The Floral Cheapskate

If you're like me, when you send flowers to someone, your procedure for choosing just the right arrangement goes something like this: "Whaddya got for under twenty bucks?" I was recently trying to find flowers for a friend of mine and so I visited a reputable floral delivery service online (I won't tell you the name, but the initials are "FTD"). The least expensive arrangement - for ANY occasion, including "Congratulations on having your mole removed" - started at $39.99. But that does not include tax or delivery charge. So for your basic model floral ensemble with no bells and whistles, you're looking at $55-60. But FTD had glaring warnings that if you made the $39.99 choice, you were a chump because anyone who would pay that little for flowers obviously didn't care that much about whom they were sending them to. So they had convenient upgrades to "better" ($49.99) and "best" ($59.99), their insidious message being that you are a total Scrooge if you don't choose an upgrade. It's a good thing I can handle pressure. I chose the cheapskate arrangement.

And then my credit card was declined.