A Zappos service story

What a great story! Compare and contrast to an experience I had a number of years ago with a national florist that will go unnamed. (They are supposedly a high end alternative to FTD. I’d use their name, but this was 11 years ago and they may be reformed by now.)

My cousin had died (at age 50), and I wanted to send flowers to the home of his sister, whom I’m very close to. Well, it was January, and the flowers arrived frozen to death, as I saw when I walked into my cousin’s living room for the post-funeral gathering. Not only that, but the vase - which you couldn’t see in the catalog because the bountiful bouquet was cascading over the top, but the vase looked exactly like a funeral urn. Which I really wouldn’t have chosen if I’d known.

Now, you would have to know my family to appreciate that from the moment of delivery, this was already on its way to becoming a classic family story, but I was fuming. I called the company and told them the flowers were all dead.

Sorry, they told me, but it was cold out.

Well, that’s not my problem, I told them. I want my money back.

They told me grudgingly, that they’d refund the cost of the flowers, but not for the vase. I could get a refund if I packaged up the vase and sent it back.

I told them that this was unacceptable. I certainly wasn’t going to ask my cousin to pack up the vase so I could get $50. Nor did I think I should have to pay anything.

After a letter to the president, I did get my money fully back. (And Mary Beth got to keep the vase.) But talk about a rotten customer experience. I never ordered from them again.

I have ordered shoes from Zappo’s, and this story certainly makes me want to do so again.