how to complain about M+S food?

[cocoboots]

Picked up Xmas food on 24th. Cooke did yesterday.
Boneless turkey crown was still undercooked well after 2.15hr cooking time
Caramel chocolate cheesecake tastes vile- way too sickly sweet (and we eat cheesecake a lot in our house!)
Salmon terrines were in a very soggy box that was falling apart.

I'm more bothered about the cost, these items were a treat, far more expensive than food i'd normally purchase and nobody was wowed by it.

I just spoke to someone on the live chat who told me to take the packaging and receptors back to the store. I no longer have the packaging and I only have the original email confirmation.

Is there any other way of getting something back for this? Even just a token food discount voucher for my next shop?

I think I know why the box was soggy. I bought a dessert from my local store and the freezers were massively frozen up - one basically had snow in it covering all the desserts. I stupidly bought one which my daughter liked the look of but by the time we got home the snow/ice on the box had melted making it completely wet through and the dessert inside had broken up. It tasted nice but looked dreadful.

OP: I am sorry you did not like what you bought but that is hardly the shop's fault. As a PP said chalk it up to experience - you chose to buy it- didn't like it - don't buy it again

Your fault you undercooked the Turkey. Not theirs.

If it makes you feel better, complain away.

Incidentally, we ordered most of our food ( including Turkey) from M and S.

‘‘Twas absolutely fucking delicious

wasn't impressed with our turkey crown from there either.

Won't buy one again.

Did anyone else have the luxury vegetable box from M&S? We had it this year to make life a bit easier as it was just the 4 of us and I was so disappointed with most of it. The potatoes were grim (sort of chewy; what's that about?!), the parnsips were horrible (had a weird plastic after taste) and the cauliflower cheese was hard (even after almost 15 minutes more cooking time than stated). The sprouts were lovely but I did finish them off with a quick blast in a frying pan to crisp up the bacon bits which I think made all the difference.

All in all, it wasn't worth anywhere near £25 and I definitely won't be bothering again.

I think your oven must not be heating correctly. I cooked an entire 5kg turkey in 1hr 50 mins and it was perfect.

@cocoboots did you cover the crown in foil? I have one from sainsburys a few years ago and didn't realise it needed to be covered for part of the cooking. Apparently it was very dry don't eat it myself

I find the food to order stuff is rather hit and miss, with some lovely food, and others a bit meh. And you don't get a chance to try beforehand.

Bought most of our Xmas food from Iceland Food Warehouse. 15lb frozen turkey for 12 of us, really tasty and succulent. Took a few days to thaw out and took 4 hours to cook to perfection.

We had the lux veg box and it was lovely. The potatoes are never exactly same as done from scratch but they had lots of flavour and not at all grainy like the frozen ones. Cauli was too saucy admittedly but the allotted time in the oven had it perfectly cooked and tender.

TBH I though it was well worth £25 to be able to bung stuff in the oven with no hassle?

I'm not a big parsnip fan but they were wellcooked and soft, my own are always hard however long I cook for. You did decant them onto a tray didn't you?

Aldi fresh turkey was beautiful and very good price!

The only problem I genuinely see is soggy salmon terrines but was that a storage issue??

The turkey taking longer is likely your cooker or was stored in to cold an environment then by fed straight in the oven.

Cheesecake sounds like it should be sweet with caramel and stuff.

Sorry you were disappointed with your food though, it does suck as it's all about the food for me. Maybe next year test the starters and pudding on different days on the run up if you are buying shop bought so you can gauge and not be left disappointed.

And the prize for the best flounce of 2017 goes to......

"I undercooked my turkey, didn't particularly like the chocolate caramel dessert but how dare you tell me it's not M&Ss fault!!!"

"Oh and you're all just VILE!!!"

Where is the MN ROFL emoji when you need it??

Sounds like buyers remorse to me, nothing actually wrong with any of the food, yet you want a refund. You knew the price before ordering.
Worst type of customer

I can only asceratain from the OP’s post that it is a pi$$ take. Incredible!

Did you expect everyone to say that you are entitled to a refund?

You can’t cook a turkey and found a pudding too sweet! -How was the cranberry sauce - did it have too many cranberries in it?

I always find that nothing is sweet enough any more so I am getting one of these cheesecakes as soon as I can,

Hotel, when you ordered, did it say the weight of it?

Probably, however it said it served 12-14, so even allowing for the greedy bunch we are I thought it would be good for 7. It was good for 4.

I was educated with pounds and oz so grams don't always mean much to me. 12-14 people I can visualise, I think they meant to print 12-14 toddlers.

I once ordered a joint of beef from M&S for Chr, Day - would always prefer turkey but my mother didn't like it.

It was supposed to serve 8, and we were only 6 anyway, but their idea of portions must be quite different from mine - it looked so small. Had to put it in the freezer and buy another that wouldn't provide stingy portions with next to nothing left over for sandwiches.
Other than that I've always found M&S food reliable enough.

RJnomore1 yes, I definitely decanted them onto a tray

I think with pre prepared food it's mostly just down to taste isn't it? H thought the roasties were perfectly nice. I wouldn't bother complaining but I'll not bother buying it again. The no hassle of it was wonderful though; not having to spend most of the morning peeling and chopping!

The roasties were not as good as if I had spent the morning peeling chopping and heating goose fat then turning and basting but I thought the difference was less than the effort required!!😁

If the cheese cake is any thing like the one on the web site the second ingredient listed is sugar.

Sugar and it's variants are then listed a further 4 times in list.

It's obvious it's a teeth dissolving mass of sweet.

If the cheese cake is any thing like the one on the web site the second ingredient listed is sugar
Lovely, I 'm having one of those tomorrow.

With the turkey I'm wondering if you have a fan oven? I was reading up on this and a lot of modern instructions assume you have a fan oven. If you haven't then you need to increase the oven temperature by approx 20 degrees. Conversely if using an old recipe you need to decrease the oven by the same amount.

I ordered everything you did plus a lot of extras. They warn you at the time of picking up to ensure your fridge is set to the right temperature and also that cooking times are a guideline because every turkey is different and you might need to adjust. So I think the undercooked turkey and soggy terrines is probably something that could have been avoided had you followed instructions. Regarding the cheesecake - I was told it was sweet by M&S which is why I bought the lemon one too.