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.

Once you rule out the Nigerian fraudsters, free product requests, and those who want us to sell our packaging separately … what type cases does the helpdesk desk get most?

Well there are two definitions of “most” : the most cases and the most time.

As far as ‘the most cases’ it would be address changes or date changes. A lot of people ‘catch’ address errors after they place an order or find out later that the recipient will not be home on that day. We’d much rather deal with these types of changes before the order hits the factory floor than deal with the messy aftermath if the changes are not made in time.

Occasionally we need to reship or refund and those type cases are handled during the business week, it’s rare but happens most often when we are overwhelmed with a major holiday: people who have been working for 20 hours straight make packing mistakes and we refund or re-ship as warranted.

Now the other side of the coin are the functionally illiterate (those special few that don’t understand basic of business hours, the days of the week, or calendars)

Here is an example:

A person places an order after business hours on a Wednesday night and selects the first available delivery date which is a Friday. Based on the delivery date we make the product when we reopen the next day (Thursday) and give it to FedEx/UPS that night, keep in mind that the order was placed after business hours on Wednesday night.

The product is made and shipped as scheduled and delivered on the date selected during checkout. As shown below:

Delivered on time and on schedule

FedEx picks the package up on Thursday and it is delivered, as requested, on Friday.

Being functionally illiterate, the person who placed the order and selected the delivery date said it was not delivered overnight, he ignored the delivery date on the screen, the confirmation screen, his order confirmation email, and shipped email. The package was delivered on the date he requested.

Nothing in the world is going to get a package delivered before the delivery date selected because, for freshness reasons, we don’t start making it until the day we give it to FedEx/UPS. Perishable products have to be shipped with overnight service because if we shipped them with ‘ground’ nationwide it would take several days to arrive and be a melted/rotten mess. For that reason every perishable shipment, no matter how far in advance it is ordered are made and sent so that they should arrive the day after we give it to FedEx/UPS. It is not that complicated.

Some people don’t understand this, but after a while you realize that there are some people who leave ice cream in a car’s trunk for a few hours and then blame the grocery store. Those helpdesk cases are the ones that consume the most time, some people read and learn but a select few are unable to understand the basics, they are the ones who eventually reverse the gift cards when sending packages to both their wife and girlfriends, we let Darwin thin them out, but if they are exceedingly rude we do block them from the site as it’s not fair to the staff or other customers to have our people deal with them when they could be doing something productive.

Helpdesk cases are also handled on a business day basis, like all businesses we have hours that we are opened and closed. It’s just like when you leave a voicemail at a company that is closed for the day: you would not expect an answer until the business reopens on the next business day. Since FedEx/UPS do not have Sunday pickups or deliveries our business days are Monday through Friday: the actual days we can make and ship things for next day delivery. Occasionally our staff will answer some after hours or weekend helpdesk cases from home, it’s entirely up to them, it’s not required, and they do it on their own time.

For some request special authorizations are needed: clearance from the factory floor or refund/reship authorizations have to be approved/processed and those only happen during the business week. Since the banks and carriers are closed on the weekends this actually does not slow anything down. The functionally illiterate don’t understand this and expect that we are going to bring in everybody (and open the banks/FedEx/UPS) just for them, it’s just not the way the world works. Unreasonable expectations are one of the hallmarks of someone who just does not respect other people’s time or normal business operations. These are the people that every sane business would run away from, you see them on the internet trashing companies, exaggerating their order value and basically ignoring the real world. Darwin normally takes care of them. Out of the thousands of customers we deal with each year only a few functional illiterates actually place orders, most end up going with the “easy saver“ companies  which is just fine with us.

Counterfeit products, false advertizing claims and credit card scams are things the public hears about every day, but as we was researching the many online complaints about Edible Arrangements we found something more disturbing:

Religious Intolerance.

Edible Arrangements is a franchise system, similar to many restaurant chains, the stores are owned by individual operators and the overall concept/franchisor is owned by someone else.

A few months ago 170 franchises filed a lawsuit against Edible Arrangements International, Inc, some of the things listed in the lawsuit are the type things you’d expect,

• changes in mandating suppliers,
• forced software purchases (which have to be made from a company the CEO controls),
• forced customer list sharing (privacy concerns with that one),
• changes in the payment percentage to the individual stores for internet orders (they lost 80% of the payment),
•  changes in mandatory days the stores are open…

All valid and fairly normal grievances.  When I looked into the last change I found some things that disturbed me.

