Here's an update on my complaint about Wal-Mart selling expired lasagna.
In addition to letting the Wal-Mart itself know of the expired food, I also emailed the company that makes the lasagna. I explained that I went specifically to the store to purchase their lasagna but was unable to because the products on the shelf were all expired.
They took my complaint seriously and have escalated the issue to the local rep for their products. They are also sending me coupons for free lasagna.
Getting an actual response from the company and free coupons shows that companies DO care about their products and public perception of their products. And they want to know if there is a problem. They can't fix the consumer's problem if they don't know about it. That's why I speak up. Complaining about something to people who can't do anything about it is a waste of time and energy. It's futile. Nothing is going to change because you're complaining to the wrong people! Sure, your friends and family might want to hear about your experiences with a certain retailer, restaurant or business. But can they do anything except offer an ear or a shoulder to lean on?
If you have a problem with a store or a product, make your voice heard to those who can rectify the situation. Your voice matters!
Who got Billie's goat? Companies who try to rip me off in one way, shape or form! This blog is devoted to letting others know of their antics and my progress in making things right. I hope my little corner of the blogging world motivates other people to learn their rights as a consumer and to stand up for themselves if they've been wronged
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
My Cancer Kitty...
She had her second surgery the middle of July and already 2 lumps have reappeared. She just had her sutures and staples removed a week ago. VAS is a seriously persistent cancer. We've decided for not to go the route of the oncologist for a few reasons. One of which is her sheer hatred for the carrier and car rides. One of her recent visits involved me standing on my washer with a flashlight in my mouth trying to extract her from the wall of our basement. Once she's in the carrier, she's equally unhappy. The nearest oncologist is about 2 1/2 hours away. I don't want to keep putting her through being put in a kennel and car rides.
The other issue is how fast it comes back. This is obviously a hardy cancer and amputation, from what I've read, is the only way to really give her a fighting chance.
The other reason for our decision is the almighty dollar. It sucks that finances have to be considered in something like this but we have several pets and have to consider finances for all of the other pets. Spending $1000's on one cat can take away from money spent on the other pets. We've already spent an awful lot of money and haven't really gotten too far in helping my kitty. Amputation is a relatively inexpensive solution to the problem. It's not the optimal solution by any stretch, but from my research, no one who was in our situation regrets the amputation.
I'm sick that I've had to consider finances in making health choices for my kitty, but it's a fact of life that can't be avoided. I do plan on contacting the manufacturer of the rabies vaccine, but there is no guarantee that we'll get reimbursed, and if we do, what amount. I'm facing an uphill battle given that this particular manufacture isn't known to be all that generous with reimbursement and neither vet is being particularly helpful, so I definitely have the odds stacked against me.
And honestly, I can say that even if I knew we'd be reimbursed for all of her expenses, I wouldn't put my cat through chemo and/or radiation, just because of the traveling issue itself. Cats are very sensitive to stress and being stuffed in a carrier for a 5 hour round trip drive is definitely stressful. Stress doesn't help anyone heal.
Once all is said and done with my kitty, then I'll pursue reimbursement. Doesn't make sense to me to begin the process just yet, as she still has at least one surgery ahead of her. As I'm typing this, she's looking at me with love and total trust in her eyes. I wonder if she'll still look at me that way after she's a tripod?
The other issue is how fast it comes back. This is obviously a hardy cancer and amputation, from what I've read, is the only way to really give her a fighting chance.
The other reason for our decision is the almighty dollar. It sucks that finances have to be considered in something like this but we have several pets and have to consider finances for all of the other pets. Spending $1000's on one cat can take away from money spent on the other pets. We've already spent an awful lot of money and haven't really gotten too far in helping my kitty. Amputation is a relatively inexpensive solution to the problem. It's not the optimal solution by any stretch, but from my research, no one who was in our situation regrets the amputation.
I'm sick that I've had to consider finances in making health choices for my kitty, but it's a fact of life that can't be avoided. I do plan on contacting the manufacturer of the rabies vaccine, but there is no guarantee that we'll get reimbursed, and if we do, what amount. I'm facing an uphill battle given that this particular manufacture isn't known to be all that generous with reimbursement and neither vet is being particularly helpful, so I definitely have the odds stacked against me.
And honestly, I can say that even if I knew we'd be reimbursed for all of her expenses, I wouldn't put my cat through chemo and/or radiation, just because of the traveling issue itself. Cats are very sensitive to stress and being stuffed in a carrier for a 5 hour round trip drive is definitely stressful. Stress doesn't help anyone heal.
