Florist beware! Scams occuring in the industry

The SAF recently reported on a number of scams affecting florists in the U.S. Read on to see what orders might be just a just a little too good to be true.

Here is a list of fraudulent orders reported by the SAF:

• Dave Daniels of Dave's Flowers and Gifts in Newburg, Ore., received an e-mail order for a large number of roses from a man posing as a reverend. At first, Daniels thought, "Wow, quick money." But when the e-mailer tried to rush the transaction and refused to discuss order details, Daniels got suspicious and called the credit card company to confirm the owner's information. None of it matched.

"I then called the fraud division at the bank and they took the information I had and said they would proceed from there," Daniels says. "I slept very well the next night. I'm a small shop and [that loss] would have devastated my whole operation."

• Last year Vincent Petrovsky, AAF, AIFD, of Heaven & Earth Floral Inc. in West Palm Beach, Fla., received several orders for a $250 fruit basket, $250 flower arrangement and a large plush bear to be delivered to Palm Beach.

"Luckily for me, the credit card was never approved," Petrovsky says. "One can never be too careful and the old adage applies, if it [sounds] too good to be true, it probably is."

• A credit card company recently told Terry Mason of The Master's Flowers in Broken Arrow, Okla., he was liable for a $150 fraudulent order his shop filled last spring. Mason received the wire service order in April from a "customer" in San Francisco. When the order was processed, a salesperson failed to heed a system warning indicating the zip code and address didn't match. After the credit company notified Mason of the fraud, he e-mailed the order recipient, who told him the sender was in South Africa. A week later, however, the shop received another order from the sender. This time Mason knew better. "I contacted our local police department to report the card," he says.

• Kathy Weil at MyFlorist in McLean, Va., says after reading last week's scam story in Wednesday's E-Brief, she received a similar phone call that very afternoon.

"The caller said he was a reverend and wanted to order 1,200 roses for pick up and would e-mail the credit card information to our shop," Weil explains. "As soon as I heard what was going on with this order, I printed out the [ SAF's E-Brief article] and circulated it to the staff. When the email came through we informed this person we were not interested in doing their order and to find another shop. Other shops need to be very aware that this scam is continuing."

Have you received any fraudulent orders? Send us an e-mail with your own story so we can help inform Canadian florists about scams ordering north of the border.

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