Hello Fresh - annoyed with them and no customer service available

[aiwblam]

I have had 5 Hello Fresh boxes. I think it's a great concept and the meals taste fantastic.

However the problems:

1st box - just 2 dented tins (I mean really dented, more dented than I have ever seen in a supermarket). I replaced them myself, didn't mind as the meals were nice.

2nd box - great

3rd box - extremely overripe squashy tomatoes (OK, I replaced them myself, not much hassle)

3rd box - one meal was missing the chicken entirely. The desert was just completely missing. Random items were added that didn't relate to any of the meals (bread rolls, yoghurt). Thought it was a bit much to rob me of chicken and desert entirely so called customer services. Refunded the desert, apparently credited the chicken, no idea where to, certainly not my bank account as only the desert came back into there.

4th box - one meal is missing 4 ingredients (tomato puree, mango chutney, chicken stock paste and a green chilli). FFS. Report function on the app really clunky, didn't let me report it all. No answer on online chat. No email address visible anywhere.

This is supposed to be making meals easier, not causing this kind of pissing about going to get ingredients and trying to get stuff credited or refunded. I'm really fed up with it and wonder whether I should just keep the recipe cards and buy all the ingredients myself. At least I know I'll actually have the items.

Is my experience the exception or is this what happens to people all the time? I've pushed my next box back because I haven't got the time to mess around like this in the week!

I've also just cancelled. DD has T1 diabetes and we have to carb count everything she eats or drinks. Having a meal with the total carbs listed with the recipe is like a little holiday (counting is pretty relentless). Number of carbs informs insulin dose. Too much insulin can lead to hypos - which can lead to unconsciousness, hospitalisation or worse.

The errors in the carb counts on both meals and individual items were so far out that they were dangerous, and it took several hours to get DD back to a good place after dosing based on the HF numbers. DD crying and scared. All good in the end, but - and this is the cause of the cancellation - Hello Fresh simply did not take this seriously; rubbish customer service. Just a vague "we'll pass this on". Nope.

We've had 3 HF boxes and the only issue so far is ingredients turning up for something we didn't order.
We had Gousto before and had two items missing and both times only realised when we were cooking or about to cook. So now we always check everything when we unpack it.

I prefer the quality of the HF ingredients but I prefer the variety of Gousto so I'm not sure what to stay with.

Just cancelled after my first free box from a friend. The meals all seem to be very samey and a bit boring. £30 for two meals on my next delivery... I could do almost a full weeks shop for £40. A lot of the veg we had was looking a bit past it. Cool concept if you have the money, but not for us.

We ordered it for the first time 3 weeks ago and a whole meal was missing so that was it for us.

We much prefer Gousto, had a couple of small issues over the last year like a broken egg but they credit you this money.

So I got this week’s box.

One of the ice pouches was punctured so stuff got wet.
One punctured sachet of curry paste.
Only one wrong ingredient though!

I had time so immediately made one of the meals, the one with the most wet/messed up ingredients. The irony is that the meal was absolutely delicious. Why can’t they get the bag packing right???????? It’s such a great business idea. They gave me yet another credit and I began to feel bad about the people who own this business - it’s just being run so badly.

My first one (and last) was poor. An ingredient missing for each meal, leaking packets. Really unimpressed. Don't know why I bothered really, I was just curious.

Have you tried Gousto? It is much better IMO. Better choice of recipes, I rarely have any issues with food quality and you can pause your subscription after ordering your first box. I find the whole having to remember to go online each week to skip boxes a hassle with HF.
If you fancy trying it I have a code for 60% off your first box and then 30% off any additional boxes ordered in the first month. cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promo_code=NICOL274409&utm_source=iosapp

Having had problems with each of our first four boxes, boxes 5 and 6 were delivered on time, complete and no spillages.

I find they are not so good for gluten free though.

Literally read this thread and have adverts for Hello Fresh on it!

Yep, I cancelled after my third box.
First one had no recipe cards. I know they are available online, but I prefer the cards.
Second one had two meats (chicken and pork mince) which had a use before date of the day they were delivered.
The third one had one complete meal missing, no chicken for two of the remaining meals and a bag of lentils that had split under the weight of two butternut squashes. Oh, and three random recipe cards.
Total rubbish.
I got a refund, but only against future orders which certainly will not be happening.

@Ratched if you push them, they will refund the money to your card. Last week’s box arrived with 2 of the meats missing, no cheese and no soured cream. They did agree to refund the money to our card and this week’s box came from Gousto 🙈.

Why don't you try Gousto? I recommend, been using them for over a year every week.

I used to alternate between them and Gousto but haven’t had a hello fresh box for a while because of repeated issues with missing/poor quality ingredients. Gousto are so much better and in the rare case of a problem it’s easy to report using the app and generally dealt with quickly.

I see someone beat me to it with a referral code but here’s mine too if anyone wants to try it, at the minute they are offering 60% off first box and 30% off any others in the first month

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promo_code=JOANN137828&utm_source=iosapp

@LadyCatStark thank you. Too late for me, I have deleted account etc, but very useful info for anyone else having problems