what the bloody living fuck!?

Do not order flowers from www.urbanflorist.com. They will be only too happy to take your money and allow you to choose a weekend delivery date, only to phone you the day after delivery was supposed to take place and say, "We're sorry, we don't deliver on weekends because the courier doesn't. We can give you a free upgrade and deliver on Tuesday or charge you $15 for a cancellation fee."

Note: I already have the maximum upgrades available to that gift. I also chose the most elaborate vase and card available. There are no upgrades. And my sister's anniversary was yesterday. If I wanted to fucking cancel my order, I wouldn't have placed it in the first place. And if I'd known that the "Sunday, May 22" CONFIRMED delivery date on the order form wasn't going to work out, I'd never have spent $100 on flowers at that shop.

And now I've been on hold for half an hour so that I can get this fucking mess straightened out. I'm going to be charged $15 because their website order form allowed me to choose an option that wasn't actually available?

ETA

Dear Sir or Madam;

I recently made a purchase from www.urbanflorist.com, order #xxxxxxx. As I believe that all pertinent details of the order are attached to the file, I will not describe them here. However, I would like to express my disappointment with the ordering system available on the website.

When I placed the order on Friday, May 20, I specified delivery for Sunday, May 22, which the website allowed me to select and which the order confirmation page/invoice confirmed without notification of any difficulty for that delivery date. However, today I received a telephone message informing me that the courier did not ship on weekends and that I could take advantage of the free upgrade option (which was not possible, given that I had chosen the maximum upgrade available) or else pay a $15 cancellation fee for delivery on Tuesday, May 24.

In my chat with an online representative, I was told that if I had placed an order for same-day delivery, I might have been able to get weekend delivery, but with no guarantee on that. I was also told during this chat that the shipping policies page stated that the company does not ship on weekends. On the shipping policies page, the closest relevant statement is "bear in mind that weekend dates do not count as shipping days"; this can mean anything from "we do not send out packages on weekends" to "parcels in transit will not move on weekends" to "parcels will not be delivered on weekends." It would be much less misleading to state in plain English, "We do not deliver on weekends," especially as the statement "Same day delivery cannot be guaranteed on Saturday or Sunday" implies that delivery service is actually available on those days -- just not reliable delivery service.

I was most upset that the website allowed me to place an order for a day on which orders will not be delivered. I strongly recommend against making weekend delivery dates available as options in the drop-down box if the company cannot actually deliver on them. If I had known that the Sunday date would not be available, I would not have placed an order with Urban Florist and would have chosen a company that could deliver on weekends. I found it insulting to not only have my money taken for an impossible order, but then be told that I would have to pay extra to have it cancelled, or else accept a late delivery. It is dishonest to make it an available option to deliver on a weekend and then not flag the order as being impossible, but still accept payment for the order and then charge a $15 cancellation fee for it!

I am certain that this misunderstanding is not the sort of experience you wish your customers to have when ordering online from the Urban Florist. I have had nothing but good experiences with purchases from the retail storefront in downtown Vancouver, and this problem was certainly an anomaly. However, it still remains that I depended on this company to help make my sister's first wedding anniversary a special one, and unfortunately it did not work out that way. Please consider my suggestions for the website so that such problems may be averted in the future.

Sincerely,
[donnaidh_sidhe]

And now, if they're half as classy as their reputation, storefront, website and location in downtown yuppietown imply, their next acceptable response will be, "Holy shit, you're right, our website sucks and should totally not have allowed you to place that order, and our shipping policies should have stated clearly that weekend delivery doesn't happen. We'll at least discount you the shipping." Because it's frankly crass to demand a refund in the first letter you send unless they started out being complete dicks in the first place -- or that's my opinion. I do hope that I struck the right balance between polite and outraged in that letter; today my "this is why you suck, but in a polite way" skills feel a little bit off.