Felicity Flowers

Over 100 florists across the United States, Canada, and the UK have signed a complaint issued to the FTC. Customers are being lured into purchasing flowers from 1800Flowers because of “free shipping” claims. The problem that florists have (and consumers should have) with this is that 1800Flowers isn’t “shipping” the flowers at all!

1800 takes orders placed on their website for same day delivery and charges a service fee just for handling a customers order then, the order is electronically passed onto a local florist who will then process and deliver the order. The local florist is required to take their delivery charge from the full amount that was sent to them to process the order. The “shipping” fee that 1800Flowers is waiving is actually just a service or handling fee.
Read more about the issue here:

http://www.flowerchat.com/real-florists-blog/2007/11/florists-urge-ftc-to-investigate-1800flowerscom-free-shipping.php

Digg the issue here:

http://digg.com/business_finance/Florists_Urge_FTC_to_Investigate_Free_Shipping_Claims/who