r/marleyspoon

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-meal-kit-industry-is-in-disarray-after-a-major-supplier-went-bust-17d7b97b?st=SvpnkL

I have a previous thread, like many others, lamenting that absolute shit boxes we've gotten in a few weeks.

It gets confusing, with the useless credits, but all told, I got three terrible boxes, each worse than the last (with the 3rd one having maybe 10% of the ingredients).

I sent a complaint to BBB and requested a refund on the two payments that went through the past 3 weeks (one for about $150 and one for about $100 (with a $50 credit).

After taking advice from here, I contacted them successfully on Instagram (weird). The refunded the $100.

I wasn't happy with just that refund, since the refusal of the $150 was based on credits, which so far were mostly useless. Lo and behold however, I had a $100 credit to my 4th box, which was not perfect, but was maybe 80% full of ingredients.

All told I paid $250 for 4 boxes, anywhere from 10%-80% full. I consider this fair, although definitely a terrible terrible way of going about things.

If the CEO or whoever was in charge of this debacle gets axed, I may reconsider them in a month or two when they are showing consistency in full boxes.

Over the past three deliveries i’ve accumulated a few hundred dollars in credits. According to the emails they get applied to subsequent orders. My next order only shows a $20 credit applied. The order scheduled for after that shows no credit applied. My next order should be free based on how many credits i’ve accumulated but it’s not.

Edit: I had to go to the upcoming order, select Order Summary at the bottom, and then scroll down to Price Breakdown. It’s there.

Tldr; It sounds like one of major meal kit suppliers went bankrupt. Now all their partners are scrambling. On one hand I feel bad for MS. Having one of your major suppliers go belly up isnt an easy thing to handle or plan. On the other hand meal kits are ultimately an easily substituted luxury service. If they can't get their act together that is their problem, not mine.

My last three boxes have all missed crucial ingredients. For the first two I accepted a credit for the ingredients, but I drew the line this week. I emailed them to request a refund, stating that "I should not have to continue to order meal kits from you in order to be compensated for your defective service," and threatening to do a chargeback through my credit card if they don't give me the refund.

Until three weeks ago I was a happy customer, so this bums me out.

I will update this post as the situation develops.

Well our luck finally ran out. Of the three meals they delivered this week, all three were missing multiple ingredients, including one of the proteins. All told there were 7 ingredients missing.

In the past when I've gone to report one or two missing things on the web site, it immediately lets me know I'm getting a credit. This time, nothing. If I don't hear back from them by tomorrow, I'm doing a chargeback with my credit card company.

Where's everyone going after Marley Spoon? I used Hello Fresh in the past and they recently sent me one of their coupons. Have they gone downhill as well?

I cannot see how MS can last more than a few more weeks. I’ve gone through my order history and saved the recipe cards for particularly good meals as PDF’s. Everyone should probably do this in case they want to cook a favorite meal with their own ingredients.

It’s too bad you can’t get the nicely formatted cards for meals you haven’t cooked. You can print the web pages for other meals (including print to pdf), but they aren’t formatted very nicely.

I'm on my second week of MarleySpoon prebaked meals. First week was OK, the food was nothing special. Second week I order 8 meals, 2 of which were Indian dishes so I also ordered some naan bread.

I get the full sized box, which with discounts was around $70. Open the box to find the naan bread, and NOTHING ELSE. They forgot to pack my food! In a full sized box! What the hell? Of course, you can't call them and complain now, you have to email them.

And the email I got back was a canned message saying Oh So Sorry you had an issue, here's a $15 gift card to make up for it. I reply back telling them there's no way that's acceptable, they need to refund me for the full amount (minus the naan-bread). Haven't heard back yet at all. What a scammy company.

Over my last five Marley Spoon boxes, I’ve experienced repeated fulfillment problems and received almost no meaningful help from customer support. Earlier problems resulted in credits, so I’ve mainly continued ordering because I’m trying to use those credits rather than lose them.

My latest order contained four meals plus Marketplace items. The box was missing:

• The ribs I ordered
• Ingredients for the prosciutto-and-pasta dish
• The proteins for both fish dishes
• The protein for the chicken dish

Essentially, I received no more than one correct item for each recipe, so I couldn’t make any of the four meals. The box also contained an assortment of random items, including steak that I don’t believe I ordered. It honestly looks like parts of someone else’s order were put into my box.

