A New Leaf Florist

Non-​delivery of flowers for a Memorial Service
We ordered a floral arrangement, from A New Leaf, for our Dad’s Memorial Service, to be delivered to the church before noon on the day of the service. Cost with tax was $ 136.36. The Service was scheduled for 3pm on a Monday. The church is a large church in Charlottesville with permanent staff on site during business days and the weekends, especially Sundays. New Leaf promised that the delivery would take place before noon on the day of the service and said that they were familiar with the church and would deliver the morning of the service.
The flowers NEVER arrived. Luckily flowers from 2 other florists did arrive. In following up on why the flowers did not arrive the situation became very ugly. Kim, at New Leaf, claimed that indeed the flowers were delivered on Monday morning. We then followed through with the Church. Church staff preparing for the service said no delivery arrived from New Leaf. Then New Leaf claimed that the delivery was made on Sunday, the day before the service. Church staff said nope! By then I asked for full refund. That was not an option. I asked them to come ½ way, asking for 50% refund. NOPE. This felt like now I had to negotiate with a business for flowers that were never delivered for a Memorial Service, it was a sad time for our family and this was not very pleasant. Finally Kim said they could refund $ 58. We await the refund.
DO NOT ever use this florist and if you do get all their promises about delivery in writing and make sure that delivery is singed for. The two florists that did deliver beautiful bouquets, on time and without a hitch were Agape Florist and Don’s Florist, both in Charlottesville.

Yesterday I posted the message below about the problems I had with the New Leaf Florist in Charlottesville. I also
left them a phone message. Today they delivered a brand new arrangement to my daughter which looked substantially like what I ordered originally. I appreciate their responsiveness today, and their willingness to correct their error and their sloppy product. Today’s delivery looks much more like what was ordered — a nice and bright, cheery bunch of flowers.
I’m therefore changing my rating to 3, based on both of my experiences. If they’d delivered the second arrangement initially, I’d have given them a 4 or 5.
I ordered flowers to be delivered to my daughter yesterday. Received an email last night saying they’d been delivered. My daughter said they hadn’t been, so she went a number of places in the apartment building looking for them. I called and left a message, and did receive a call back this morning. The lady was very pleasant. They said their system automatically sends the email on the scheduled delivery date, even if the flowers are not delivered as scheduled, which makes absolutely no sense. You would think they would fix that.
I was also told that they were waiting on fresh daisies to be delivered for the arrangement. That seemed ok, but when the flowers were delivered they looked nothing like what had been ordered. It was supposed to be a deluxe vase of white and yellow daisies. Instead there were white daisies, sunflowers, lots of greens, and some cheap filler flowers. No where near as nice as what I ordered, certainly not for what I paid, and especially not since I upgraded. I won’t be using this company again. VERY disappointed in their product. I have photos both of what was delivered and what it was supposed to look like.

Although the guy in charge was nice and friendly, he was not very helpful in picking out flowers. If I had not gone in having already seen the website and picking out a few bouquets that I was interested in, I would have been absolutely clueless. He was very courteous though, even when I changed my flower pick-​up time ~3 times.
On Valentine’s Day, I received my flowers, and I was not impressed at all… It looked shoddily thrown together (i.e. flowers were in all sorts of different heights and there was no apparent pattern), and the flowers were NOT even fresh (some unopened buds and some of them were wilting or had already wilted). Definitely do not trust the online pictures, because you will be disappointed. In addition to having to spend about 20 minutes rearranging the flowers to make them look presentable, I realized the vase was also see-​through (the picture on their website was red). By the way, I ordered the deluxe Hugs and Kisses Bouquet which ended up to be $ 45.
I would come here if you are looking for something cheap and have the time to arrange the flowers yourself. It will be gamble to see if the flowers are actually fresh and blooming though, but there are enough of the «good» flowers to make it look decent. But if you want things to be absolutely perfect like I did on this special day, I would probably look elsewhere.

I placed an order two weeks ahead of time. It is now 3:40 in the afternoon and my delivery still has not been made. I have called numerous times and keep getting told that the delivery is in progress. Do yourself a favor and call Don’s Florist.