What happens when Australia’s biggest retailer insists on selling you rotten food products?

Sunday, 25 October 2009


Woolworths

Department That Deals With Bitching Customers

1 Woolworths Way

Bella Vista, NSW, 2153

Whoever Reads This,

Safeway: The Rotten Food People

Having been a long term customer of Safeway (and more recently Woolworths, as you devour and rebrand across the state), I find myself in the unfortunate position of writing to you regarding my recent experiences with Safeway/Woolworths supermarkets.

To get straight to the point: You claim that you are “The Fresh Food People”. I claim this is complete bullshit.

On three separate occasions over the past two months, I have inadvertently purchased items which, in my opinion, have been unacceptable for sale and unfit for consumption. To assist, I shall now list these items:
In the first instance, I purchased a block of Safeway-branded cheese from the South Melbourne store. Upon opening the block later that evening I found that the entire underside was covered in mould.

The second instance found me purchasing a tub of sour cream – again from the South Melbourne store. Opening the tub that day found the top of the cream covered in a layer of black fuzz.

Lastly, an onion was purchased from the Camberwell store. Cutting it up revealed that the insides of the onion was rotten.

Now, I’m a reasonable person, and I understand that when you’re dealing with a metric fuckton of products you’re going to get the odd item that shouldn’t have made its way to the shelves. That’s why I chose to say nothing about the cheese incident. The same goes for the sour cream incident. However, after the onion saga I raced to my window and yelled “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!”.

You can take comfort in knowing that as a result of my purchasing these items, you’ve caused a fair bit of hurt. The cheese was to be used for a wine night, the cream for a curry and the onion for delicious Mexican food. The only thing that saved the Mexican food was a female having an onion in her handbag. (Yeah, seriously. Even I’m a little WTF? on that one). The other two were saved in less glamorous circumstances: the wine night by borrowing cheese from a neighbour and the curry without the cream.

Anyway, to get to the point on this: I put my losses at about $20 on this one. This figure has been arrived at by adding up the approximate cost of the three items, with the balance being the inconvenience and immeasurable hurt caused.

As such I am requesting a refund of $20, either by way of cheque or money order, to the address above.

I look forward to your response.

Regards

Andy Blume

P.S. If you can tell me which movie the “I’M AS MAD AS HELL …” quote comes from, I’ll send you a prize. For reals.

Once the above letter was sent, I instigated a conglomerate-wide ban on business dealings with Woolworths/Safeway and all associated companies.

6 weeks later the fuckers actually decided to respond. And I’m going to quote it verbatim.

T o Mr Andy Blume

Sorry for an inconvenience our Supermarkets have caused you. Your complaint
has been forward on to the Store Managers of the stores concerned.
Please find enclosed a $20 wish gift card.
Once again I am sorry for any inconvenience we have caused you.

Regards

Fiona Caculovic
Store Services Specialist
Woolworths
Region 4.2

First thing I noticed is that the response from Fiona Caculovic wasn’t printed on official Woolworths letterhead. In fact, there was NO letterhead at all. Just a plain piece of A4 paper with the above obviously quickly typed in Word and printed off. Makes me wonder if she’s somehow related to Erol Yucedag?

For great justice, here is a scan of her letter.

I was quite surprised that there was no response directly from Woolworths head office, as my initial guess would be that they’d just send me a letter and a voucher to shut me up and have me fuck off quickly. But it seems that the letter was passed down the chain until it ended up on her desk for it to be dealt with.

Anyway, back to the letter. The whole lack of any official letterhead as well as the poor formatting and layout as well as the spelling errors led me to think that it had just been passed off to some kid as part of “Bring Your Kids To Work Day”. So I did a little net-stalking on Fiona Caculovic. You know, for science.

No Facebook account. Nothing on Myspace or Twitter. In fact, the only reference to any Fiona Caculovic I could find were a few references to her in various documents through a Google search, all of which were hosted on Woolworths-based servers. Taking a look at those documents reveals that Fiona Caculovic is indeed a Store Services specialist, and for Area 42 in the Woolworths region breakup – and not Area 4.2 as she states in her letter).

Now, correct me if I’m wrong on this one, but I’m guessing if you’re going by the title of a specialist, and answer directly to the Area Manager, you’d have some some basic knowledge on properly formatting a letter and at least take the time and effort to print it off on a proper letterhead?

To be honest, I don’t give a fuck. They could’ve have written it on a dead baby for all I care. But complaining about it did pad out this post quite nicely.

And I scored a $20 voucher to spend on more rotten food.