I found a number of these types of pictures on a social media site and contacted each of the photographers  in order to get the rights to use the pictures, so far I’ve only heard back from one.. below is that picture.

The thing you notice first is not the most important thing to us, broken berries can happen for several reasons. Unless we had a whole lot more detail (pictures of the outside of the box, the shipping label and such) we really would not be able to determine the cause of the breaking. The breaking could be caused by dozens of reasons, everything from missing gel packs to carrier mis-handling to the after effects of a bad delivery address, we have no way of knowing for sure. But as we said that’s not the most important thing…

What we see is that the product delivered never matched the pictures on their website, while we know from their ingredient list that the product is not dipped in Milk, White or Dark Chocolate; what we see is no leaves. It’s not just that the leaves were lost on one berry during dipping process but that they were taken off before dipping. While I’m not certain: the removal of the leaves is more indicative of a machine dipped/ conveyor belt type of operation rather than hand dipping.

All of the problem pictures I found for this competitor had the same missing leaves, and that was not what was pictured in their many TV commercials, print ads or their web site. The product does not even match the marketing materials included in the box (as seen below). It’s not the result of an accident in packing,  delivery or customer actions: It’s a very basic change to the product; one that was done on purpose.

Even with the logo that you can see in the marketing materials above: just avoiding that one web site will not keep you from running into other parts of the same company with the same product, they operate under many different names and web sites, they own shopping channels, a  baseball team, TV stations and so much more that it would boggle your mind. The product is also sold by totally unrelated companies, they are so pervasive that it’s hard to avoid them.

Ignore the broken berries for a second: The product in the box does not match what was promised, no leaves, no stems, and not milk, white or dark chocolate. But since their customers are also saying they are involved in the “easy saver scam”:  should it be a surprise that their product looks nothing like their marketing materials?

Of course we sell chocolate covered strawberries so when  you are ready for real chocolate and whole strawberries with the leaves, dipped by hand to order give us a try.

Provide Commerce (parent company of Shari’s Berries, ProFlowers, Red Envelope, Cherry Moon Farms and more) seems have ticked off another group of customers.  Their customers have filed another class action lawsuit for passing credit card information to a company that then bills the customers monthly. The case regarding what is commonly knows as the Easy Saver Scam is still pending and according to some customers they are doing something similar with a new partner “Clarus Marketing Group”.

According to the documents we’ve found (Click for details),  (shorter version here) they used the lure of “free shipping”,  and once the customers clicked on that ad they were unwittingly signed up for a membership program that billed them between $9 and $15 monthly.

Another lawsuit that came to light was the one by their insurance group. from the linked document:

“Hartford Fire Insurance Company issued commercial general liability policies to the parent company of Provide Commerce, naming Provide Commerce as an insured.” “seeking a judicial determination of  whether Hartford is obligated to continue defending Provide Commerce, Encore and  Regent in two putative nationwide class actions“.

Hartford no longer wants to have to be involved with defending the Provide Commerce (ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, Cherry Moon Farms, Red Envelope…)  companies from the lawsuits regarding these practices. Insurance protects against accidents, but if you willfully and knowingly break the law they don’t back you up.   (Partial details here). Right now we’re only seeing the documents on the related filings, not the full case, but if the liability insurance company wants to distance itself: they must think there is something to the class action lawsuits.

Consumers have been responding to “Free Shipping” offers like a Pavlovian dogs responding to dinner bells.  Companies have found that by posting “Free Shipping”: the customers will go partially blind and not notice anything except the “Free”.  Pretty much like a 17 year old boy in a strip club. You have companies like Provide Commerce raking in millions with their version and you have other companies raising prices and then claiming free shipping, and consumers are drooling like a pack of well trained dogs. While the “free shipping” scams are supposed to be regulated either by law enforcement agencies or at least the credit card companies: no responsible entity has shut them down.

How are they getting away with this? (and by “they” we mean all the companies named above plus the other “Free Shipping” scammers)
So far there have just been consumer class action lawsuits,
NO ACTION has been taken by the criminal courts,
NO ACTION by the FTC, (on this or any “Free Shipping” false offers.)
NO ACTION by Visa, MasterCard or American Express: the companies involved can still process credit cards,
While congress held hearings on similar types of behaviors: congress does not file criminal complaints. (they write laws: they do not enforce them)
Basically the  sections of the government and credit card companies that are tasked with limiting/preventing consumer fraud have done nothing.

