Would you complain?

It's very rare that we (as a business) will diss another florist, as it's not a nice thing to do in public, however I feel we may have good reason to, and wondered if you were me, what would you do?

This week we found ourselves in the position of needing to send flowers to someone we know, but as they are out of our area we needed to source a shop local to the recipients. Having used a shop in the area before, we chose to use them this time; we have never had any complaints relayed back to us about them - however we are now wondering whether that was just because our customers (or their recipients) were being too polite - as we have found ourselves in the position of having every reason to complain. 

Now before giving an order to another shop I always check out their web page - I am a nightmare for spelling errors and if a shop has many of them on theit site I won't use them; I think if a business can't take the time to check they are getting things right on their website, then how can I trust them with my money and place an order with them? (having said that I did notice a mistake on our own site recently that hadn't been picked up when it first went live so I do make small allowances). The shop in question do have a lot of generic pictures on their site (something we have none of; each and every  picture you see on our site has been made by one of us in the shop) but they also had a few of their own work which looked good enough for me to put my trust in them.  This I now know was a big mistake and they are a shop that we will avoid at all costs in the future.

The flowers we needed were for a sad event, for people with very classical tastes, so when I came across a green and white handtied in water on their site (a generic image for the Direct2Florist relay service they belong to that they should have been able to fulfill with ease) it fitted exactly what we wanted, and would be perfect for the recipients. See the image below for the flowers I chose. 

As you can see the flowers are mainly white with beautiful foliages to tone, giving an overall impression of a green and white theme.  I understand there are times when we need to substitute flowers (we have to do it often) but we always choose something as close to the flowers that have been requested. This bouquet consists of White Lilies, White Roses and Green Single spider chrysant blooms. Classical, Elegant and perfect for the occasion. 

Now see the image below for the flowers that were received

Admittedly the recipients have removed them from the wrapping (I have been told by the recipient that they were wrapped in nice cellophane and looked lovely when they arrived) but do any of those flowers look like the ones in the picture of the flowers we ordered??  Is there any hint of purple in the bouquet we ordered?

After much consideration we have contacted the D2F relay service this shop is a member of, as the bouquet was one of their basics that ALL their members should be capable of, and we have contacted the shop in question too - we are still waiting for a reply from either of them (complaint was lodged on Tuesday with D2F and Wednesday with the shop) it is now Monday.

It saddens me that something like this can happen and I know how disappointed I feel being let down in such a way; I can only imagine how one of our customers would feel if this was to happen to them.