Once all is said and done with my kitty, then I'll pursue reimbursement. Doesn't make sense to me to begin the process just yet, as she still has at least one surgery ahead of her. As I'm typing this, she's looking at me with love and total trust in her eyes. I wonder if she'll still look at me that way after she's a tripod?
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Update on Walmart and more
My update for WalMart and their expired food is lackluster. Yesterday was a busy day but I did call and speak to someone who actually seemed unhappy and a little irritated that they were selling food past the expiration date. I had thought I'd ask for the manager but I was on hold forever as it was and had an appointment, so I figured I'd better make this quick. The woman I spoke with asked me all kinds of questions and said she'd have it taken care of immediately. Yay. That was easy., I like being able to take care of problems while sitting on my chair with a cat on me. I will need to go back and make sure the old food was taken off the shelf but I have a good feeling! Yay for caring Wal-Mart employees! I'm hoping she's not a rare breed.
About a week or so ago I was in a pet store. They had a great deal on shelled peanut halves. A 20# bag for $24.99 less a $10 discount. My chickens love these as do my bunny and the various forms of wildlife that visit here. So that was a steal compared to other prices I've seen.
I got to the register and it rang up as $26.99. I was going to say something but I thought maybe I looked at the price on the shelf wrong. I'd investigate next time I went in.
So I went back in yesterday and investigated the shelf prices where the peanuts were. Sure enough, $24.99 was on the shelf. Ha! I was right!
So while making my pet food purchases, I brought this to her attention. There was a little confusion at first - she said the price WAS $26.99. I said no, not according to the price on your shelf. So she actually had to walk over to the shelf and look (how rude of me to make someone do their job! The horror!). She came back and said yes, it was $24.99. Then she said but we already took $10 off. I told her that the $10 was to come off the actual price of $24.99 not the invisible price of $26.99. It was as though I was stealing the $2 from her pocket. All I wanted was the actual price I was supposed to pay. There was nothing shady there.
So instead of doing a credit she combined it with my current purchase. I didn't care how she did it I just wanted to pay the correct amount.
She does the credit, rings up my new purchases and my bill is over $80. Now, that's not an unusual amount for me to pay when purchasing pet food - but for 2 bags of premium food, one of which had a $10 discount on it - that was a little off. So we stared at each other for a minute and I told her that's not right. She sighed and realized she rang up the holistic bag of cat food twice (those are about $35/bag so that $10 off coupon on the bag made me do a cartwheel in my head!). So she took off the extra bag and finally, all was well. I had my $2 refund from being overcharged and she took the $10 coupon off the holistic food and even got the sale price right on the other bag of food I purchased. Finally.
It never ceases to amaze me that even with computers and just scanning the upc code, how many times I can be overcharged, either by human error or by computer error (which usually is still a form of human error - wrong price in the computer!). It just proves you've got to look at what the cashier is doing and look at your receipt. Don't blindly walk out of the store and stuff the receipt in your pocket because you may have just paid more than you should have. And who wants to do that?!
About a week or so ago I was in a pet store. They had a great deal on shelled peanut halves. A 20# bag for $24.99 less a $10 discount. My chickens love these as do my bunny and the various forms of wildlife that visit here. So that was a steal compared to other prices I've seen.
I got to the register and it rang up as $26.99. I was going to say something but I thought maybe I looked at the price on the shelf wrong. I'd investigate next time I went in.
So I went back in yesterday and investigated the shelf prices where the peanuts were. Sure enough, $24.99 was on the shelf. Ha! I was right!
So while making my pet food purchases, I brought this to her attention. There was a little confusion at first - she said the price WAS $26.99. I said no, not according to the price on your shelf. So she actually had to walk over to the shelf and look (how rude of me to make someone do their job! The horror!). She came back and said yes, it was $24.99. Then she said but we already took $10 off. I told her that the $10 was to come off the actual price of $24.99 not the invisible price of $26.99. It was as though I was stealing the $2 from her pocket. All I wanted was the actual price I was supposed to pay. There was nothing shady there.
So instead of doing a credit she combined it with my current purchase. I didn't care how she did it I just wanted to pay the correct amount.
She does the credit, rings up my new purchases and my bill is over $80. Now, that's not an unusual amount for me to pay when purchasing pet food - but for 2 bags of premium food, one of which had a $10 discount on it - that was a little off. So we stared at each other for a minute and I told her that's not right. She sighed and realized she rang up the holistic bag of cat food twice (those are about $35/bag so that $10 off coupon on the bag made me do a cartwheel in my head!). So she took off the extra bag and finally, all was well. I had my $2 refund from being overcharged and she took the $10 coupon off the holistic food and even got the sale price right on the other bag of food I purchased. Finally.
