Beware the Virtual Florist Shop
Beware the Virtual Florist Shop
We have seen the proliferation on virtual online florist shops. These so called shops do not have either a physical outlet or any experience in operating florist and gift outlets. They are usually IT specialists simply running web sites not shops.
The other day a customer wanted a delivery of fruit to Walgett (northwest NSW). Because we are unable to deliver that ourselves, I went online to see if there was a florist at Walgett who may be able to send this fruit basket for us, we discovered that is not a florist there, BUT there were any number of virtual florist who could give you same day delivery to Walgett no trouble at all. One even had a page that said Walgett Florist and listed all these wonderful things that they could deliver. After much research we found a florist in Moree who was able to deliver the fruit basket at a cost of $49 just for the delivery part. Without Google Maps, most of the operators of these’ virtual florist’ would not even know where Walgett was.
To give you some examples, one virtual online florist and gift company was operating from the 2_ something floor of a CBD building, another was being run by a IT professor at a major University. Most are run by IT professional. Of course when you Google florist and gift shops these types of businesses dominate the leading pages of Google because this is what they do. Most real florists and gift shops cannot employ fulltime professionals in order to get their web sites on the leading pages of Google.
How do they make their money? They simply take a percentage out of each order before they give the order to a real florist to make and deliver. These percentages can vary from 25% to over 50%. We do not except these types of orders because we cannot give the customer the full value that they paid for. An example is an order we received where the customer paid $94 (we looked it up on their web site) and this company was only going to pay us $49 to make and deliver the flowers and chocolates. see www.fair-trading.com.au
In conclusion, deal with a real Florist. You will get much better value for your money. It is sometimes hard to sort the real florist from the virtual florist but there are several ways you can tell. Look at the “Contact us” page and look for a physical address. They will also promise the earth and anywhere in the world and look at where they fall in Google. Most of the first page is made up of virtual florists. We simply do not have the time or the expertise to get full time front page rankings.
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