Edible Arrangements International (the parent company or franchisor who also runs DippedFruit.Com) is run by Tariq Farid, a  U.S. citizen  who was born in Pakistan.   Our biggest concern is best described by the following quote from a franchisee:

 “They have now released new hours mandating we have to be open on Sundays, however they allow” … “ Muslim owned stores to be closed Friday. Christian owned stores are told they have to be open on Sunday…NO EXCEPTIONS will be made. This is Religious Discrimination!”

We have a problem with this, this is America, the same rules need to apply to everybody. If one religious group must have their stores open on their holy day then the same should apply to other religious groups as well. When a company discriminates against store owners of a particular faith then something is wrong with the mindset of the discriminators.

For many Christians Sunday is not a “mandatory” day of rest, there are some Christians who observe on Saturday and I seem to remember that there was even a religious group who observed on Wednesday. Some Christians can go to services on Saturday night and have it “count” as Sunday…  but that is not the point, having one set of rules for people of one faith and a different set of rules for people not of that faith is un-American, divisive and only serves to create ill will.

To us the day of the week does not matter, if you are showing favoritism towards one group by allowing them to close on their day of observance then the same rules need to apply to people of all faiths.

Personally we don’t care that Mr Farid is Muslim, that’s not the point: the point is that he is setting rules retroactively, rules that discriminate against people of other religious faiths.

Online sources:
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/edible-arrangements-franchise-c335037.html
http://www.franchisepublicity.com/edible-arrangements-franchisor-responds-to-franchise-lawsuit/

Here is an example of a right and wrong address.

Wrong:

Grandma Mary
134 Peachtree
Coral Gables, TX 60609
305-999-9999

Right:

Mary Smith
Shady Rest Home
1234 SE Peachtree Rd
Room 512
Coral Gables, FL 33146
305-555-1212

How each wrong entry affects the delivery.

1) Since Grandma Mary lives in a retirement community there are probably more than one “Mary” there.

2) Missing company/school/retirement home names effect the shipments in two differnt ways

a. The drivers may know the business or school so if you transpose a number in the address it could still get to the right location.

b. When you leave off the business name you put the package on the residential delivery schedule, which may mean the driver will attempt to deliver the package after the business closed

3) The street number is very important, a wrong number can put a package miles from the correct destination and the unintended recipient will really enjoy your gift.

a. We have had actual shipments where the address we were given was about 3 miles offshore in Miami. (we caught it so the address got changed before it left the building)

b. We’ve had a shipment where the son sent the package to “12 Thunder Way”, but the mother lived at “21 Thunder Way”, the people at “12 Thunder Way” ate the shipment.

4) The street name needs to have the correct street, avenue, road, lane, or court designation. In a lot of cities there are multiple roads with the same name with only the St., Ave. Rd… to separate them. It lets the drivers know which of many roads with the same name to deliver the package to.

a. In Atlanta there are several roads named Roswell, and dozens named Peachtree, this same problem happens all over the country.

5) Missing Apartment, Suite, room numbers

a. A missing apartment number can ruin a shipment if there is no directory or apartment manager to accept the package, and many apartment managers no longer accept packages for residents.

b. We’ve had customers send packages to 100 story buildings without a company name and no suite number, it didn’t go well.

6) The City, State and Zip code need to match, Coral Gables is not in Texas and “60609” is for Chicago.

a. Most of the time UPS and FedEx will not let a package ship when the zip code is not in the correct state, but if the zip code is in the wrong section of a state it may take several days to correct the problem.

b. We’ve had customers put in their (up-state New York) zip code when the package was going to New York City, the packages are sent to the sorting facilities based on the zip code given, so once a misaddressed package is found the planes are gone and delivery is pushed to the next day.

7) When all else fails UPS & FedEx will call the phone number you give us for the delivery address, a fake phone number guarantees that the driver will not be able to fix any address problems while on his route. It should be the actual phone number of the person or business the package is being shipped to.

Addressing a letter or package correctly is something we all learned in grade school, and while a misaddress Christmas card will eventually get there a perishable package (like chocolate covered strawberries) can be ruined as the result of the delay. The delivery address is always your responsibility and taking the extra time to double check it is always a best practice. (plus then you are not telling others that it was our fault that the package was not delivered)

Call centers are used to take orders and for customer service in many large companies. Today I saw the following: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100530/pl_nm/us_usa_outsourcing  regarding call centers and customers being transferred outside the US. Basically the proposed law would require two new things:
1) that you get notified when your phone call  is transferred to a call center outside the USA and
2) that the company transferring the call outside the US to pay a fee.

While big business and special interest groups will fight this, we support this idea.

Companies using non-US based call centers affect us all, not just in jobs and taxes shipped overseas but in data security. Do you really want to give your credit card number, billing address and card security code to someone who makes a few dollars a day in a foreign call center?