Last Thursday, I contacted Marley Spoon by email, chat, through the app, and by phone. I have received no meaningful response through any channel, and my emails are no longer being answered.

After five problematic boxes, this is clearly more than an occasional packing mistake. Has anyone successfully received a refund to their original payment method for an order like this? I don’t want more credits that require me to place another order and risk receiving another unusable box.

Today I received my third incredibly incomplete box - and this one was shockingly possibly the worst of the three.

I feed a family of 5 on these meals, buying 4-6 4-person meals/week plus extra protein as needed to top up.

My Friday delivery box was delivered a day late earlier today. I had ordered 5 meals. Each had proteins for 4.

I received:

• 2 small (but adequate) bunches broccolini
• 8 scallions
• 2 10-oz tilapia
• 2 10-oz salmon

The complete box cost was $245.95 with discounts. It was 5 meals with extra proteins and enough to stretch to the full week. What I’ve received isn’t even 2 meals.

This just looks like fraud to me at this point.

When I call the customer service number provided in an email, it’s a recording with no options, just hangs up.

When I email (and I have multiple times), there’s either no response, or worse, a code for $5 or $15 off a subsequent purchase.

I’ve cancelled all future orders, but I’ve had 3 weeks of being defrauded and one more coming next week that I had not yet cancelled, hoping they would figure it out.

I don’t know what they did, but this can’t be legal.

Loyal MS customer; I really liked the recipes and variety.

After pausing for a few weeks (out of town), I got a box with..some things in it, I guess.

What service should I switch to that is closest to MS in terms of recipe quality and variety?

I used Hello Fresh a while ago and liked it, but I thought MS had more variety (at least at the time).

It would have been fairly easy.

By noon Monday the issue should have been identified. By EOD, or mid Tuesday at latest, an email needed to go out.

"Dear customer. We are notifying you due to an issue we are having with our distributor. Unfortunately, you are unlikely to receive your full order, or even a full recipe, from us this week. We know many of you depend upon us to feed your family, and we could not be more apologetic. We understand this isn't acceptable, and have gone ahead and fully refunded your order for this week. We have also credited you for one full meal in your next box. We are working hard to ensure this never happens again, and hope to regain your trust with our meals, or ingredients, and our service."

My box came Monday. On Wednesday, and again today, I received a "your box has been delivered!" email, but weirdly did not get one when my box was actually delivered. I've received two "we are missing ingredients" emails, one which was comically short, one which was comically long, both about the same discount. I also filled out the form online and got a comically tiny discount for missing ingredients.

Good companies do not operate like this. There doesn't appear to be a crisis response, no emergency meeting of the CEO, Chief Client Officer, Head of Comms and Finance. Just silence. The type of silence only a rotten organization has, one as rotten as most of the spinach I've received since it started shipping in a sealed plastic bag.

I've worked with companies that have had a much more rapid response to much smaller issues. This company is just fundamentally poorly run by people who don't care enough about the consumer to keep my business.

Canceled.

I finally decided to switch off of Hungryroot in favor of a meal furnace that lets me actually cook my food.

I saw some recommendations for MS so I gave them a try.

First box from them, I ordered 4 recipes. I received a cryptic email saying that my delivery would be a day late, and then just received it today, Thursday, three days late.

I open the box and I’m genuinely confused what I’m looking at . A couple random pouches of spices, and some green onions.

There are only recipe cards for two of the meals that I ordered , no proteins included.

Genuinely never heard of Marley Spoon before ordering. I tried calling the customer Support Number and I got an automated message saying they wouldn’t talk to me…

Is this company real or did I sign up for a scam?

I've now sent this story to WIRED, Consumer Reports, 404 Media, ProPublica, Business Insider, USA Today, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, The Verge, NYT, Washington Post, AP, Reuters, CNBC, WSJ, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, The Guardian, Eater, Food & Wine, Food Business News, Modern Retail, Food Dive, and Retail Dive.

I've pointed reporters to this subreddit and the FreshRealm situation. I strongly encourage others experiencing this to submit tips too. The more independent customers they hear from, the harder this is to ignore.

A few tip contacts:

• Reuters: tips@reuters.com
• Consumer Reports: tips@cro.consumer.org
• WIRED: zoe_schiffer@wired.com
• USA Today: cjones@usatoday.com

Send photos/screenshots and point them here. Let's get some eyes on this.