FTD's Mother's Day Mishap

Twitter is abuzz with angry complaints about FTD not delivering flowers to recipients on Mother’s Day. Apparently a number of Moms didn’t receive their FTD flowers even though the senders made the orders early in the week. Here are a few sample tweets about the FTD mishap:

“FTD.com still hasn’t delivered the flowers I ordered Wednesday to my mom in the hospital, and they still haven’t replied either. Grrrrr.”

“Firing off an angry letter to FTD. They are liars, use 1-800-Flowers or call an actual, real florist on the telephone.”

“Calling FTD…mothers day flowers that were not delivered….”

“FTD had two days to get RA’s mom her mothers day flowers and they FAILED. I am SO waiting this 15 minute hold time to rip someone a new one.”

“FTD resolution was terrible; solution to missed Mother’s day flowers;send flowers tomorrow & discount the service charge!”

We did a sentiment analysis of tweets about FTD’s brand using Twendz, which looks at the sentiments expressed about a brand or topic and measures how positive, neutral or negative the tweets are. According to Twendz, 63% of recent tweets about FTD are negative. And 83% of tweets that include “FTD” and “Mom” are negative.

There is also negative buzz on Twitter about 1800Flowers.com regarding issues with the delivery of flowers yesterday. But interestingly, when you do a search on Twitter, you will see that 1800Flowers’ Twitter account is trying to appease customers. It’s not a bad idea, considering the damage that angry tweets can do for a brand. Twendz reports that only 33% of tweets about 1800Flowers.com are negative. FTD has twice the number of negative tweets.

We’ve contacted both flower delivery services for comment but have not received a response.

We understand that FTD sent those customers who were impacted an email offering a discount on their order. Here’s the text of the email:

Please accept our sincere apologies. Despite our best efforts, due to exceptionally high seasonal demand with our member florists, we regret we were unable to fill your order as requested.

We very much appreciate your business and would like to offer you $10 dollars off your existing order to be delivered on or before Tuesday, May 12th.

We truly understand how important each order is to our customers, and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.