I tried to order flowers for Valentine’s Day

I should have known ordering flowers for Valentine’s Day from a Living Social deal was a bad idea.

There were a lot of warning signs. The fine print longer than a disclaimer for Splash Mountain at Disney World, the forecasted snow storm, the 60 percent off deal — — I mean what could go wrong?

Mostly everything.

I was sweetheart of Alpha Chi Omega in college. I wanted to order a nice bouquet of flowers for their house for Valentine’s Day- a noble gesture. So when I received an email from Living Social with a stellar deal, I thought, what a perfect opportunity!

First of all, for something that withers and dies after a couple days, flowers are really freaking expensive. They grow in the ground yet a nice bouquet of flowers cost more than a two star motel room in Gatlinburg.

Believe it or not I’ve purchased my share of flowers in my day. Mostly they were purchased to get me out of situations I found myself in. As you can imagine, there were a few occasions.

These flowers, however, were purchased with good intentions. And then things got fun.

I ordered the flowers on Feb. 9 and scheduled for a Feb 14 delivery. Doable right?

Wrong.

A snowstorm hit Elon. And I received this:

“The winter storms in large areas of the United States have delayed shipping nationwide and many gifts did not arrive in time for Valentine’s Day.Our records show that your gift has been delayed.” — Doug Chaplin, head of customer care.

So naturally, I responded with the following

I then did what most people would do in this situation — Complain on Twitter. A nice social media manager for the flower company responded with an email for me to complain. I decided to have fun.

A couple hours later Mr Doug Chaplin sent an email to Michelle and myself apologizing and issued me a full refund. Then Michelle sent this:

To which, someone at ProFlowers responded with:

Later I checked my email and saw one that said “my flowers had shipped.” Naturally I was like, uhhh I didn’t order any flowers. So I called them.

I called the 24 hour hotline (yes, they have one). It turns out, they loved Michelle and my emails so much they not only sent me a refund and the Valentine’s Day bouquet that was delayed, but also a bouquet for Michelle. The woman on the phone also told me they printed out the emails.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

-JB