In March 2024 the Federal Court ordered Bloomex Pty Ltd to pay $1 million in penalties. The company admitted misleading Australian consumers: star ratings unchanged since 2015, discount claims on prices its products had never actually sold at, and checkout surcharges it failed to disclose. The Court issued injunctions and ordered a three-year compliance program. That program is still running.

Here is what one of its brands is publishing right now.

Around 25,000 pages, each telling a different Australian town the same thing.

Mel's Flowers is a registered business name of Bloomex Pty Ltd. Its website publishes roughly 25,000 locality pages: 9,274 for flowers, 9,274 for gift hampers, 6,452 for sympathy flowers. Every one of them says:

"Local Know-How: We have been in the [town] area for years. We know what works here."

"Serving the area since 1980..."

Change the town name and the pages are word for word identical. Yalgoo, Western Australia (population about 100), has one. So do Forbes, Narrogin, Toowoomba, Mount Isa, Ceduna and thousands of others.

None of it can be true. Bloomex Pty Ltd was registered in 2010. The Mel's Flowers business name was registered in December 2025. The website's first product record is dated April 2026. A trading history "since 1980" is off by forty-five years. The only address on any of these pages is a unit in Homebush, Sydney.

And every page carries a heading that says it outright: "An Experienced Toowoomba Florist who knows how to deliver flowers right." Change the town, and it says the same about Forbes, Ballarat, Mount Isa and 9,000 others. Not "we deliver there". An experienced florist of that town.

Here is the part that gives it away. Every one of those 25,000 pages also carries the heading "Why The Blossom Shop is Chosen by People in [town]". The Blossom Shop is not Mel's Flowers. It is a florist at 167 Bridge Street, Carleton Place, Ontario, Canada, and it genuinely has been trading since 1980.

That website is run from inside the same operation. Its privacy policy tells customers to write to 4235 17th Street Southeast, Calgary, which is the registered office of Bloomex Inc. Its product data carries the tag "BloomexSyncProduct".

Its website runs town pages with exactly the same wording. Put them side by side and the only thing that changes is the town name:

Carleton Place, Ontario: "An Experienced Fergusons Falls Florist who knows how to deliver flowers right... We have been in the Fergusons Falls area for years... Serving the area since 1980."

Mel's Flowers, Australia: "An Experienced Toowoomba Florist who knows how to deliver flowers right... We have been in the Toowoomba area for years... Serving the area since 1980."

So the "since 1980" is real. It just belongs to a flower shop in a town of 10,000 people in Ontario, 16,000 kilometres away. It has been replicated onto 25,000 Australian pages and published as a claim about Ballarat, Broome, Mount Isa and everywhere else.

Even the delivery prices came across. The Mel's Flowers pages tell Australians next-day delivery is "$14.99" and same-day is "$19.98", and that they don't deliver on "statutory holidays", which is a Canadian term. Bloomex's own Australian policy says $19.95 and $24.95.

6,452 of those pages are aimed at funerals.

That is the part that should stop you. Someone has died. A person is searching, often from another state, often a day or two before a service, for a florist near the funeral. They find a page saying this florist has been in that town for years and delivers to local funeral homes.

Meanwhile the company's own shipping policy says: "We cannot guarantee the exact delivery date and specific time." Its own refund policy offers, for a late delivery, only the difference between delivery tiers, and provides nothing at all if a dated delivery is missed entirely. In 2022 CHOICE tested 21 orders to regional addresses: eight never arrived.

A late birthday bouquet is annoying. A funeral delivery that doesn't arrive cannot be fixed afterwards at any price.

And the prices don't hold up either. Ads promote "Bouquets from $19.95". On the website the only $19.95 item is "Vase & Card", an accessory with no flowers in it. Every item under $29.95 is a card, a balloon, a vase, a teddy or a box of chocolates. The cheapest actual bouquet is $39.95, double the advertised price. An ad offers next-day delivery "from $14.95"; the published policy says $19.95. One ad promotes free delivery over $85 while its own body text says $99.95. It contradicts itself. And ads claim "Save Up To 50% Off" while every single product on the site sits under a "Sale price" label with no original price shown, so there is nothing to measure the saving against.

One company, six brands, and no way to tell. Bloomex Pty Ltd runs at least six florist websites here: Bloomex, Mel's Flowers, Aussie Blooms, Bunches & Stems, From You Flowers and Roses Everywhere. Some name the parent company in the footer. Mel's Flowers and Roses Everywhere don't name it anywhere you'd actually look.

So picture what happens. You order from Bloomex. It goes badly. Months later you need flowers again and you deliberately avoid them. You search, and you find Mel's Flowers. Real gardens, dirt under the fingernails, cutting out the middleman. Exactly the small local outfit you were after.

Same company. Same warehouses. Same 1800 number. Same catalogue. Same terms. And when you check the reviews first, like a sensible person, you find a brand registered in December 2025 with barely any history, not the parent company's record. NSW Fair Trading issued a public warning about Bloomex Pty Ltd in April 2023. Search "Mel's Flowers" and you will never find it.

We are asking:

The ACCC to investigate this conduct, and whether it is consistent with the orders made on 15 March 2024. In December 2024 the Federal Court fined another online florist $1 million for false "local florist" claims across 156 websites. This is around 25,000 pages.
Google to review the ads driving traffic to these pages, and the pages themselves.

You don't have to take my word for any of it. Open these two pages side by side:

blossomshop.ca/pages/flowers/fergusons-falls melsflowers.au/pages/flowers/toowoomba

One is a flower shop on Bridge Street in Carleton Place, Ontario, that really has been there since 1980. The other is telling Toowoomba the same thing.

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