Betraying customer's trust

Roses Only is a business I've admired. The company's founder, James Stevens, has built up a great online business from scratch. So I'm dismayed and disappointed with how they've handled the news their database has been hacked.

Putting aside the question of why Roses Only were saving credit card details, the handling of this is disgraceful as we have no information on what has happened and who is affected.

The first place concerned customers are going to go to is the website. There is absolutely nothing about the problem anywhere on the site.

But the front page of the website proclaims "To ensure the security and privacy for all our customers. Roses Only does not store any credit card data in its system".

Well, according to the media, that's not true. "Hackers" have stolen credit card details from the database.

So you'd think clarifying this issue would be important for Roses Only. Apparently not, because apart from a press release issued by their PR agency they have nothing to say about this.

Communicating through a PR company to the media is not good enough. There needs to be, at the very least, something on the front page of the website explaining the problem.

I think what irritates me the most with this is the PR agency's line that you should contact your bank.

This is not the customer's problem. This is Roses Only's problem. It's up to Roses Only to contact customers, not let them wait for a pile of fraudulent credit card transaction to appear on their statement.

While the customer might not be responsible for those transactions, reporting and undoing them will be an expensive and time consuming hassle. Some people will have had legitimate transactions declined while others will have incurred penalty charges and some will miss the illegitimate entries.

Online commerce relies on trust by both the merchant and the consumer. Both sides of an online transaction are trusting the other side will do the right thing.

In my view Roses Only has breached that trust. It's a shame such an innovative organisation has dropped the ball so badly.