A well designed web site (one that does not keep the credit card and security numbers) is actually more secure than anytime a person is involved. An outsourced call center, as used by many major corporations, is a huge security risk, as you never know who you are talking to, what their intentions are or even what country they are located in. You can’t even always tell by the accent as some companies are training their people to speak without a discernable accent and to identify themselves with American sounding names.

Some people may be saying “wait a minute the credit card information is being sent over the internet isn’t that a security problem”?  The truth of the matter is that every credit card transaction, whether it’s placed online, over the phone or in a department store, is transmitted over the internet at one time or another and in some cases multiple times, as the internet is used for authentication and the collection between the merchant, and the multiple  banks involved.   The biggest risk to internet security is the setup on the customers personal computer.

Things you can do to improve your personal online security:
1) when entering credit card information make sure the URL begins with “https” this is the secure “encrypted” connection that keeps your card information from being intercepted online.
2) Beware of “toolbars”, small tools that install functions on your browser as they bypass all normal security and can intercept and transmit your credit card information and other entries without your permission at any time: even when the URL is “https”. The toolbar installed may have nothing to do with shopping, anytime you install one you run the risk that it will self install a new version which can then transmit your credit card, email addresses, passwords, and address information without your consent. Toolbars are always a very bad idea.
3) Always keep your security software up to date and running.
4) A group of companies in the gift/flowers/strawberry industries have used their checkout process to sign customers up for a third party “savings” program, some customers have said they were signed up for those programs without their consent. While the big check off box may say something like “xxx discount program” the small print and end result is that the customers get signed up for a program that charges them every month for what seems to be little reward. The site that the customer places the order on actually passes the customers credit card information to the third party site.
How we handle things differently
1) We don’t employee any outside call centers (either inside or outside the US)
2) We don’t pass your credit card number to anyone except the bank
3) We don’t keep a copy of your credit card number, when you place your order we send it to the bank and it is not saved.

according to the research the UPromise toolbar can send your credit card information over the Internet, to third parties, without any encryption at all.

That’s a huge violation of the customers privacy  and really bad for the safety of your credit card information.

below is the source article for this
http://www.benedelman.org/news/012110-1.html

Some of the same fake chocolate strawberry companies that have had problems (class action lawsuits) in the past are involved with this mess.  For security purposes you might want to rethink any toolbar that you have installed as they can access any data on your system without restrictions.

1)      Get the delivery address right: you’d be surprised how many people don’t take the simple step of double checking what they entered.

1. Example 1: A package was addressed to an address in Miami that would have been about 5 miles offshore (we caught this one before it happened and corrected it)
2. Example 2: Another problem shipment was the result of some sending the package to “21 Thunder Way” rather than “12 Thunder Way”.  (result= someone else ate her package)
3. Zip codes, a bad zip code will send the package to the wrong part of the state and may result in a several day delay in delivery (result=ruined package).
4. The delivery address is your responsibility, if you get it wrong there is not a lot we can do about it.

2)      Making sure someone is going to be home

1. We had one customer send a package to his mother in Arizona, she was out of town for three days.

3)      Apartments: FedEx/UPS will not always leave a package unattended,

1.  A package left at the door of an apartment may ‘disappear’.
2.  Shipping to a business address or making sure someone will be home is much better.

4)       Shipping at the last possible moment for Christmas (bad idea).

1. Everybody else has the same idea.. and each year FedEx/UPS get more packages then they can handle in a single day (one year FedEx got 12 million packages in one day when they could only handle 9 million)

 Best practices:

1)      Double check your delivery address,

1. Does it have all the needed bits, suite number, business name, correct name
2. “Grandma” is not the correct way to address a package.
3. An incorrect or incomplete delivery address is the leading cause of delivery problems.

2)      Will someone actually be home or are they off on vacation?

3)      When someone is not going to be home: The delivery address needs to be secure  .

1. FedEx/UPS will not leave a package that has a high chance of being stolen.

4)      Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, It’s best when you don’t wait till the last minute to ship. Each of these Holidays are peak times for FedEx/UPS, and the busier things get the more likely things are to go wrong.

1. Christmas: anytime in the two weeks before Christmas works, just avoid the last few shipping days before Christmas. People are much more likely to be home and you’ve avoided the Christmas overload that the carriers experience every year.
2. Mother’s Day: avoid scheduling a delivery for the Friday before Mother’s Day. Mom will just be glad you remembered.
3. Valentine’s Day: You’ll get more ‘points’ for early delivery, everybody in the US is shooting for delivery on Valentine’s, this leads to an overload at the carriers. Having your package delivered a few days earlier will let them be the center of attention.