It never ceases to amaze me that even with computers and just scanning the upc code, how many times I can be overcharged, either by human error or by computer error (which usually is still a form of human error - wrong price in the computer!). It just proves you've got to look at what the cashier is doing and look at your receipt. Don't blindly walk out of the store and stuff the receipt in your pocket because you may have just paid more than you should have. And who wants to do that?!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Wal-Mart selling expired food
I don't go looking for stuff to complain about. Really, I don't. But sometimes things just present themselves to me, like tonight at Wal-Mart.
My hubby takes his lunch to work. He's not a PB and J kind of guy, so lunch for him is never a no-brainer for me. So a while back, I found a refrigerated lasagna product that he liked. It wasn't too spicy. It wasn't too saucy. It cooked in a short amount of time (he only gets 1/2 hour for lunch) and it was readily available at Wal-Mart as soon as I walked into the door. Yay! We can add this lunch product into the lunch rotation!
Now, because we've been 'burned' before, I rarely blindly buy refrigerated food without looking at the date on the product.
I wanted to buy this lasagna about 2 weeks ago but I noticed that the use by date was 2 days past. I dug through the refrigerated case and found one within date. Groovy.. all is well. Didn't give the expiration date issue another thought. I mean, who hasn't looked at the date on a product and put it down and stood on their tip toes and reached in the back to find one with a better expiration date? Okay, maybe you're not all 5' tall - so maybe no tip-toes were involved, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Expiration dates matter!
I know that sometimes in a grocery store that expired stuff doesn't get pulled off the shelf until a day or two past it's expiration. It's annoying but it's a fact of life, at least in my shopping experience. I never complained about it because if it was meat, it was usually past it's selling prime by hours (I typically shop after midnight) and I figure when the morning shift comes in, it'll be taken care of. If the date bothered me, I just didn't buy it or found one with a more acceptable date. After all, I'm not the food patrol.
Fast forward 10 days. I was in Wal-Mart tonight and wanted to pick up lasagna for the hubby's lunch this week. I checked the first lasagna - 'enjoy or freeze by July 20, 2011'. I put that one down as it's August 1, 2011 and upon further examination the package had a slight top bulge to it that meat gets when it's on the funky side. I picked up another lasagna and it also read "enjoy or freeze by July 20, 2011'. Ditto for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th lasagna. That was the entire stock on the shelf. 7 expired lasagnas with slightly bulging tops.
Wal-Mart is selling food that is 12 days past it's sell-by date.
Not only are they selling refrigerated products well past their sell-by date, they are also selling baked goods that are past their 'sell by' date as well. Their pies (those tiny lunch size ones) had dates on them back to July 30th. This isn't the first time there have been pies for sale past their 'sell by' date at this location. But again, I just looked until I found one with a better expiration date.
Again, it's August 1st. Now, I highly doubt anyone is going to get ill from eating an apple pie 2 days past it's prime. It might just not be as yummy. But eating a product with meat in it twelve days or longer past it's prime? That's probably going to result in logging some serious bathroom time at the very least and not really a position you want to be in while at work.
So I intend to call Wal-Mart. And I'm not going to be happy with an 'um, okay, we'll let someone know'. This is meat nearly two entire weeks past it's prime. If I don't take action, I wonder how much longer it will sit there, tempting some hurried shopper looking to fulfill an Italian craving for dinner... particularly one with bad eyesight. Those 'enjoy by' dates aren't the easiest to see... a pale yellow on a black container and it's some of them are a little smudged. I even double checked to be sure I wasn't reading 'July 28 as opposed to July 20' since the '0' and the '8' look similar (at least through my eyes). And even then, it was still expired food. But the date on the 7 containers of lasagna was most definitely, without a doubt, July 20, 2011.
These are two products, past their freshness date, that I had planned on purchasing at our new Wal-Mart. I purposely went there to buy those two items. I didn't just stumble onto them. And this isn't my first experience with food past it's sell by date at this Wal-Mart. I wonder how many other products are sitting on the shelf, past their prime, just waiting to make someone sick - not just at Wal-Mart but anywhere food is sold?
Update: I was doing a search on expired foods in grocery stores and came across two articles/blogs of interest. One was done by NBC news and lists Wal-Mart as the 9th worst offender of selling expired food and health violations out of the 10 they listed. NBC report on expired foods in grocery stores "9) Wal-Mart and Save-a-Lot. Not far behind we had two chains tied for ninth place? Wal-Mart and Save-a-lot. Over 10 inspections both averaged 9 critical violations.".
