Thursday, February 02, 2012

Dr. McDougall's products & Cuisinart (or Good Customer Service vs. Bad)

As someone who has spent seven years working in retail and customer service, the most important trait in a company (to me) is good customer service. 

As I previously mentioned, I LOVE Dr. McDougall's Pad Thai cups. Well about 2 months ago (6 weeks? I have no idea. I have no sense of time lately) I found a tiny bamboo stick in my pad thai cup! I was really sad about it and I emailed the company to let them know. Their customer service response was quick and helpful and they offered to send me some product to make up for my experience. When I mentioned that I had blogged about my love for the Pad Thai cup, they offered to send me extra! 

On Monday my very friendly UPS guy delivered a large heavy box full of yummy things! I was super excited and immediately took some pictures for you guys. They sent me almost every gluten free item they have! I will review them all for you as I try them but so far I've only had more of the Pad Thai :) 

Pad Thai! (Sorry for the fuzzy pic - I was excited;)


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New things to try!!


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Soup!!


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Now for the bad. Cuisinart. In March 2009 I was excited to buy a Cuisinart Pro Classic 7 cup Food Processor. It was $100 but I figured that as a Cuisinart it would be a worthwhile long lasting investment. (ooh! I just realized I bought it 4 days after I bought my Vita-Mix) I was pretty surprised in March of last year when I saw that my blade was cracking! I emailed them and they sent me a new blade and had me send my old blade back. Fine. Good even. Well about a month ago I realized that my replacement blade was cracked and that my cup was cracked and broken!

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The reply email was that the cup and blade were about $30 each to replace and they gave me the part numbers to order those items with. Why I would spend $100 on an item and then $60 to replace parts in the item is BEYOND me. They send me replacement parts or I buy a cheap replacement food processor. Or Kitchen Aid sends me one of their lovely food processors. But as it stands right now I will never buy a Cuisinart product again. Lousy customer service makes me angry. 

My other great customer service experiences - to end this blog on a happy note - have been with Nalgene* and Joyce Chen. Both companies sent me replacements REALLY quickly and for free, even when I offered to pay! Good customer service is what it's all about people.

*I didn't realize that Nalgene tests on animals when I bought my bottle (almost 4 years ago!) and because of that I wouldn't buy another one (but I'd buy like a caseload of their bottles if they'd stop!) but I am abnormally attached to my red Nalgene. I'll buy a Life Factory next because I hate that Siggs aren't dishwasher safe and their customer service BPA scandal was just too much of a PITA.

3 comments:

Bethany said...

We love those soups, too! I also have a Cuisinart 7-cup food processor, but thankfully, I haven't had any problems with it (5 years+) yet. I found this post to be very helpful - I always like to hear about others' good/bad experiences with companies...thanks for sharing!

K said...

I love the pad thai cups too. I wasn't a huge fan of the black bean soup but look forward to trying the pilaf. Am taking 3 of the pad thai cups with me travelling to Hong Kong since hard to get gluten free food there!

Anonymous said...

Haven't tried the Pad Thai cups, but will look for them now!