A frustrated small business owner looked to Reddit for advice after an entitled customer had her family “bombard” her flower shop with one-star reviews over roses.
“I wasn’t sure if I should post this but Google algorithm and flagging support hasn’t helped in this situation,” u/Otherwise_Tadpole897 wrote last week before explaining the issue that had been plaguing her.
It all started, she said, when an order was placed through her shop’s website one evening requesting an early pickup for their Red Rose Wrap, a $300 arrangement consisting of 50 60cm red roses. She had the order ready to go first thing in the morning, placing it in a “temporary container and in a tote bag for safe travel.”
“The first thing [the customer] says to me when she comes in to the doors ‘this isn’t what I ordered, what kind of discount can you give me?’” the owner recounted, calling it a “red flag” she should have picked up on but didn’t.
Apparently, the entitled customer felt that the roses she was given were different from what she saw in the photos on the website. The owner suggested the difference might be attributable to the fact that the flowers were prepped for transport, or maybe she thought the arrangement would be larger because the owner herself, who is 4’11″, was holding them in the picture.
“I am a people pleaser and at this point I just want her to be happy,” she wrote. “I tell her the best I can do is 20%. She agrees and takes the arrangement.”
Negative review for roses
Feeling as if the situation had been resolved, the owner was shocked to see the customer leave a one-star review on her Google listing the following day.
She went on to leave a response of her own:
“Hi Luba, We appreciate any customer feedback be it positive or negative. However, what you forgot to mention is that you agreed to the discount before you even left the store with the flowers. In similar instances we have had customers come in and if they were disappointed with the flowers they request a full refund in lieu of taking the product. I respect this because even though we cannot hit the mark 100% I value customer opinion.
You picked up the arrangement at 10:15 am, if you stand by your remark of getting something better at Costco, you could have gotten a full refund and done just that. How someone who accepts the product upon seeing it and then expecting a full refund just because they complain afterwards is baffling.
The wrapping used is exactly the same as in the photo because it came from the same batch using 50 red 60cm roses (as it states on the online description)
…And to clarify, the photo you posted is the arrangement still in the tote bag used for safe delivery. At least take a photo of the arrangement when someone is holding it for size/style reference. In light of this, I will add a photo of how the arrangement looks like in a tote bag before taking it out.”
Review bombing the flower shop
After the shop owner responded, the customer deleted her review entirely — but then proceeded to enlist three of her family members to leave their own one-star ratings (sans reviews). The customer herself ultimately left a new rating without any review, as well.
“She did text me saying that she had no other choice because this was her only option,” the shop owner told reddit. “She also proceeds to tell me that the photo she posted was the only one they took because her mom was so distraught on how bad they looked. I have saved screen shots of her with the arrangement posting all over her Facebook… also been deleted since this.”
The customer isn’t always right
Review sites like Yelp or Google have always been a useful way for customers to recommend business to others — or to warn them away. They’ve also frequently been a way for people to harass businesses or organize online review bombing campaigns against them, as there is no method of verifying whether someone is actually a customer or if they are being honest about their experience.
In this particular scenario, redditors felt that the customer’s behavior displayed a sense of entitlement that has become too common in the age of social media.
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