A woman claims her Valentine's Day was ruined by a romantic bouquet that turned up "completely dead" at her door.
Sarah Townley, 29, said she was heartbroken at the state the £40 bouquet when they were delivered to her home in Huyton, on Sunday, February 14.
Carl Lyon, 36, ordered the flowers from online company eflorist as a romantic gift for fiancée Sarah - but they were far from what he expected.
When she got home from work on Sunday, Sarah said she opened the box to find the flowers were "wilted, black and dead" inside.
Carl even had to nip out to their local Asda to pick up another bunch of flowers for Sarah for £10, which she said were far better than the £40 bouquet.
Sarah told the ECHO: "My partner ordered them for me. He wanted to go all out and make it special.
"I was in work and I got a notification to say they would be delivered at 12.45pm.
"I got home at 1.15pm and they were in the tiniest box you can think of. There was no air flow, no water, no plant food.
"When I got them out of the box as you can see they were completely dead.
"I was heartbroken. I didn't even want to celebrate Valentine's Day after I saw them. It was an absolute joke."
Sarah said she contacted eflorist on Sunday to complain about the flowers via email.
After being made aware of a Facebook group called 'E Florist Complaints Group', Sarah said she emailed the company for a second time and threatened them with legal action.
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Sarah said: "I don't want this to happen to anyone else because it's not nice to receive what we did.
"I said to [the company] if you carry on sending flowers like this I'm going to take you to court. That's when I got that reply straight away.
"It said we will offer you a full refund within 3-5 working days."
A spokesperson for eflorist said: "I really appreciate you bringing this particular complaint to our attention, it isn’t what we expect when sending our flowers out. And we know how important this special occasion is for our customers and we’re sorry to have let Sarah Townley down.
"All our bouquets are covered by a 7 Day Freshness Guarantee. On the rare occasion that our flowers do arrive damaged, we will of course offer a full refund or replacement bouquet to our customers.
"We send our courier bouquets in a specially designed box which keeps the stems protected in transit, these are sent without water with the flowers in bud so they will bloom and last longer in the recipient's home.
"We have been in contact with Sarah Townley and have refunded this order in full."
