An online flower company is under fire for delivering dead flowers to people's doors.
That's what many customers say they're getting from Bloomex — an online shop selling flowers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Last month, its Australian arm was fined $1 million by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for publishing misleading ratings and promoting false discounts.
It also featured on Fair Go in 2022 after using a local florist to deliver a single rose, when the customer had paid Bloomex for a bouquet and at nearly twice the price.
Sometimes Bloomex calls up a local florist to fulfil an order, but since 2023, Bloomex has started doing its own arrangements from a facility in Onehunga, Auckland.
But that's not where its customers think they're getting their flowers from, telling Fair Go the Bloomex website led them to believe they were buying from a local florist.
For example, when they searched online for a florist in a certain New Zealand town, Bloomex was one of the first options that showed up. Then when they entered the Bloomex website, it talks about being a "local florist", as pictured below.
When customers enter the Bloomex website, it talks about being a "local florist". (Source: Fair Go)
In reality, many of the orders Fair Go investigated were packaged at Bloomex's Auckland facility and then shipped to customers around the country. This has led to delivery issues, where flowers have ended up stuck in transit and are dead on arrival.
Annie Wright's family spent $135 on two dozen roses for her birthday.
She said she "threw some out that were just too rotten to deal with and the rest were dead and dying, like comatose".
Wright also told Fair Go she only received 16 roses when there was supposed to be 24.
"People like my mother, for example, would be too embarrassed to say anything about the flowers if I sent them. She might feel, 'oh, I won't say anything' so people will lose money."
Fair Go has heard similar stories from people up and down the country. Chris ordered 100 Alstroemerias for his mum in Nelson, who'd just been given the news she had terminal cancer.
The flowers spent four days in transit and when they arrived "not only were they nothing like what they looked like on the website, they were dry and halfway to death", Chris said.
The customers that Fair Go spoke to said they did eventually get a refund, or a partial one, but are frustrated they had to work for more than the offers they received from Bloomex.
These offers included replacing the flowers for free, a store credit, or a refund of 50% of the product price.
In each of the cases, Bloomex used Aramex to deliver its flowers, which are put into a typical parcel van. Aramex NZ said that Bloomex is aware that it doesn't offer a refrigerated service and that flowers are not refrigerated during transport.
"Perishable items are accepted for transport within our network. They are at the sender's own risk. This information is clearly outlined in our terms and conditions. Bloomex has not provided care instructions to Aramex NZ for preserving flowers during transit."
Florists that Fair Go spoke with said, in those conditions, time is everything.
"Flowers are a massively perishable product, like almost nothing else. So the time from us picking them out of the ground to getting them to the end consumer, that needs to be as short as possible," Christy Ralphs said.
She runs the flower farm Nourish Gardens, growing and selling her own flowers. She said most blooms can only survive so long without being chilled.
"I think overnight is the maximum and you're pushing it even then because there's no control of them being put in a hot warehouse or a hot courier van and as soon as flowers get over a certain temperature, they're going to perish pretty quickly. They might arrive looking OK, but a day later collapse."
A spokesperson for Bloomex said the company doesn't market itself as a local florist but rather "provides delivery to local destinations".
After Fair Go contacted Bloomex, it deleted references on its website to being a 'local florist'.
Fair Go asked what its product ratings were based upon, and the ratings were removed from its website. Earlier, the products had ratings of 4/5 or 5/5 stars. Whereas on the review website Trustpilot, Bloomex.co.nz has a 1.5 star rating (at the time of writing), which is slightly higher on Google at 2.3 stars.
Bloomex said it has an improvement plan for 2024 which includes switching to NZ Post for future deliveries. They use vehicles that can keep flowers fresh on the road. It's also opening a second facility in the South Island to reduce the need for overnight couriers.
The Commerce Commission said it's had 30 inquiries about Bloomex since 2020 and told Fair Go it wrote to Bloomex about some of them last year. It's not investigating Bloomex, but said it will continue to monitor any complaints, especially in light of the recent judgment in Australia.
If anyone feels they have been misled by Bloomex they can get in touch with the Commerce Commission through its website.
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