Order gathering is a practice that hurts people that send and receive flowers, and the florist that gets caught in the middle. Here’s how & why it goes bad.

This is a great real world example of order gathering in the flower business and how it hurts almost everyone involved.

The customer went to a website and liked the look of this arrangement:

They called the flower shop, and the shop promised that they were in fact a true local florist that would personally prepare and deliver this order. They also confirmed the availability of the flowers, colors and container (clear, square, glass vase) shown.

They also paid an extra $10 to upgrade the arrangement to a larger size. Here is a copy of the receipt:

Here is a picture of what was actually delivered:

Even if you don’t know much about flowers you’ll notice that the flowers and container are pretty much completely different. Not even close. How do things go wrong?

The order gatherer is greedy. Despite their promises about what you would get they care only about what it costs them. They try and get a real local flower shop to prepare and deliver something remotely close for much less than what you paid. They keep the difference.

This is a copy of what the order gatherer sent to the filling florist – the real local flower shop that actually did the hard work of preparing and filling the order.

The customer paid $49.95 for flowers. The order-gatherer asked the filling shop to do it for $35. They kept the extra $14.95 for their own. They also “skimmed” on the delivery charge.

The customer got much less than what they paid for. The recipient (the person receiving the flowers) got much less than they were supposed to. And the filling florist, the flower shop that did all the work, probably gets the anger of the disappointed customer and recipient.

The order gatherer, the company responsible for all this disappointment, does pretty well though.

Doesn’t seem fair does it? The good news is that it can be avoided. Don’t buy from order gatherers, buy from a real local florist.