[The Mountaineer]

Do NOT under any circumstances use Flower Delivery Express, which operates online.

I did, to my chagrin. I ordered flowers and specified that they were to arrive on the day I knew she would be getting to The Villages after 2 days of driving along, to try to perk her up.

1. The flowers did NOT arrive on the promised date.

2. The flowers never got beyong the bud stage and died.

3. When I complained about the non-delivery, they came a day late.

4. I was promised, in writing, a $51.24 rebate.

5. When I went online to order flowers for my girlfriend's return to Ohio, I picked out flowers that were $24.99 for EVERYONE. But when I got to the end of the ordering process, I saw that my $51.24 rebate applied to the "original" price of $64.99 that no one paid, so I would lose $40 of my rebate.

6. These guys tack on exorbitant charges. $3.99 for a card, which every florist hands out free, $9.99 for delivery, $4.99 for a vase, $7.80 sales fee (doesn't say sales tax, but sure pretends to be). This totaled $26.70, more than the promised $24.99 price.

7. I Googled Flower Delivery Express, an outfit out of Michigan, and found out that one of the lawyers who got slamdunked by this outfit has his law firm setting up a class-action lawsuit against Flower Delivery Express, whose CEO has another company under the name of Wesley Berry Flowers.

8. There are at least two web sites devoted to complaints about Flower Delivery Express, one called Flower Delivery Express Scams. At least 900 people have filed complaints on one web site about FDE.

9. The Better Business Bureau has received 5,012 complaints about Flower Delivery Express.

10. You've been warned. If you use these guys after reading this, you have only yourself to blame. And you're ignoring 6,000 to 7,000 complaints about Flower Delivery Express that I've seen. I'm sure there are more.

11. As for me, I'll walk into a florist shop and see what I'm getting for me money. And if my girlfriend isn't in the same town as me at the time, I'll find a reputable LOCAL florist to send her flowers.

12. This outfit, in all the names Wesley Berry is using for his various companies, has to be stopped. I filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General's Office and I notified Barclay's that I will not pay the original $74.35 charge for atrocious service, all-but-dead flowers, and the shell game Berry's firm tried to pull on me over the "rebate."

13. This guy is putting P.T. Barnum's slogan to the real test: There's a sucker born every minute. Don't be the 10,000th sucker for Flower Delivery Express.

14. Being a newspaper editor for 43 years (retired in 1996), I have kept written proof of everything I am posting here. Don't mess with senior citizens, particularly those from The Villages. My girlfriend bought a home here in March after our 3-month stay and we'll be coming down every winter.