I’ve never used a gift service before – the kind that lets you send flowers or gift baskets or fruit.  So my order with Shari’s Berries was my first foray into this type of business.  I could not have asked for a better introduction.

The ordering process was super-easy.  Well, there was one hard thing – choosing! Everything looked good!  Shari’s Berries’ specialty is dipped strawberries, and they look amazing.  In addition to “classic” ones, there are little jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, brides and grooms for weddings/showers, footballs, etc.  They’re gorgeous.  (And in case you are thinking that they seem pricey, let me tell you, I have tried dipping strawberries, and it is not as easy as it looks. Mine were not pretty!  And I was just going for dipped – not drizzled or themed or anything else.  They are well worth the price!)  Besides berries, though there are other dipped fruits, cake pops, fruit baskets…plenty of choices.  Maybe too many choices. 😉  I finally settled on the Fall Cornucopia, which you’ll see in a moment.

So that was the hard part.  From there, it was easy.  There was no part of this process that was any harder than ordering any other product online.  I was even able to choose my delivery date, from a clearly-marked calendar.  It was easy to see what dates were available, which were unavailable (this has to due with the shipping carrier), and which would require an additional fee (weekends!).  Choosing the date was as simple as clicking on the one I wanted.

I was able to enter a gift message for the packing slip.  (This I did more to test it out than anything, since I was having this shipped to myself.  “Note to self…”)  If I’d chosen to, I could have added an actual card, and the costs and options were clearly outlined for me.

Delivery

When the package arrived, it looked just like any other FedEx package – just a big brown box.  (Although the packing slip led the driver to say that it looked like someone got flowers!)  Inside the box, the basket was well-packed, in eco-friendly recyclable brown paper and not obnoxious styrofoam pellets.  (Thank you, Shari’s Berries!)  I don’t know what I expected, as the fruit basket obviously could not ship as displayed in the website image, and survive the trip, but I was surprised at the packaging.  It looked like this:

After removing the plastic cover and beginning to pull things out, I discovered that there were things buried all the way down inside the straw-like filler – down into the end of the cornucopia.  I might be concerned that a recipient wouldn’t know to look for these.  (Having ordered it myself, I knew what contents to expect, so I knew to keep digging.)  The fruit was carefully paper-wrapped and, in general, in great shape.  (There was a small bad spot on our orange, but I figure that an occasional spot on an occasional piece of fruit is inescapable.  We just cut it off and ate the rest.)  The contents were much more aesthetically pleasing after unpacking and unwrapping. 🙂

Conclusions

I would order from this site again.  I found it very simple and straightforward, and could definitely find something else worth ordering!

Disclosure: I received a gift certificate to enable me to experience the ordering process and facilitate this post.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.