ROOTS FLORAL SHOP

The services began at 10 am with a viewing, and the funeral was at 11. When the flowers hadn't arrived by 10:20 (the three sprays that we ordered from other florists on behalf of distant cousins got there by 9), I called the shop and spoke to the owner. She said that they had screwed up, that the flowers were still sitting there in the shop, and that they would deliver them immediately. I told her that we would be shutting the doors for the service at 11, and she promised to get them there by then. The Roots shop is about a 10 minute drive from the church. We finally shut the doors for the service at 11:05, but the flowers never made it. When we came out of the services at 12 there was a small vase of flowers on a table outside the chapel. It was not a funeral spray, and it had only about $30 of daisies and other non-funeral flowers in it. All of the flowers in the vase were bright yellow and it looked like a child had arranged it. It did, however, have a large card proclaiming that our family had ordered it. After the burial service, I tried calling the shop about 20 times, only to find out that they had closed early for the weekend. When the owner finally called back, she told me that the arrangement that they finally delivered to us was actually someone else's. We got their $30 bouquet and they got our $170 spray. She also acknowledged that the arrangement that we got was the worst arrangement she had ever seen come out of her shop. The owner apologized several times, but couldn't explain why they missed the delivery time entirely, why they couldn't get the flowers to the services on time after I called her the first time that morning, or why (when they finally did get delivered) her delivery person couldn't figure out the difference between a cheap vase of flowers and a large funeral spray. Funerals are one time events. My wife will always remember her mother's funeral, but when I ordered the flowers I never intended that one of those memories would be that Roots would screw up and that she would be the only family member who didn't have a floral arrangement next to her mother's coffin. Roots had one chance to do it right and they blew it.