And here's from a coupon blog Blogger exposes grocery store expired food. In her blog, the food was from 2007 in a Chicago store, so I guess maybe finding food 12 days expired isn't too bad - but still - do you want to spend money on expired food to potentially get ill from it?!!
My hubby takes his lunch to work. He's not a PB and J kind of guy, so lunch for him is never a no-brainer for me. So a while back, I found a refrigerated lasagna product that he liked. It wasn't too spicy. It wasn't too saucy. It cooked in a short amount of time (he only gets 1/2 hour for lunch) and it was readily available at Wal-Mart as soon as I walked into the door. Yay! We can add this lunch product into the lunch rotation!
Now, because we've been 'burned' before, I rarely blindly buy refrigerated food without looking at the date on the product.
I wanted to buy this lasagna about 2 weeks ago but I noticed that the use by date was 2 days past. I dug through the refrigerated case and found one within date. Groovy.. all is well. Didn't give the expiration date issue another thought. I mean, who hasn't looked at the date on a product and put it down and stood on their tip toes and reached in the back to find one with a better expiration date? Okay, maybe you're not all 5' tall - so maybe no tip-toes were involved, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Expiration dates matter!
I know that sometimes in a grocery store that expired stuff doesn't get pulled off the shelf until a day or two past it's expiration. It's annoying but it's a fact of life, at least in my shopping experience. I never complained about it because if it was meat, it was usually past it's selling prime by hours (I typically shop after midnight) and I figure when the morning shift comes in, it'll be taken care of. If the date bothered me, I just didn't buy it or found one with a more acceptable date. After all, I'm not the food patrol.
Fast forward 10 days. I was in Wal-Mart tonight and wanted to pick up lasagna for the hubby's lunch this week. I checked the first lasagna - 'enjoy or freeze by July 20, 2011'. I put that one down as it's August 1, 2011 and upon further examination the package had a slight top bulge to it that meat gets when it's on the funky side. I picked up another lasagna and it also read "enjoy or freeze by July 20, 2011'. Ditto for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th lasagna. That was the entire stock on the shelf. 7 expired lasagnas with slightly bulging tops.
Not only are they selling refrigerated products well past their sell-by date, they are also selling baked goods that are past their 'sell by' date as well. Their pies (those tiny lunch size ones) had dates on them back to July 30th. This isn't the first time there have been pies for sale past their 'sell by' date at this location. But again, I just looked until I found one with a better expiration date.
Again, it's August 1st. Now, I highly doubt anyone is going to get ill from eating an apple pie 2 days past it's prime. It might just not be as yummy. But eating a product with meat in it twelve days or longer past it's prime? That's probably going to result in logging some serious bathroom time at the very least and not really a position you want to be in while at work.
So I intend to call Wal-Mart. And I'm not going to be happy with an 'um, okay, we'll let someone know'. This is meat nearly two entire weeks past it's prime. If I don't take action, I wonder how much longer it will sit there, tempting some hurried shopper looking to fulfill an Italian craving for dinner... particularly one with bad eyesight. Those 'enjoy by' dates aren't the easiest to see... a pale yellow on a black container and it's some of them are a little smudged. I even double checked to be sure I wasn't reading 'July 28 as opposed to July 20' since the '0' and the '8' look similar (at least through my eyes). And even then, it was still expired food. But the date on the 7 containers of lasagna was most definitely, without a doubt, July 20, 2011.
These are two products, past their freshness date, that I had planned on purchasing at our new Wal-Mart. I purposely went there to buy those two items. I didn't just stumble onto them. And this isn't my first experience with food past it's sell by date at this Wal-Mart. I wonder how many other products are sitting on the shelf, past their prime, just waiting to make someone sick - not just at Wal-Mart but anywhere food is sold?
Update: I was doing a search on expired foods in grocery stores and came across two articles/blogs of interest. One was done by NBC news and lists Wal-Mart as the 9th worst offender of selling expired food and health violations out of the 10 they listed. NBC report on expired foods in grocery stores "9) Wal-Mart and Save-a-Lot. Not far behind we had two chains tied for ninth place? Wal-Mart and Save-a-lot. Over 10 inspections both averaged 9 critical violations.".
And here's from a coupon blog Blogger exposes grocery store expired food. In her blog, the food was from 2007 in a Chicago store, so I guess maybe finding food 12 days expired isn't too bad - but still - do you want to spend money on expired food to potentially get ill from it?!!
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