Delivery Confirmation: How You Know Your Flowers Were Received
The most common call we get after an order is placed is not about the bouquet itself — it is from the sender asking whether the flowers actually arrived. Customers ordering roses for a birthday in Novosibirsk or a box of peonies for a colleague in Moscow cannot be in two places at once, and that gap between clicking 'confirm order' and knowing the recipient is holding the bouquet is genuinely stressful. This article explains every notification step we use, what triggers each one, and what you should check if something seems slow.
Why Confirmation Matters More Than People Expect
Most people assume delivery confirmation is a formality — a polite receipt that arrives after the fact. In practice it is the only way a sender knows the handoff actually happened, and for time-sensitive occasions like anniversaries or corporate events, timing matters as much as the flowers themselves. A bouquet of garden roses left outside an apartment door in July will wilt within two hours because summer temperatures in Russian cities regularly exceed 28 degrees Celsius, which is well past the comfort threshold for most cut flowers. Confirmation tells you the flowers reached a person, not a doorstep. The gap between 'delivered to address' and 'received by recipient' is real, and it is exactly what our notification system is designed to close. When a courier hands over a bouquet of spray chrysanthemums or a hat-box of ranunculus, the clock on flower freshness effectively resets because the flowers are now in a climate the recipient controls. Until that handoff happens, the flowers are our responsibility, and we treat confirmation as part of that responsibility rather than an afterthought. Senders who understand this tend to plan their orders better — they allow time for the courier to reach the door, wait for the recipient to answer, and complete the handoff properly rather than leaving the arrangement unattended.
Bouquets we can deliver
The SMS Alert: What It Says and When It Fires
An SMS goes to the sender's registered mobile number at the moment the courier marks the order as delivered in our dispatch system. The message is short and factual: it includes the order number, the address, and the timestamp of confirmed handoff. What it does not include is the recipient's reaction or any detail about the flowers — those come through other channels. The SMS fires within two to three minutes of the courier's confirmation tap, which means if you placed an order for a bouquet of white tulips at noon for a 2 p.m. delivery slot, you should expect the message somewhere between 2 p.m. and 2:20 p.m. depending on how quickly the recipient comes to the door. Russian apartment buildings often have two-stage entry — a street intercom and then a floor-level door — so couriers sometimes wait four to six minutes before the flowers actually change hands. The SMS system accounts for this: it fires on confirmed receipt, not on arrival at the building. If you have not received an SMS within thirty minutes of the scheduled delivery window, that is the right moment to contact us directly rather than waiting longer. The most common reason for a delayed SMS is a phone number entered with a transposition error at checkout — one digit wrong means the message goes nowhere. Checking the number in your order confirmation email before the delivery window opens takes thirty seconds and prevents most of these situations.
Email Confirmation: More Detail, Same Trigger
The email confirmation fires at the same moment as the SMS but carries more information. It includes the full order summary — varieties ordered, the delivery address, the time of confirmed handoff, and the name of the recipient as entered during checkout. For corporate clients ordering arrangements of lisianthus or mixed seasonal stems for an office, the email serves as a paper trail that can be forwarded to an events manager or saved against an expense report. For personal orders, it is simply a more detailed record than the SMS. One thing worth knowing: email delivery in Russia can be slower than SMS depending on the recipient's mail provider. Messages to major providers like Mail.ru or Yandex.Mail typically arrive within five minutes. Messages routed through older corporate servers sometimes take fifteen to twenty minutes to clear spam filters. If your email has not arrived within half an hour of the expected delivery time, check your spam folder before assuming something went wrong with the delivery itself. We send from a fixed domain, so adding our address to your contacts before the order date will prevent filtering issues. The email also includes a feedback link, which is separate from confirmation — clicking it is optional, but the timing is intentional. We ask for feedback immediately after confirmed receipt because that is when the sender's experience is freshest, not twenty-four hours later when the occasion has moved on.
Photo Proof: What the Courier Captures and Why
Photo proof is the confirmation method that surprises people most, because they do not expect it and then find it enormously reassuring once they see it. When the courier completes a handoff, they take a photograph of the bouquet or arrangement in the recipient's hands or, if the recipient declines to be photographed, a photo of the flowers inside the entrance of the building with the door number visible. This image uploads to our system automatically and is attached to the email confirmation. It is not a professional photograph — it is a courier's phone shot in available light — but it shows the condition of the flowers at the moment of handoff, which is the relevant information. For a bouquet of garden roses, you can see whether the heads are upright and the guard petals intact. For a box of peonies at bud stage, you can confirm the buds are firm and closed as intended, ready to open over the following two to three days at room temperature. The photo is stored against the order for fourteen days, after which it is deleted from our system. If you want to keep it, save it from the email when it arrives. Recipients in Russia sometimes ask the courier not to be photographed, which is a reasonable request and one couriers respect — in those cases the door-number shot is the fallback. We do not share photos with third parties or use them for any purpose other than confirming your specific order.
