To return Heston Blumenthal's utterly disgusting chocolates to Waitrose?

[EmilyGilmore]

A few days ago I bought a box of Heston Bloomingdisgustinthal's chocolates in Waitrose. I ONLY bought them because I thought they were on offer at £3.49 and that seemed a reasonable price for a smallish box of 15 chocs. It turns out the offer was for the teeny tiny box of 5 not the 15 which I paid £13.50(!!!!!!) for I didn't realise till I got home, unpacked the bags and DH had already opened the box, eaten two and declared them "horrible".

I have since eaten 4 more, to give the guy a chance...but no, they are truly disgusting. Rosemary and thyme praline anyone?

WIBU to attempt to return them to Waitrose? Would I get a refund do you think? I have chucked the receipt unfortunately.

Ugh, I need a Walnut Whip now just to get the taste out of my mouth.

I'm in Holland and aldi here do a box of Belgian chocs, 20 for around 5€.

They're bloody lovely.

I hate the celeb chef cult. They're all gobshites.

LineRunner or two fifths

Contact waitrose they are good about that sort of thing. I tried the horrid mince pies and popcorn ice cream which appeared to have unpopped corn in it.
I think waitrose have gone down hill a bit and they try and cash in on celeb things ie that ridiculous poppa Middleton thing.

I tried the popcorn icecream and it was a massive disappointment.

His spiced cider is nice.

Hestons food has never failed to blow me away, I have a very sophisticated pallet.

A wooden pallet, like you stack groceries in a lorry for delivery?
An artist's pallet, for a sophisticated colour scheme?

Or a palate? Ahem.

Gosh isn't it a laugh making fun of people with learning disabilities.

Oh ffs. When you boast about your sophistication, you invite jokes.

At the risk of taking the thread off course, while it's a bit of a dickish move to comment on someone elses spelling mistake, how could Zebra have POSSIBLY known you had a learning disability?

"I have a very sophisticated pallet" - That made me smile.

Urgh. You've brought back repressed memories of a Rosemary chocolate truffle I had once. It was awful. It tasted like a chocolate meatball.

mshanj, learn to laugh at yourself. 'I have a very sophisticated pallet' is hilarious.

Asking for a refund when you've eaten almost half is taking the piss.

I can't believe people would even consider taking something back because (after eating half the box) they don't like them

By all means if they're faulty or something but just not to your liking??
Bit of a brass neck

Take them back. Waitrose will refund them.

I emailed to tell them about a disgusting fish pie we'd bought from them. We'd bought it previously without incident but they must have changed supplier or recipe because it was revolting. They sent me £14 of vouchers to over the £6.99 cost of the ready meal and presumably petrol costs, which was nice. I live just round the corner from the store

We've also returned corked wine and some truffle paste that went mouldy less than two weeks after opening and it said would last a month in the fridge once opened.

They refunded them all without quibble.

However they ballsed up my loyalty card so they're not perfect.

Take them back. I'm sure they will refund them. They don't want their customers to be unhappy as long as they get their money .
If you haven't got the receipt they may not want to give you a cash refund but I bet they would give you an exchange or credit voucher.

It would never occur to me to take something back half eaten because I didn't like it not knocking it necessarily - fair play if you get your money back but I just don't think I would have the nerve.

Saying that if I realised I had paid £13.50 for 15 chocolates I would be trying to recreate them and taking the box to be re-cellophaned up somewhere to get my money back. I won't buy a chocolate orange unless it's half price

This thread is so perfectly mumsnet.

I loved the chocolate sponge thing last year. There were 100s (only a slight exaggeration) of them reduced in our tiny local waitrose to about £3/4 I think. We got 1 to try, then went back and got about 6 more that we ate through january. I wouldn't have paid the £15 or whatever they were originally, but reduced they were great for the price.

The previous year in Waitrose I got 2 or his 'special' ice creams as a treat - Xmas pud and Marmelade flavour and they were disgustingly awful. We threw them away in the end - even the kids wouldn't eat them, and usually DH will eat anything if its left in the freezer long enough.

Such a shame, we went to the ice cream fair by Kings Cross earlier that year and they had some super weird ice creams there (marmelade and brown toast was 1 we'd had there and loved) - things like stilton etc and managed to make them yummy so why couldn't Heston?

ps loving the pallet mix-up - mshanj - everyone makes mistakes in posts, learning disabilities or not, just laugh at the mix up and move on.

If it's their own brand stuff and it's horrible they will usually refund. And how would you know it's horrible unless you try it?

If something is particularly unpleasant rather than just not to your personal taste then if it's no bother to let the supermarket know then do. They may have a problem with a supplier or storage that they wouldn't know about otherwise.

The trouble with the Heston range is that it is grossly over priced, deliberately weird and some of it just doesn't work. People don't want loo cleaner flavour mince pies, they want classic and delicious mince pies without too much messing. When you go to The Fat Duck or whatever you want an experience and accept a bit of weirdness. When you go to the supermarket you expect food that tastes like, well... food.

I'd give them a call as feedback and see what happens. I'd probably focus on the unhelpful shelf pricing.

I contacted Tesco about their uneven quantity of coconut liquorice allsorts in their bags and they've gone all out to find out why and I'm awaiting a mystery parcel. Hoping its not full of coconut liquorice allsorts I didn't ask for anything, or want a refund, just wanted to let them know I only had one of my favourites in the bag (those round blue/pink ones with the liquorice jelly stuff in the middle!). Very eagerly waiting my surprise.