Over the past week, 1-800-FLOWERS.com has shelled out some big bucks to show up across the Yahoo! and MSN homepages in an attempt to sell their Valentine’s Day flower arrangements. I say this as modestly as possible–it’s lucky for their shareholders that someone in their PR department was smart enough to realize that Notoriousdad.com pulls some serious weight across the interwebs.

The fine folks over at 1-800-FLOWERS.com offered to send each of our wives a dozen red roses and a personalized greeting in exchange for an honest product review. This presented me with an ethical dilemma. As soon as I wrote about the flowers, Kerry would know that I received them in return for only the time it took to write this post. However, if I didn’t disclose that they were given to me, I would be guilty of being dishonest with our vast fan base. Because of my respect for you, our beloved readers, I’ve chosen to take the high road. Okay, to be honest, I also ran the following calculation:

(value of 1 Andy Hour) x (hours spent on post) = $$ Spent on Kerry

Or expressed numerically:

$10,000 x .75 = way to friggin’ much to justify this review

Based on my rough numbers, Kerry received an extremely expensive gift, and 1-800-FLOWERS.com made out like bandits. However, I’ve already started writing, so it’s too late to turn back now.

So what did I think of the flowers, you ask? I’ll start by saying that Kerry’s favorite flower is the carnation, so I’m used to buying flowers with the change left over from my beef jerky purchases. However, I’m told that roses are quite a bit more expensive. I spent minutes of research on this, and while I couldn’t find the identical picture, I believe the arrangement that was sent to my lovely wife is sold by 1-800-FLOWERS for $47.98. I’ll let you be the judge. Here is the picture from the site and a poorly-lit picture of the actual product received by my wife (I should reread Mark’s post on taking good pictures):

For the record, Kerry’s roses were deep red. My flash and amateur photography skills made them look a bit pink

Kerry was not a huge fan of the heart-shaped pendant hanging around the vase, so it was promptly removed, but the vase itself is sturdy and reusable. Overall, I think she was pleased. As evidence, I received the following text at exactly 4:52 this afternoon: “Just got my flowers…thank u…they are gorgeous : ). I love you!” As an aside, my wife has an ellipses addiction.

As for the service, the flowers showed up right on time and were delivered by a nice older gentlemen whose looks Kerry described as “totally Joe Pesci from Home Alone.” 1-800-FLOWERS.com even spelled all of our names correctly on the personalized greeting. It appears that you can order flowers as late as tomorrow and still have them delivered by Valentine’s Day.

Based on my experience, I may pay actual money to use 1-800-FLOWERS service in the future.

Unfortunately for me, the flowers did not lead to a spontaneous anything-goes make-out session as soon as I stepped foot in the house, but I attribute that more to my buzz-kill of a son than I do to the flowers.

If you are planning on ordering from 1-800-FLOWERS, we can hook you up. Use the code SCORE15 to save 15% on any non discounted items.

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