. The only thing that disappointed me slightly was that, a few weeks after the flowers were delivered, I visited the person I had sent them to and saw the gift box the bouquet arrived in, and noticed that the price I had paid for it was printed on the box (albeit in small digits!) Perhaps this is a legal requirement though.
Flyingflowers.com sends small mailings out to their customers from time to time, and through one of these I was made aware of their international flower delivery service. The prices seemed extremely reasonable. I have a friend who lives in France who loves flowers, so I decided to send her a bouquet.
I chose a small bouquet of tulips from their international range, costing just £16.99 including delivery. I was limited in which dates I could choose for delivery, but I didn’t mind that too much. I entered my friend’s details and mobile number in case she was out when they tried to deliver the flowers. In the meantime I told her to expect something from me around that time, but I didn’t tell her what I was sending as I wanted it to be a surprise.
Well, the delivery date came and went, and I heard nothing from my friend to say that the flowers had arrived. Eventually I cracked and told her what I had ordered for her. Yep, you guessed it – my friend hadn’t received the flowers. Again I found myself emailing flyingflowers.com customer service to complain about the non-arrival. They emailed back apologising and saying that the bouquet was despatched from their packing dept on the correct date, but as they relied on the French post office to deliver flowers they do occasionally experience “problems with late or failed deliveries.” They then gave me the option of a replacement bouquet (subject to confirmation of the delivery address) or a full refund. I chose the replacement bouquet, since I still really wanted to treat my friend to a bunch of flowers.
In the meantime, my friend went to the post office to see if anything was there for her. It turned out that the bouquet had indeed been left there for her, but by that time it was “very dead” (her words!) So the bouquet did indeed almost reach its intended destination, but as they did not leave my friend a card to say that there was something for her at the post office, I didn’t consider that satisfactory service.
The replacement bouquet arrived eventually, although my friend told me it was freesias rather than tulips. Still, she seemed happy, which was, after all, the intended outcome!
So, my overall impressions of flyingflowers.com are that it is a bit unreliable, but the customer services team do eventually sort the problems out. I wouldn’t recommend flyingflowers.com to you if it is really important to you that the flowers arrive on time, as from my experience you can see that only 2 out of 4 of the bouquets I’ve ordered have arrived on their intended date! But if price is the most important thing to you, then I would recommend flyingflowers.com, as it sells the cheapest nice bouquets that I have found, and, if the order goes wrong, in my experience anyway, the money is always refunded. The customer services are not bad; the one time I used their phone service I was kept waiting for quite a while, but that seems a given these days with business call centres!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Jul 23rd, 2007
exceptional by (27%):
very helpful by (73%):