I’m sort of surprised that in this second  class action  lawsuit didn’t list the credit card companies as additional co-defendants. The credit card companies knew about the previous activity and continued to allow activities that violated the merchant agreements.

Since the credit card companies and enforcement agencies have not stopped this type of scam how can it be stopped?

That’s a subject for another day, as no one expects to order flowers or chocolate covered strawberries and get signed up for a membership service that bills you $15 a month.

If a few weeks Valentine’s Day will be upon us, and a good portion of the country will be doing something for their special someone.

Today we’ll look at two types of situations, one where the public thinks something is wrong and others where something is actually wrong.

Spike in prices: are they gouging?
Roses and chocolate covered strawberries are perishable; they cannot sit in a warehouse for months, or even a few days, and still be any good.  (last year we stopped someone from ordering a Valentine’s Day Chocolate Covered Strawberry gift box that he planned to put in the closet for a few weeks.. it would have been an ugly surprise)

From the growers perspective:

Everybody wants the same thing on the same day, plants (strawberry and rose) have to be planted and prepped so that on this one day of the year they have the most product available, that is not an easy thing to do. It’s extra work (and fertilizer) to make all those flowers and strawberries ripen at the same time. Cold weather can quickly ruin all those roses and create shortages (like we are expecting this year).

Those same strawberries and roses need to be harvested by hand, that means bringing in a lot of extra people, training them to harvest correctly, and then the labor for the actual peak days of harvest. All those extra people are more expensive than normal because all the other growers in the area also need extra staff.

Logistics: Trucks, trains and plains:
It’s the middle of winter, if you think about it: Where are flowers being grown this time of year? Certainly not New York, Vermont, Colorado or Utah, it is ski season after all, snow and flowers don’t mix. That means the roses have to brought in: trains are to slow, and trucks are only used for the final part of the trip from the airport to the refrigerated warehouses. That means tons of are being flown into the country & even if you fill a cargo plane with flowers: it really adds to the cost.

Strawberries are only grown in a few places this time of year, California, Florida, Mexico as well as a few other places that are far outside the country. There are no ‘special’ large long stem strawberry plants, these are the biggest strawberries that are available on the existing plants, but the extra size and different of methods of harvesting and packaging (to prevent bruising) all add to the price.  All it takes is one cold weather event (freezing) in any of these areas and a significant amount of product will be lost. January freezing happens in Florida or California every few years, ruining the product that would ripen into the fruit or blooms that become the fruit that would be used at Valentine’s Day.  The growers try to limit the damage from the cold weather through various methods: helicopters to circulate air over the fields work in some situations, in others they have to encase the plants in ice and hope for the best. I’ve been hearing about really cold weather in Miami, so the chances are that the Florida strawberry crop is not going to be that useful during the peak time of year.

Grower summary:
The prices are higher because everybody wants the exact same thing on the exact same day during a time of year that it’s risky to grow.  That peak effort has a lot of higher costs in all segments from forced ripening, picking, and delivery.

Florist and strawberry manufacturers, we’ll take these two separately.

Florists:  local florist are in a rough spot, they have generally smaller locations and there often is not enough room to properly handle the huge volume of flowers that have to be stored and prepped for delivery, they also don’t have the delivery staff needed for all those deliveries. This means they need to get extra storage space and a lot of extra staff for deliveries. Even the sites that ship from warehouses need extra space for the big day. That extra space and staff costs a lot of money.

Strawberries are even more perishable than flowers, they have to be dipped the same day they are shipped to preserve freshness. Volume for the peak day will be over 100 times higher than other days of the year. All that extra production means extra staff, and that staff needs days of training. Extra shifts are a given: regular employees will probably be working 18-20 hours a day for three days straight. That is a lot of expensive overtime.  We also have to get extra storage space for supplies (boxes, gel packs, insulated containers and the rest), perishables (fruit) and finished/boxed product.  For the fresh fruit and the finished product ready for the FedEx/UPS pickup, refrigerated trucks solve part of the problem, but they are not cheap. Plus there is a lot of hardware,  such as all the extra melters, dipping stations, tempering.. even tape guns that are needed for all those extra people.

