I got an email from The Bouqs a week or so ago, asking if I wanted to check out their website, and get a bouquet of flowers to review. Just another day in the life of a blogger. Disclaimer: I did not pay for these flowers, and I am an affiliate of this company, but they didn’t buy my opinion.
I thought, sure, I’ll send Brent flowers. I’ll be home to sign for them, this will be great! So I picked some flowers out, and promptly forgot about them until the doorbell rang on Wednesday. Thinking it was someone I knew, I stepped out of the house in my bathrobe. Note: showering is not high on the morning priority list for those who work from home.
Sorry/You’re Welcome, FedEx Guy.
The Bouqs Review
First Impressions
Their website is really nice. Just gorgeous. In fact, you can pick out your theme! What version of their website do you want to look at? Corporate? Rustic Thunder? Light and Bright? That’s a very silly feature, but given the number of times I’ve changed the theme here on Frugal Portland, it appealed to me. Finding a bouquet (or a ‘bouq, because we’re cool now) was easy — narrowing it down to just one was the hard part!
Important note: The Bouqs isn’t for you if it’s Monday and you need flowers delivered by Thursday. That surprised me until I read on their website that they source their flowers from a volcano in South America. So it takes awhile. That was fine for me because I wanted to get Brent flowers sometime before the wedding but would almost never work for me in my normal flower-buying mentality. For me, flowers are sent when something scary happens to a friend. In fact, I think the last time I sent flowers was when my friend had a scary “what is this lump?” doctor’s appointment. Also I used to send flowers on my mom’s birthday.
The Bouqs has a concierge service for the “flowers on their birthday” idea, and it’s brilliant. They take your credit card, and just handle everything for you. It’s pretty cool — you can set up “just because” flowers, every x months flowers, and “send on every anniversary” flowers so you’re not scrambling when your special day is a week away.
Delivery
Aside from showing the FedEx guy my fuzzy bathrobe, delivery was lovely. These flowers didn’t come with a vase, which is perfectly fine by me! I put the stems in a mason jar and added the flower food with some lukewarm water. My flower decorating skills leave plenty to be desired, so as you can see in the picture, they’re splayed everywhere. After a few hours, I cut off their ends, which helped with the splaying and with the wilting.
For something that came from South America, they were beautiful. For a minute.
I walked out of the office three or four hours after delivery, and they looked so sad:
sad panda
So, I tweeted to the company, and they were a) very responsive, and b) very empathetic. They said I should try a taller vase. But I couldn’t find it. To be fair, I couldn’t find anything in my home, anything at all, it being several days before my wedding and all, so I followed their second suggestion, which was to cut more than half the stem off the bottom and stick them back in the jar.
So I did, and found that the pink ones were too floppy. Their heads were too big for their weak little necks. I predicted they wouldn’t last a day:
better, but not awesome
On Twitter, they agreed with me, and sent me a coupon code for anything else. The review bouquet was supposed to be chosen from a list, but the “sorry the first bouquet won’t last past tomorrow’s dinner” bouquet was anything I wanted.
There’s a choice for “just make it awesome” and I was dying to know what that would be. I filled out my information, and was careful to be wearing clothes when the UPS guy came again a few weeks later. He’s afraid of Stanley, so when he rings the doorbell, he walks all the way back to the street just in case.
The email said they were sending me, “just make it awesome for mom,” and I was initially put off by that, but then couldn’t think of a flower that would be OK for Mom, but not OK for my house.
Also I found a taller vase:
Much better!
I was so much happier the second time! I think it’s good to go through this kind of debacle when you’re getting something for a review. The process should have been seamless, but it wasn’t. And that’s okay. I appreciate their customer service and prompt response, and would consider ordering from them in the future.
Do You Ever Order Flowers?
