Talk:Teleflora

Mention of Complaints
I think there should be a mention of the large number of complaints about this company. This business appears to be unreliable, judging by the number of negative online reviews and poor customer service. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.183.149.121 (talk) 03:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

deletion candidacy
After doing the rewrite of this page I have sadly realized there's just not much to write about this company that is notable which complies to WP:NPOV. It has only 4 sentences total. Then a bunch of links to the corporate website as "references" (like getting free link popularity). I can find no reliable 3rd party sources for any notable information on Teleflora. Per WP:CORP (notability) I'm going to go through the process of nominating this for deletion. This isn't just a matter of no one bothering to do the research. There's no research to do. This is a closely held private company that does not get much reliable 3rd party reporting. All there is are paid press releases and their own website. Also notice our "references" just go to all corporate controlled websites. Retran (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The statement on WP:CORP is "An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources." Let's go through it.Retran (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Q.has it been subject of significant coverage? A.not really. the recent news (such as one could search for 'teleflora' using news.google.com) is very underwealming. there's less 3rd party coverage of this than the subject of a cheesey local news human interest story. and no one gets a wikipedia page because they're on the local news. (Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability.) But... there may be people who think the coverage Teleflora has received is noteworthy? PRoblem is, none of the coverage includes anything like details of the company and what it does. Its mostly just coverage on it giving away free flowers, etc.Retran (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Q.Do the potential sources directly support the information as it is presented in an article?? A. nope. in the form they're in (on news articles, and in the promotional) they are simply assertions.Retran (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

So I can't help but think this article makes a good candidate for a debated deletion process. It obviously is not a candidate for speedy deletion, and looking through the rev history of this article its been tried and reverted. With folks saying "just rewrite it". Well its been rewritten with all the sources I could find (none). So unless someone else comes along and points out the availability of appropriate sources which point to its notability, it oughta be deleted.Retran (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

old rewrite request
Note: This article should be re-written by someone impartial, which I am not.. Most of this information sounds biased to me, but Teleflora has most definately NOT been #1 in its field for 70 years. As the encyclopedic article on FTD accurately states, the U.S. Justice Department has gotten involved in anti-monopoly suits against FTD several times in the past century, actions that would have been impossible had Teleflora ever been #1..

NPOV impartiality fixes
I have attempted some WP:NPOV compliance revisions.

I'm removing the gushing descriptions of such things as "through its self-owned..." (not notable) "point-of-sale (POS) network known as the Dove network". This isn't an IT article where we can nerd out on names of POS networks. As fun as that may have been for me. Its an article on the company. A mention that it can provide the clearinghouse services is important and notable (as that's what makes this company a company) but the details of the infrastructure only serve as promotional material, I would argue. Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm also removing the name-dropping of all its mergers. When these articles on reletively small companies start just compiling lists of things its merged with it gets out of control. If there was a single one merger that was a defining point for the company then it might be notable (something like HP merging with Compaq). But I have no knowledge of non-promotional material which would provide me with such insight. And even if there was such insight available, it might not be appropriate here because the beginning companies were both not notable enough to warrant the inclusion of such insight in an encyclopedia entry (HP and Compaq were both very notable to begin with, for example). In short, I feel lists of M&A activity needs to be avoided as it detracts from the quality of the article, especially when the implications of the merger aren't obvious to the public. Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm also removing the phrase "for florist shops all over the world". Its purely promotional because it does nothing but add emphasis and attempts to imply to the reader the impressive nature of being international. The statement "20,000...outside North America" is far more appropriate, conveying the same info, and it already exists in the article, and it will stay. Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I also feel that a company of this size only needs to list its headquarter locations. NOt the locations of all its call-centers, training labs, etc and whatnot. Because those facts are not really all that important or notable, however true they are, serve only as filler and place undue emphasis on the places the company wants people to know it has a physical existence in. And becasue such location lists often rely on promotional material, they only include places the company wants the public to know about. They might leave out places, hypothetically, like toxic waste dump locations (though this doesn't pertain at all to Teleflora, its just an example). Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm removing the strange reference to an obscure award called the Effie_Award. True the Effie Award does have a wikipedia entry, but that doesn't mean each time the award it given it is a notable event. I would argue this is promotional, especially given that its an insider type award system (given by advertising industry to advertisers), having nothing to do with flowers, but with advertising methodology. So its gone. Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm also removing the multiple links to Teleflora's website. We don't need to list multiple regional portals to their website (telefora.com, teleflora.co.au, and so on...). One is plenty enough, as I'm positive the one website will lead customers to the appropriate section depending on region. The same is the case when multiple links are given to different sections of a company's website (for example a set of links saying "http://company.com/customer_service.html, http://company.com/about_us.html, http://company.com/products.html) Having multiple links to the corporate website is hardly ever appropriate, in an encyclopedic entry, as it is serves only promotion. Both in more chances for a reader to "click through" and it having more links spidered by search engines. Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a free text-link ad broker. Retran (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

new edit request
Hi! I work at Teleflora and have a few notes that may assist in a re-write, though obviously I don't want to do them myself because of a conflict of interest (since I work here). In response to the most recent post about deletion - we can be a challenging company to gather data on, since we are private, therefore all news releases, etc will come from our public relations team, so I would like to offer a few 3rd party resources that may help.