That box of machine made chocolates you saw in the drug store was probably made several months ago, it’s not the same type of product as something perishable like chocolate covered strawberries.

Summary: At least some of the price rises you see in the gift industry are market and conditions driven, the costs are a lot higher but so is the volume.

But what about the other unethical companies in the gift industry?
Nothing has changed in the last year… and parts have gotten worse.

Companies that advertise chocolate covered strawberries but the product is not made with chocolate? They are still at it (read more and even more), unforgettably fake chocolate is not what they advertise.

Companies that are being sued for the easy saver scam? Visa and MasterCard or the California Attorney General have not shut them down  (read more), not being able to trust a a company to protect your credit card information is very basic and their customers say they violated that trust.

Companies advertising “fresh from the grower” who really truck their flowers around the US to regional warehouses? (They even say they are fresher than local florists but those several days on the road to their regional warehouses say differently (it’s the same group as the “Easy Saver Scam”)) plus they even use local florists to deliver some of their flowers.

Surprise “care” fees at checkout? Of course.. (same people as above)

Corporate discriminatory Religious policies? Yep they are still at it (read more)

Fake Free shipping? The FTC seems to be sleeping on this one. They are not supposed to raise prices and then claim free shipping.

In the gift industry it seems like the government is not really doing it’s job correctly, and the largest players in the gift industry seem to be running amok while the regulators sleep, which seems to be a pattern in the enforcement segment of government. We are too small to play games like they do, and frankly we’d rather spend the time making a better product (and web site) than pay a bunch of lawyers to separate you from your money.

While researching the ProFlowers class action lawsuit I did some research about what other companies the parent companies own. One of the online reports said a customer got signed up for Easy Saver while placing a ticketmaster order , and ticketmaster is partially owned by the same company. I have no information that all companies listed below are involved with Easy Saver, but to be safe you chould check your credit card statements for unknown charges.

UPDATE: I’ve noticed that a lot of the online information on this subject has been disappearing from the web, as an example the MSNBC video above is gone, as is the Wikipedia entries. I found find these entries: http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/09/28/Easy_Saver_My_Foot_Class_Says.htm and http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/shopping/Complaints-Filed-About-ProFlowers.html

Below is a list of companies that the parent companies have ownership in.

They have been sorted by percentage of ownership.
The data came from Liberty Media’s own web site.

As you can see: they own many companies that you may already be doing business with, be safe and check your credit card/bank statements.

Each of the company names listed above are the trademarks of the respective companies.

 I’d known about the lawsuits filed by FTD and the 2 class action suits against ProFlowers for it’s “direct from the growers” claims, when in fact they were really filling the orders with local florists. It’s common knowledge: anytime a company claims same day or Sunday/Monday delivery they are using a local florist to fill orders.

 They have set things up so customers unknowingly sign up for a third party service called Easy Saver which bills the customer $14.95 a month.

 This news report from KDKA (Channel 2 Pittsburg)  explains it well:
http://kdka.com/video/?id=57177@kdka.dayport.com

 And another report from NBC4 in Columbus Ohio http://www2.nbc4i.com/cmh/news/local/article/online_customer_upset_with_savings_program/16404/

 http://www.ripoffreport.com/Corrupt-Companies/Easy-Saver-EZSVER/easy-saver-ezsver-pro-flow-4b749.htm

 The above was created a year and a half ago, and I thought they had stopped the practice, but the following site shows they are still up to the same old tricks..

 http://www.flowercomplaint.com/proflowers_complaints.html

 While the majority of the complaints are about ProFlowers, (which is where the Secret Spoon Sweets and Cherry Moon Farms orders are also placed),  Shari’s Berries is also listed.  They are both part of  Provide Commerce which is part of the  Liberty Media group of companies (which also owns QVC, The Atlanta Braves….).

 My initial problem with these companies is that they advertise “chocolate covered strawberries” but don’t use chocolate, but with so many ProFlowers customers complaining about unknowingly signing up for a monthly subscription something has to be wrong.

 Please share this information with your friends, because no one should be paying for a subscription they didn’t know they signed up for.

The names ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, Secret Spoon Sweets, Cherry Moon Farms, Provide Commerce, Liberty Media, QVC and the Atlanta Braves are trademarks of their respective companies.