Flowers By Jeannie

I am rejecting this response because: As far as I am concerned she knows nothing about floral arrangements and neitherwas done as requestedLike I said before she had very few flowers in her coolers and she willget no recommendations from me my friends also will not use her and will give their business to [redacted] Florista much more professional floristI go not take her excuses as reason for poor results the final cost was disgusting

I am rejecting this response because:
As far as I am concerned she knows nothing about floral arrangements and neitherwas done as requested. Like I said before she had very few flowers in her coolers and she willget no recommendations from me my friends also will not use her and will give their business to [redacted] Florista much more professional florist. I go not take her excuses as reason for poor results the final cost was disgusting

It truly hurts my heart that Ms. [redacted] was so upset about the arrangements that I custom made for her. Her grandson [redacted] was my age. I did not grow up in Grand Rapids so I never had the opportunity to meet him, but many of my friends were friends with him so it hit close to home for me and I knew...

how important and special these floral arrangements would be to the family.  It upsets me that she questions my ability to do arrangements, as I have worked in 2 different flower shops, 1 through college and 1 outside of college starting in 2010. This gave me the opportunity to learn design techniques from 2 separate locations, making my background more extensive and diverse than most. If you would like, I can give you the contact information of the people that trained me at both locations.  I have full confidence that they will both be proud of my abilities and will confirm my professional skills as a designer. As far as the arrangements themselves, I do have a copy of the order slip she referenced in her complaint. I have attached a picture of both with their corresponding recipes and a copy of the original receipt. Ms. [redacted] and her husband [redacted] came in to finalize the arrangements on Wednesday August 31st with delivery on September 1st.  With how my ordering falls, I placed a special order for the flowers after they left and it was sent via Speedy from my wholesaler and arrived Thursday afternoon (the day of the visitation) for me to put them together.  This is more of an expense for me to have them delivered via Speedy, rather than the normal truck route that would’ve come in Friday morning.  Speedy deliveries come in the day after you order and arrive in the afternoon (if I remember correctly, that day they arrived around 1pm), limiting my time to put the arrangements together before the 5pm visitation began.  The funeral home requested I have the flowers delivered by 3pm.  When she placed the order for the "[redacted] J #1" arrangement, I mentioned to her that those types of arrangements, where they are solid flowers, are very expensive for the size.  She told me that price did not matter and that is was just important that it read "[redacted] J #1" as this was his signature tagline.  I also mentioned to her that I would not be able to give her a quote on price because the size/fullness of the blossoms could vary the price greatly. I felt that waiting to give her a price would have both of our best interests in mind so she would not be over charged or I would not under charge.  I placed the order and made the arrangement without taking payment beforehand.  To be respectful of their schedule, I called and left a voicemail at their home on Thursday to let her know I had her total for her and that she could swing in the following week to take care of payment when their schedule had calmed down. For the "[redacted] J # 1" arrangement, you will be able to see from the order that I followed their specifications.  The background was to be white, the "[redacted] J #" portion to be green and then the "1" to be black.  Based on the availability of the flowers at my wholesaler, I chose to use carnations and white cushion mums to save on cost for them, they hold up the best for these types of arrangements as far as longevity, and tend to be very full.  The final size of the arrangement was approximately 11"x 33".  The industry standard for basic arrangements is 30% on the total.  I had additional labor into making the floral foam to be this large.  Some florists will charge 40%-50% labor for custom pieces like this, especially if there is additional mechanics and structure required, as there was for this piece.    I used 44 carnations at $2 each, 4 stems mini carnations (for the "#") at $3 each, and 20 stems of cushion mums at $4 each.  The floral foam piece I used, my cost is $32 but you have to figure in freight charges and such as well making that $45 for the foam. Then for supplies, script, ribbon, I had $8 worth. I only figured 30% off the total of the flowers, $180, to get $54 in labor, where technically, if I would’ve ta[redacted] the industry standard off the total, labor should have been at least $69.90.  I did it this way because I am just getting established as the new business owner and I feel sympathetic to Ms. [redacted] on the loss of her grandson.  I wholeheartedly wanted to do something nice for them and minimized my labor charge.  Here are 2 arrangements that are the closest I can find on FTD.com.  I would have liked to find something on Teleflora.com as well that would've been a similar comparison, but they did not have anything like it.  I wanted you to see what the suggested retail price on these style of arrangements is.  These are stock arrangements and do not have that customization piece that Ms. [redacted] requested. https://www.ftd.com/3316/catalog/product.epl?product_id=S50-4565 https://www.ftd.com/3316/catalog/product.epl?product_id=S48-4557 For the tennis racket, Ms. [redacted] brought this in on behalf of her son/Nick's uncle for me to make the arrangement on.  She told me that it was acceptable to glue and make permanent changes to it.  Being that the tennis racket was not her's and was technically her son's property and he did not give me permission to make permanent adjustments to it, I wanted to keep the integrity of the racket the best I could.  The racket hung on one of our standard funeral easels.  Again, to not make any permanent changes to the racket, I was able to get it to hang right underneath the racket head in the open throat area. She had ordered white flowers to cover the strings of the racket with a flower tennis ball in the middle. As you can see from her picture, I accomplished this.  I am very proud of how the tennis ball turned out.  I feel that the color I ended up with on the flower version was the closest you could get to a real tennis ball.  In the floral industry, we are restricted by the color that flowers come in from our wholesalers and we have floral paints that we can use to slightly alter the flower's natural color. Please keep in mind too that floral tinting can only get us so far.  You can also see that I added white floral tape to wire to represent the white rubber lines on the ball. She asked me to also have black and orange flowers all the way around the outside of the racket.  As you can see in the picture I did not do this, the fresh only goes partially around.  As I was putting the flowers on the racket, Thursday afternoon before the visitation, the weight of the flowers was making the racket swing down, so the handle would stick up in the air.  At this point I had to make a design call, either make a permanent alteration (which as I mentioned before I was not comfortable with) or use as many flowers as possible, while still keeping the racket upright.  As you can see I chose the latter option without their approval to be respectful of their time with their family and friends.  I feel that this is the only part I did not represent as they had requested. For the tennis racket, I used 5 stems of orange spray roses at $5.50 each, 8 stems of cushion mums at $4 each, and 4 stems of mini carnations at $3 each plus supplies, like ribbon, easel, wire, glue, tape, etc. Here too I took the total of flowers, rather than the total for the arrangement to get the 30% labor charge of $22, rather than taking 30% to 50% of the total.  This would have made labor at least $30.15. Again, I want to say how much this saddens me that she is upset by what I made for her.  I never want a customer, especially someone going through the loss of a loved one to have a bad experience.  I take a lot of pride in my work and take it personally.  There have been many times when I am consulting with a family ordering funeral pieces that I am choking back tears because my heart goes out to them in their time of loss.  I have been in their shoes myself and feel proud and humbled that they come to me to represent their loved one through flowers and that I am able to bring a little bit of beauty and color into their celebration of their loved one. Sincerely, Madeline [redacted] Owner, Flowers by Jeannie [redacted] Grand Rapids, MN 55744 ###-###-####