It’s that time of year again, when radio airwaves are full of ads telling men they can charm their significant others with Valentine’s Day flowers for just $30 on websites like ProFlowers.com. I’m an investigative journalist, and I have 20 years’ experience hunting and pecking my way through the web, but try as I might, I can’t find anything that costs $30. Or for that matter, $40. Even $45 is a challenge.
Welcome to the 2015 Valentine’s Day Gotcha Capitalism roundup. Once again, online retailers are getting away with advertising prices that are often 25-50 percent less than the real price. Once again, I call on federal and state consumer agencies to investigate this practice and set some rules.
Americans will spend an estimated $2.1 billion on flowers this Valentine’s, according to the National Retail Federation. I’m here to make sure as much of that money as possible goes to love instead of hidden fees.
It’s great to give flowers, of course. Really, you should. In a world full of so much stuff that Americans need storage units to hoard it all, flowers are the perfect gift. They brings smiles, show thoughtful affection, and have a lovely life-cycle that means they aren’t destined for an overcrowded knick-knack shelf in the closet. So, give flowers.
While I think it’s always better to buy flowers locally, select them yourself, and deliver them in person, major online flower retailers are a very convenient option for gift-giving. Generally speaking, ProFlowers.com, 1800Flowers, and FTD.com all do a pretty impressive job of delivering healthy flowers on time for holidays. I’m impressed by the logistics behind this, particularly on such a busy day.
But I can’t believe they continue to get away with misleading consumers about their prices. I’ve written about this before, but but it keeps happening, and there are some fresh twists. So to save you some heartache, I priced flowers at all three retailers, selecting Friday the 13th delivery to keep costs down (superstition be damned). Here’s what I found.
At 1800Flowers.com, a consumer who opts for an arrangement with a stated price tag of $45 must fill out 4-6 pages of forms before learning the real cost of actually getting the flowers to the intended recipient. That can vary, of course — in the example I toyed with, it cost $63, when an $18 shipping charge was added — but there’s no way to buy the flowers for anything close to $45.
Well, you can if you are willing to pay $75. If you sign up for 1800Flowers’ Amazon-Prime-like “Passport” service, which costs $30, you get free shipping and no service charges for a year. Not a bad deal, if you send flowers more than twice a year. (I’d be wary of that auto-renewal clause, however). This doesn’t change the main point, however, which means you can’t send the flowers for $45. As an added tall-tale, the site urges radio listeners to enter a code they heard in an advertisement for special deals. That’s a neat way for 1800Flowers to track the efficacy of its ads. But I’m not sure what it does for customers. When I entered the code, I had trouble finding flowers that had discounts greater than those I was already shown.
I will give 1800Flowers this: consumers are shown the final, “out the door” price on the same page where they enter credit card details, and the price is shown adjacent to the “place order” button. The firm is hoping that, since you’ve gone through the trouble of filling out the rest of the web pages, you won’t abandon your purchase now, even with a surprise $20-ish fee.
FTD.com does much the same thing. On its home page, I’m told Valentine’s flowers are available “starting at $29.” When I clicked on that arrangement, the browser defaulted to a $39 option. I fixed that, filled out all the forms and …. found out my $30 flowers cost $50. The “service fee” was $19.99. Once again, I was offered the chance to avoid the $20 fee by paying $30 to enroll in an “FTD Gold Membership” that promises free shipping for a year.
Again, to FTD’s credit, the final price is listed right next to the “Place Your Order” button. But also, the wear-you-down-so-you-just-cough-up-$20 strategy is at play.
Nothing that these sites do is as bad as ProFlowers’ behavior, however. The same general unsavory tactics described above occur at ProFlowers, but with one dastardly addition: the site’s “place order” page is clearly designed with a “confirm order now” button at the top, faaaaarrrrrrr away from the order total at the bottom, which isn’t visible to many users unless they scroll. To make matters worse, ProFlowers requires that users enter their credit card data on a prior page, so shoppers there are denied the true price for an extra step…and it’s quite possible to order flowers are be confused about the price.
My $35 arrangement really cost $58, making ProFlowers the hidden fee champion — both in terms of price and gotcha tactics. This should come as no surprise. ProFlowers seems to win this title every year. As I’ve said before, this is a shame, because even *with* the fees, ProFlowers often has lower prices.
Look, all these sites are fighting over that enormous pot of $2.1 billion; Valentine’s Day makes or breaks them. So they push the envelope. If someone (I’m looking at you again, FTC) passed clear rules about price disclosure across media, I’ll bet they wouldn’t even mind. As things are, rules seem to be unclear, and are these sites all fighting for any edge they can get. Are these “deflated” prices really deceptive? (I hope you see what I did there). Don’t consumers except some kind of delivery charges when ordering flowers? Yes, of course they do. But all these online florists require delivery. There are no flowers to buy for $30. “Starting at….” should mean the lowest possible price to buy something. Anything else is English language abuse.
After all, markets cannot function properly without clear price tags. That’s the one thing no one should debate.
But we’re not fixing this today, or any time soon. So what does it mean for you? First, today is Feb. 10, meaning it’s the last day you can buy V-day flowers without paying a procrastinator’s premium. Second, if you plan to use a big online retailer, don’t be in such a rush. Take a few extra moments and price out arrangements at at least three three merchants. Open three different browser windows if you must. Ignore every price you see until you get the real “out the door price.” Then make your selection. Your lover will appreciate the thought, but you know what’s really sexy? Not getting ripped off.
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