5mo ago

Criminal charges filed against HelloFresh

www.rnz.co.nz

The Commerce Commission has filed criminal charges against meal delivery company HelloFresh New Zealand for alleged misleading behaviour.
The regulator claims the company misled customers in cold calls trying to get discontinued subscribers to sign up again.

The claim related to conduct between February 2022 and July 2023, when previous HelloFresh customers were offered vouchers without being told that accepting them would reactivate their subscription, the Commission said.

7 comments

My wife signed up for a trial of it 3 years ago. At least 3 times a week now, we get ads from them begging us to sign up again.
- I enjoyed using them for a while due to a number of things, but now have stopped as my roommate and I trade off making meals for each other. Getting requests to join back in heavily misleading DO NOT BEND envelopes. Fortunately I don't get anything like phone calls
- I have their number blocked. I've done a couple of trials with them, but only ever the first couple with the biggest discount, then cancel.
  
  I do this too, but even with the 50% discounts I’ve decided it’s not worth it. The produce is so limited (usually carrots, onions and slaw for every meal) and all the single use packaging makes me want to cry. One box gave me 6 small packs of slivered almonds.
Ah yes, throw the minimum wage call centre staff under the bus for what is clearly a systemic problem.
We used to occasionally use them if the discount is big enough to make it comparable to our typical grocery bill, but after how badly they fucked up last week Never Again.
Busy weekend, so put in an order for delivery Sunday afternoon
Saturday morning get a text saying "sorry, we can't do deliveries on Sunday this week, you'll get your box Monday before 6pm, we'll give you a credit for the delivery fee". Fine, annoying, but have enough stuff in the pantry and freezer to put a meal together
Monday evening rolls around, 6pm comes and goes, still no food. Have scrounged another meal together for me, my wife and my toddler. Get the toddler to bed at 7pm, then call the help line - they clearly have not been told that something is going wrong, are actually super helpful and try to figure out what is happening and apologise a bunch
At 8:30pm get another text saying "yeah, our linehaul is fucked, we can't get you the food, we'll give you a credit"
Call up the help line again cos fuck no you don't get to give me a credit when you've taken the money and supplied nothing. Again, call centre people are really helpful but absolutely have no idea that this is going on, eventually get a refund
For a company whose core function is logistics, they seem really bad at doing logistics. Also, I've worked in call centres before; if something like that is going down that is going to affect a big load of customers and generate calls, you tell the call centre so they don't get caught out by angry people
They're fucking cunts. Very big on the "here's the notification email about your subscription resuming, but it's too late to cancel" thing. Never touching them again.

7 comments