Thought I'd share my horrible experience with the Panda Flowers located at 1220 Centre Street NE.
Here's the story:
I called Panda Flowers Feb 7, 2014 and ordered a Valentines Day Bouquet for my wife.
This is what I ordered:
Total cost for this is $61.95 + $12.00 delivery + gst - total comes to $77.65.
Anyway, I called on Feb 7th and ordered that bouquet for her specifying delivery to her office downtown on Valentines day - Friday Feb. 14 of course. I gave the lady (Korean lady with light accent but decent comprehension) the delivery info, what I wanted, phone numbers, what to state on the card and finally, my credit card number to pay for the flowers. That should've been it, she said they would get to her for the specified day before noon.
This was during lunch hour.
Later on at 2:21pm on Feb 7th, the Korean lady from Panda flowers called me and said my credit card didn't go through. We spoke and I assured her there are more than sufficient funds on that card, in fact I used it in the morning. She stated that perhaps I had given her the wrong number and asked me to verify the number. I was on the way to a meeting a couldn't give out my cc number in the open, so I asked her if I could call her back and confirm, she said that was fine. 2:29pm she calls back and lets me know SHE must've entered in the wrong number, but now the purchase had went through, no need to provide her with the number again. I said ok thanks.
Thursday Feb 13th, I called the shop to verify everything was ok. Spoke with the same Korean lady, she said all good to go for Valentines Day and we confirmed again delivery by noon at the address it is to go to. (The reason I called and kept confirming was because I was concerned about the level of comprehension and wanted to make sure things would go smoothly.)
Friday Feb 14th strolls by. 9am, 10am, 11am...nothing. I've ordered flowers from Panda Flowers along with various other florists before and have not had any issues whatsoever prior to this. My wife usually calls me around 10am, maybe 11am all happy and stuff thanking me for the flowers, we talk dirty and plan V-day. Today however....nothing. I didn't hear anything from her, and I even called her just to see how her day was going.
Noon strolls by and nothing from my wife at all, so I decide to call the Panda Flowers location on Centre Street to so what's going on.
Korean lady answers again, I ask her what's going on as she stated the flowers would be delivered by noon. She understandably said they're really busy. We again verified the address and she asked when my wife would be leaving work, I said by 4pm. The Korean lady re-assured me and said don't worry...she'll have them by the time she leaves work. I'm started to get nervous now....
3pm comes along and still nothing....so I'm pondering on what to do now, maybe go out and grab flowers and hand deliver them? While pondering about this, I decide to check my bank and credit account, I do this regularly to ensure there aren't any weird ass charges, but have been busy throughout the week and had not gotten to it earlier. Anyway, so I log into my bank, take a look and scroll through....
WTF do I see....this:
a $177.65 dollar charge from Panda Flowers on 1220 Centre Street NE. Now I'm like seriously...wtf. No flowers yet for my wife and I'm charged literally a $100.00 more than what I was supposed to be charged. I now decide to head there in person to see wtf.
I get there at 3:35pm. Walk in, there's a couple of Korean lady's working - younger one behind the counter chopping and wrapping flowers and an older one.
The younger one addresses me with broken English and asks what she can get for me. I tell her that I ordered flowers on Feb 7th, they were supposed to be delivered for noon, then before 4pm today - Valentines day, it is now 3:40pm and nothing. I also bring up with her that they over charged me by $100. Meanwhile there are customers in the store that hear/see this and they start to agree with me.
The younger one has a hard time believing this so I log into my bank via the app on my phone and show her. She says it's some sort of mistake, of course I say it sure is. She calls the older lady, which happens to be the one I've been speaking too the past several times.
The older one tells me the flowers on the van for delivery and there's nothing she can do to check with the driver on the status - which is hard to believe since everyone has cell phones now. We also discuss the over charge and of course she doubts me as well, so I show her the app. She then says her debit/credit machine is not working properly and tries to offer me a store credit, to which I tell her to pound sand in a nice way though. She insists on store credit and I insist cash or credit refund, she hesitantly agrees to cash...as her machine is not working is what she tells me.
At the same time, she says she'll get me the flowers for my wife and I can deliver them to her myself. Since I'm in a bind and I'd like to enjoy V-day, I agree. One of the customers that sees this and comments to the older Korean lady and myself - "brother, I hope your valentines day gets better, this is horrible." He turns to the older Korean lady and says "for all this trouble, his flowers should be free". The Korean lady chuckles. I knew right there this would be a costly lesson learned.
She then grabs a dozen crappy wilted red roses from some bucket up front near the counter and starts getting them ready for me, at the same time grabbing me the $100 she owes me.
I take the $100 and tell her the flowers look like crap, she pushes them to me and basically tells me take them and leave. I do however also bring up the fact that I paid $77.65 for flowers with a vase and that it also includes delivery. She refuses to re-wrap the flowers and give me a vase. She also refuses to give me the refund for delivery as well. We continue to discuss this and as we talk, I can see I am not getting anything back besides the $100, realistically...all I really wanted was the $100 and the cost of delivery and vase refunded. By my calculations, I would say for valentines day a dozen roses with no vase, wrapped in paper should roughly be $35-40 bucks. I paid $77.65 for mine, and I had to hand deliver this too.
Anyway I ended up walking out with a dozen half ass wilted paper wrapped flowers, but at least I got my $100 back.
I did also call the 1.877.776.7220 number, which happens to be the head office. I spoke with a lady there and explained this long ass story, she obviously sided with me about the situation. She also apologized about 20x times to me, which I must admit was better than the folks at the 1220 Centre Street location. The lady at the head office also took down my info and said she would issue me a corporate cheque for the additional $77.65, but we'll see if the cheque actually arrives - hopefully....
Long story short, the Panda Flowers on 1220 Centre Street NE is a really sketchy, horrible and unethical location with terrible customer service - stay clear of that location!!!
Sorry for long read.