Sites like Glassdoor.com do offer basic information on our company size and income, as do Hoover's, BusinessWeek  and so forth.
 * Thanks. What tidbits do you think should be included in this article from these company snapshots?Retran (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

→By comparing the numbers of members listed on sites such as these to other floral providers, you will find that Teleflora has the largest network of member florists - this is what has (in the past) supported the claim of #1 floral company.
 * see my argument below, we should not include phrases like "#1 whatever" here. In this case the meaning is not obvious, and it's also problematic to assess (should one go by channel revenue or purely number of vendors to conclude which entity is #1?):ie: the neutrality and notability of such a statement cannot be established. Retran (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

As for our business-to-business services (a major portion of the business which someone would want to address in the article), we offer a number of technology solutions to florists for use in their shops (which was the business area that Teleflora originated in as a business-to-business service and product provider). Listing our point of sale systems, we currently offer: Dove POS Daisy Eagle RTI

And also offer credit card processing and a web-building and maintenance service called 'eFlorist', in addition to answering services, and email marketing tools. 
 * I'm very confused now. How can we establish the notability of this company as a B2B player through independent news articles? If we could, I still don't understand how it could be appropriate to geek-out on all the different systems and brand names. It might be appropriate for the article to discuss that its a major B2B player in re. to POS systems, then cite a reference which elucidates all the geeky stuff names. Retran (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Those technology offerings are widely recognized, and rarely show up 'spelled out' as such because they are assumed in industry coverage of our company. Turning to resources like the Society of American Florists may help verify some information about our florist services. Renato Sogueco, an employee of the Society of American Florists, also offers a list of point-of-sale providers for the floral industry on his personal blog, which may be useful to confirming the ownership of Dove and RTI names.
 * "and rarely show up 'spelled out' as such because they are assumed in industry coverage"... Interesting argument but we need to see them in mainstream articles to establish notability, and THEN we can turn to industry specific sources for further citation of specifics perhaps not mentioned in mainstream press. Do you have access any mainstream press articles about your company (besides just computer-generated listings on hoovers, newsweek, glassdoor, etc)?Retran (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, Canadian Florist magazine wrote an article about wire systems, including information on Teleflora's offerings to florists.

I hope these resources will be useful in writing an article that is more useful to the community.

Thanks. DwriteN (talk) 00:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for providing these suggestions and possible source materials. Notability of a company or a topic about a company is best established by assessing the number of independent articles written on the company. Do you have any references to non-promotional news articles discussing the service offerings you wrote about (POS, CC, etc)? In my opinion, inclusion in hoovers and glassdoor is great for finding little factoids about private companies but it doesn't help much in establishment of notability of particular topics (such as if a particular offering is notable enough for inclusion in this article). I also notice you included a list of POS system brand names, but I wonder how that can help us in constructing this article? Retran (talk) 20:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, as you may be aware, the number of purported vendors might be a certain high number, but there's other things to note when establishing relative importance of a company.. such as revenue. How does Teleflora to other peer companies in this regards, revenue from brokering distance orders? And no matter what, I can't fathom that stating a designation like "#1 florist company" would be very neutral, especially since its meaning is not very obvious. I'm not certain we can establish that having the greatest number of member vendors is notable enough to mention, but it I'm willing to hear arguments why and would be willing to include it in an update to this article. Retran (talk) 20:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed your ref tags because they don't seem to work on this talk page, we can just display the URL and titles verbosely on talk anyway for clarity.Retran (talk) 20:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Procedural note: I have removed the tag, for now, because the above discussion shows, currently, that the request lacks appropriate independent reliable sources. As explained above, the core policy here is verifiability - and that requires reliable sources - with editorial control, and a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" - such as newspaper articles, books, etc. We cannot base notability on originial research, by comparing membership numbers, etc.

Thank you again for the suggestions. If you are able to provide further sources, please feel free to re-request an edit.  Chzz  ► 09:16, 18 June 2010 (UTC)