TheBouqs.com – Not Worth the Hype

TheBouqs.com – Experience as a Customer

When I was recently offered a free bouquet of flowers cut and shipped fresh from a volcano in South America in return for a blog post and social media promotion of my post, I thought it sounded like a great deal! I had never before heard of TheBouqs.com, but was immediately intrigued and excited to learn more. There were so many flowers to choose from that it was tough, but I settled on “Cherish” in the “original” size (12 blooms). These were White Ranunculus flowers, a simple but gorgeous white flower. The flowers showed up just a few days later, but I sadly missed FedEx while I was in the shower! Nooo! I wish that the signature-required option wasn’t set as the default option when ordering, I think I just skipped right over it. My flowers showed up a bit sad and limp the following day, but luckily perked up a bit once I put them in water. They were very pretty, but it was a really tiny little bouquet. I’m not sure I would regularly want to pay $40 for such a small bouquet when my local Whole Foods sells the same flowers for $7. They were still pretty though, and hey, they were free! Here’s a picture I took a few hours after my flowers arrived, once they perked up:

I placed another order shortly after receiving my own for my mother-in-law, but this time chose a California bouquet that cost $50. She sadly missed a Saturday delivery and didn’t get hers until Monday. They were unfortunately completely dead since they aren’t shipped with any water or cold packs. I have a feeling they were already on their way out if they died so quickly, and really wondered why they weren’t shipped with something to protect against the heat. When I inquired with TheBouqs about why they weren’t shipped with cold packs or water during a heat wave in California, they replied that they only use cold packs “during the warm summer months”, um, doesn’t 90+ degrees qualify as warm?! I requested a refund and would have been happy with at least a partial refund, but all they offered was $10 off my next order. No thanks, I don’t need any more dead flowers!

TheBouqs.com – Experience as a Blogger

Unfortunately, the poor customer service that I experienced with my mother-in-law’s flowers also carried over into their dealings with bloggers. As mentioned previously, I had agreed to do a review for them in exchange for 2 things, the free bouquet AND social media promotion that they promised. They offered to post my link to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with a potential of “1.5 million” views. Now, my initial blog post was before I had ordered for my mother-in-law so I only had my own flowers to write about, which was a mostly positive experience. I did a nice review for them detailing all of the benefits and what I liked about the experience. However, when I inquired as to whether my link was still going to be promoted, I was told that they weren’t required to do so, that they choose what they want to promote and that it would make no sense to promote a blog with affiliate links. They were the ones who worked so hard to convince me to join their affiliate program in the first place as part of the blog review program!

Well, they then went on to tell me I’m not a good fit for their affiliate program and that they have “so much demand,” so they were terminating me from it. Eh, whatever, I didn’t really want to promote dead flowers at this point anyway, but how incredibly rude! I work with a ton of other affiliate programs and have done many sponsored posts where promotion of my post isn’t even part of the deal, yet the brands still go above and beyond to forge a good working relationship, and I do the same in return. I think when something is promised up front, it really needs to be carried out, and if there’s a good reason it can’t be, that needs to be explained so the blogger can perhaps make necessary changes to their post. TheBouqs needs to make some serious changes to their blogger outreach, we bloggers all talk and we talk a lot!