Nothing says, "I love you," like flowers, but sometimes love is blind.
 
In a Consumer 10 alert, Maureen Kocot found 15 florists with local sounding names and local phone numbers in the Columbus Yellow Pages. When dialing the phone number, some calls were transferred to a call center located elsewhere in the U.S.
 
A florist that appeared in the Yellow Pages as being in Gahanna is actually located in Bernardsville, N.J., Kocot reported.
 
10TV ordered a $40 bouquet. The flowers were delivered the same day by a local florist, so what was the problem? 

"The problem lies when these companies create an unnecessary middle man and they're trying to be order-gatherers," Lambert said.
 
If you order a $50 dollar bouquet for a friend, the out-of-town companies might take a cut before passing it on to an unsuspecting local florist who would actually fill the order, Kocot reported.
 
"We fill the value thinking it's a $25 order," Lambert said.  "We don't see that the original order was $50."
 
10TV put the theory to the test. We ordered another $40 bouquet directly from a local company that filled the first order. At first glance, the two bouquets looked identical. However, the bouquet ordered directly from the local florist included two stems of white lilies, adding another $10- to $15 to the value of the arrangement, Kocot reported.
 
Ohio law requires florists to list their actual addresses, so consumers are advised to read the fine print. 
 
Other suggestions include asking the person who answers the phone where they are located, ask if there is a processing fee to the order and find out if the delivery fee is included in the quote price or added to the balance.