ComplaintsforOrganic Valley

• Initial Complaint

  06/13/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Organic valley is pulling a fraudulent act by adding an additive to its heavy whipping cream product while raising the price on the product, neglecting to update the ingredients list on the website for the product and acting as if it responding the multiple complaints on the website about the fraudulent activity. The company claims only cream is whats in the organic heavy cream yet they have added Gellan gum to their product, but on their website still are promoting their product as one ingredient only, even after many reviews and complaints about the false promotion. This has brought me much emotional distress as I have been going out of my way to pay a lot of money for so called quality heavy cream when in fact its not organic anymore more is it will just a single ingredient. I want my money back I want an explanation and I believe this conanpy should be subject to legal repercussion as they have lied to their consumers form months now.

  Business response

  06/20/2023

  Our service representatives were able to make contact with ******************* regarding her questions on our website product pages for our Heavy Whipping Cream. Through the course of conversation we identified that there were two ***'s to choose from in the left-hand site navigation and that the *** available in her area was not the one she was looking at. These products differ in their pasteurization type and also ingredients, so our service representative informed the consumer that the second *** was what would be available in her area based on distribution. ***** inquired about the possibility to do geo-targeting for our website to show only products that are available to users as they browse based on our distribution, which unfortunately is not possible at this time. We closed the case noting that we would bring this suggestion back to our web team for further analysis and potential future development. 

  Customer response

  06/22/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.
  
  We did speak over the phone, however I made it very clear that the whole left and right sku was misleading and failed to give clear directions to consumers about the ingredients in the the product they were purchasing. As the 31 reviews on Organic Valleys website mention, no consumer has clear indication that based on where they live, the might or might not purchase heavy whipping cream with added preservative. What I asked on the phone was that there be at the very least a disclaimer stating that you might or might not get additives in your heavy cream because the skus as you mention dont give out any information other than one has additive and another doesnt. Basically as a consumer Id have to call ********************** and ask why my heavy cream has additive when just months ago it didnt. To me, I felt like organic valley is intentionally misleading its customers and I just wanted to call and ask why and what can be done to inform customers better and their response was we have two absolutely similar pictures of an organic valley pint of heavy cream and you as the consumer have to have chosen the right one to see that yes we are now adding gellen gum to our heavy cream after having increased the price of the heavy cream. Because a year ago heavy cream was certainly at the very least cents cheaper. I didnt suggestion geotargeting to inform consumers. The representative summarized all that I said as that being my suggestion. Im simply a prior loyal customer of ********************** products that was shocked to learned that additives are being introduced to what was once a farm to table product and the company is doing just about nothing to inform consumers about it. The rep mentioned how a plant that produced cream from the south eats region in ******** closed down and now gellen gum had to be added to the cream as the only way to get nature that the heavy cream makes it to the stores safely but Im unable to find any such information of that online and was never told that up until I had to wait about 14 hours for a call back from organic valley to be informed of the product I was buying and the changes made. To summarize, all im saying is that it was unfortunate to see the additive in the heavy cream and even more surprising to learn that organic valley felt it did all it could do to inform consumers of the change. I think that could do just a little bit more to help bring knowledge of this change to consumers even if they state the change is supposed to be temporary because of that plant in ********. Thank you for hearing me out.
  Regards,
  
  *******************

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