Credit where credit is due

Last week, I wrote about my misadventures with WalMart and their dryer sheets.  I used their website to send them the following complaint:

"We are expats in Jakarta, Indonesia. On a return visit to the US, we went to a Walmart store in Scottsdale, AZ and bought $300+ worth of food to ship back - comfort food we cannot find in Indonesia. We also bought the dryer sheets - another item not available in Indonesia. We shipped the dryer sheets in the same box as our food. This turned out to be both costly and unhealthy. The dryer sheets contaminated any food in a permeable container - specifically, anything that is only housed in cardboard or paper. I missed a half day of work after consuming 5 bites of oatmeal. I was nauseous and dizzy for a few hours. Before you get worried, I have no intention of suing. All I really want is to have you ship me, at your expense, replacements for the food we had to throw out. The oatmeal, cereal, and pudding we tasted before deciding it was inedible. The rest we threw out based on smell - they smell of dryer sheets. Here is the list:

• 2 boxes Cheerios value size
• 2 boxes Quaker Oats 2lb, 10 oz whole old fashioned
• 1 box raspberry jello 6 oz
• 5 boxes cherry jello 6 oz
• 4 boxes strawberry jello 6 oz
• 7 boxes chocolate pudding 6 oz
• 6 boxes of Rica A Roni 6.4 oz

 

This week, a day before I would have sent a follow up complaint, they responded to my complaint and advised me on the next steps.  I was anticipating a much longer wait time, and more struggles.  Of course, I haven't been told they'll compensate me yet, so I temper my enthusiasm with that reality.

But, credit where it is due, they recognized, responded, and validated my claim.  Now they just need to make me whole.

I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not Going to Take it Anymore

My wife humors my internet distractions - fantasy sports, online games, blogging.  She did impose a few rules for me with my blog:

1. Don't drink and blog
2. Don't blog while mad
3. Don't reveal too much

I'm having to break rule #2 today.

 

As I mentioned in my last blog, we shipped 120 pounds of food from the US.  As of today, we've discarded roughly forty pounds of it, and the amount increases daily.

 

On Monday, I was the first to eat some of our newly arrived food (other than the brownies from the weekend).  Every morning, I have a bowl of oats with raisins and honey for breakfast.  With my first bite, I knew something was terribly wrong.  I gagged at the taste.  I thought maybe I had eaten a big glob of honey (a flavor I can only appreciate in small doses), so I tried a second bite.  This time, the raisins tasted odd.  I spent time separating all the raisins to one side of the bowl and ate a few more bites of the oatmeal.  The flavor was not improving.  After my fifth bite, I gave up.

 

Included in our box of food were two boxes of raisins.  They had broken open in transit and were open and uncovered for at least two weeks in a variety of conditions.  They smelled okay, but we didn't trust them.  I texted my wife and asked if they were in my oats.  She said no, but that she smelled the oats and they smelled of perfume.

 

Then it hit me.  In addition to food, we bought some laundry supplies - stain stick, spray and wash, and dryer sheets.  My oatmeal tasted like the dryer sheets smelled.  About an hour later, I was feeling nauseous and dizzy and decided to go home for the day.  My stomach was uneasy the rest of the day.

 

We inspected all of our food.  Much of it smelled like the dryer sheets.  The few items we risked preparing - Cheerios, chocolate pudding, Rice A Roni - tasted like the dryer sheets.  The thing these all have in common - they were inside cardboard boxes with a paper-based internal packaging, or no internal packaging at all.

 

So, thanks to the Walmart Great Value brand dryer sheets, we've discarded about $100 worth of the food we shipped.  The list includes:

• 2 boxes Cheerios value size
• 2 boxes Quaker Oats 2lb, 10 oz whole old fashioned
• 1 box raspberry jello 6 oz
• 5 boxes cherry jello 6 oz
• 4 boxes strawberry jello 6 oz
• 7 boxes chocolate pudding 6 oz
• 6 boxes of Rica A Roni 6.4 oz
• 1 box blueberry muffin mix

Using the Walmart website, I submitted a product complaint about the dryer sheets.  In it, I have requested that Walmart send me a replacement for all of the food I've had to throw away.  If they refuse, my next step will be to notify Consumer's Reports and the FDA of my experience, with a copy to WalMart.  I have not yet decided a Step 3....I hope I do not have to.  Based on what I now know about dryer sheets, Step 3 could get ugly.