What Happens When the Recipient Is Not Home
A significant number of delivery issues trace back to one situation: the recipient is not at the stated address when the courier arrives. This is more common than senders expect, especially for surprise deliveries where the recipient has no idea flowers are coming. Our couriers wait up to ten minutes at the address and attempt contact by phone if a recipient number was provided at checkout. If there is no answer, the courier does not leave the flowers unattended — cut flowers left in a hallway or outside a door are exposed to temperature swings, and a bouquet of anemones or sweet peas will show stress within an hour in an uncontrolled environment. Instead, the courier returns the order and we contact the sender immediately by phone and SMS. At that point, we arrange a second delivery attempt, usually within the same day if the slot is available. No confirmation SMS or email fires until a genuine handoff occurs, so the absence of a confirmation message is itself information — it means the delivery has not been completed yet. Senders who are planning surprise deliveries should think carefully about whether they know the recipient's schedule well enough to guarantee they will be home. Giving the recipient a vague heads-up — something like 'stay home this afternoon' — without revealing the surprise dramatically increases first-attempt success rates and means the flowers spend less time in transit, which is always better for varieties like anemones and ranunculus that are sensitive to handling time.
Timing Windows and How They Affect Confirmation
Our delivery slots run in two-hour windows, which means if you book a noon-to-2 p.m. slot, the courier can arrive at any point in that range. Confirmation will fire at the actual moment of handoff, not at the start or end of the window. This is worth understanding because senders sometimes start worrying at 1:45 p.m. when the confirmation has not arrived, not realising the courier may be completing the delivery at 1:58 p.m. The two-hour window exists because city traffic in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and other major Russian cities is unpredictable, and a tight one-hour promise would mean more missed slots and more re-deliveries. For occasions where timing is genuinely critical — a birthday dinner that starts at 7 p.m. and you want flowers delivered before guests arrive — the right approach is to book the slot ending at least ninety minutes before the hard deadline. That buffer absorbs traffic delays without putting the flowers at risk of arriving after the moment has passed. Flower condition across a two-hour window is not a concern for most varieties: roses, chrysanthemums, alstroemeria, and carnations are stable in a courier bag at controlled temperatures for three to four hours without visible deterioration. More delicate varieties like sweet peas or lily of the valley have a shorter tolerance window, which is one reason we do not recommend booking the latest possible slot for those flowers during warm months.
Checking Your Confirmation and Fixing Problems Fast
If your SMS and email have not arrived within forty-five minutes of the end of your delivery window, contact us directly — by phone is fastest, but our chat is monitored continuously during business hours. Have your order number ready; it is in the original booking confirmation email. With that number we can tell you within sixty seconds whether the courier has marked the delivery complete, whether a second attempt is in progress, or whether there is a technical issue with the notification itself. Technical notification failures are rare but they do happen, usually when a phone number is entered incorrectly or an email address has a typo in the domain. In those cases the delivery itself may have been completed successfully — the flowers are with the recipient — but the sender never got the message. Checking the order status through us directly resolves this immediately. One thing we see regularly: senders who ordered through a third-party platform and expect us to have their contact details on file. We only hold the contact information entered directly into our own checkout, so if your order came through another channel, confirm your details are correct in that system. For orders placed directly with us, you can update a phone number or email address up to one hour before the delivery window opens by contacting our team — after that the courier is already dispatched and changes to notification contacts cannot be processed in time. Getting this right at checkout is the simplest way to make sure confirmation reaches you without any follow-up needed.
Delivery confirmation is not a luxury feature — it is the factual close of a transaction that started when you chose the flowers and ends when another person holds them. The SMS fires on confirmed handoff, the email carries the full record including photo proof, and the absence of either message within a reasonable window is a signal to call us rather than wait. Knowing what each notification contains, when it arrives, and what to do if it does not arrive turns a potentially anxious wait into a straightforward process. The flowers are the point; the confirmation is just proof that the point landed. We deliver bouquets across Russia in 1–2 hours.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get confirmation sent to a different number than the one I used to order?
Yes, but the change needs to be made at least one hour before the delivery window opens. Contact our team with your order number and the correct phone number. After the courier is dispatched, notification contact details cannot be updated in time, so it is worth double-checking the number in your booking confirmation email as soon as the order is placed.
Does the recipient get any notification that flowers are coming?
Only if you request it. By default, all confirmations go to the sender. If you want the recipient to receive an arrival notice — useful for non-surprise deliveries to an office, for example — note this in the order comments and we will arrange it. For surprise deliveries, no message goes to the recipient unless you specifically ask for one.
What does the photo proof actually show — the recipient's face?
Not necessarily. The courier photographs the bouquet or arrangement in the recipient's hands where the recipient agrees. If the recipient prefers not to be photographed, the courier takes a shot of the flowers inside the building entrance with the door number visible. Either way, the photo confirms the flowers reached the address in good condition at the time of handoff.
How long is the photo stored, and can I download it?
The photo is attached to your email confirmation and stored in our system for fourteen days. Save it from the email if you want to keep it longer. After fourteen days it is deleted from our records. We do not use delivery photos for marketing or share them with any third party — they exist solely as proof of your specific order completion.
If the first delivery attempt fails, do I pay for the second one?
We arrange a second attempt at no additional delivery charge when the first attempt fails because the recipient was not home and no prior arrangement was made. We contact the sender immediately to agree on a new time slot. If the recipient is unavailable again on the second attempt, we discuss options with the sender directly, including revised timing or an alternative address.
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