Pocket Change - Shopping Blog

There are 3 parts to any good Valentine’s day. First you must have the gift. The gift must be something romantic and thoughtful. Second you must have the dinner reservations. You have to shoot for a place that is just out of your price range (break the bank on this, trust me). Most importantly you must have the flowers. Now, I have never understood the appeal behind cut flowers. Who decided it was a good idea to use a slowly dying plant as a symbol of love? Regardless, without nice looking and well arranged flowers there is very little chance of making the day a success. This is a well known fact, and it is one of the reasons that florists and online flower retailers put so much money into advertising in the weeks leading up to the 14th.

The company that seems to have the most advertising out there is Proflowers.com. After hearing their ad on the radio for the 15,000th time I decided I should give them a shot (because you should always trust the person who yells the loudest, right?). They also had some of the best prices out there (beating 1-800 Flowers.com by about $10 on average).

It turns out that there is a reason for the cheap price. The flowers arrived a day later than they were scheduled (which is a big problem on Valentine’s Day), and came FedEx. There was no arrangement to the flowers, and they came with 10 step instructions on how to arrange them yourself. While this does allow them to offer slightly better prices it makes for a very poor presentation as a gift. They were also left on her doorstep for 5 hours, which isn’t a huge problem in sunny California but can be very bad in places like Philadelphia (biased video, but not totally inaccurate).

I wouldn’t say to never use proflowers.com. If you are looking for some flowers in your house, and you have a knack for floral arrangement then there is a chance you will save some money and be happy with what you get. However, if you are giving flowers as a gift you may want to try another option. 1800 flowers does do hand delivery, and the extra money you will spend is well worth the quality you will receive. Below are pictures of the product my girlfriend received, and the process of putting it all together:

Kris

This is what I was expecting.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Here is a box.

After 30 minutes of cutting, soaking, plucking, and such… the mess.

The Final Product: Not awful, but not exactly a $50 arrangement.