Those of you who have been reading this blog for a few years might recall that in the winter of 2015, I became familiar with Hello Fresh, a service that sends weekly “cook boxes”.  The boxes contain all of the ingredients needed for three to five recipes per week.  Although Hello Fresh’s customer service left much to be desired, I remained a member for about two years.  Bill liked the convenience of the service and having to translate the recipes was doing good things for his German skills.

The day we got SEVEN boxes from Hello Fresh!  And then they sent me an email, blaming me for this.

Of course, we did have a pretty serious billing SNAFU at first.  One time, I ended up with four boxes of fruit and three classic meal boxes, when I only wanted one box of fruit and one meal box.  It took several emails and a phone call to straighten out the mess, but it did get fixed and I only ended up having to pay for one box of food.  I got to keep the rest, so Bill took the extras to work for his colleagues to raid.

After a couple of years of maintaining the service, I determined that I didn’t like Hello Fresh that much.  I didn’t enjoy a lot of the recipes and didn’t like having to worry about trying to pause boxes for the many weeks I didn’t want the meals.  As of November 4, 2016, I canceled my account…  or so I thought.  I even got a personal email from one of their customer service people confirming that my account was closed.  For two years, I only got the occasional sales email from them, which I totally ignored.

A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I got a “welcome” email from Hello Fresh that was dated February 2015.  I thought it was a mistake, since the date was from three years ago.  I ignored it, and didn’t hear anything else from them.  Apparently, ignoring them was a mistake, because today, I got an email from Hello Fresh letting me know my payment failed.  I responded with an admittedly pissy “Why are you sending me emails?  I canceled my account two years ago.”  Then they sent me another failure notice, probably because I also used to get their fruit box.  So I sent an even pissier response, asking them to stop sending me emails and letting them know that their shitty customer service was the main reason I canceled my account.

You’d think that when the payment fails, the company wouldn’t send the product.  Unfortunately, that’s not how it works at Hello Fresh.  I got a notice that I’m getting a box tomorrow, even though I never ordered one.

Then I logged into my account, which I hadn’t done in about two years.  I noticed that somehow, my account was reactivated.  I didn’t get a good look at this week’s recipes, but I did notice one of them is loaded with mushrooms, which come from hell as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t even like looking at mushrooms, let alone eating them or putting them in my refrigerator.  So I went on UPS’s Web site to see if I can either arrange to have the box sent back to Hello Fresh or cancel the delivery.  It appears that I’m not able to do that.  I plan to refuse the shipment.

I see I’m not the only one who’s had a bad time with Hello Fresh. Here’s an account that went viral.  It was written by a guy who did Hello Fresh in the Netherlands.

I’m not in the best mood today because a number of bad things happened before it was even noon.  I took Zane in for a dental and the vet found an oral tumor.  She thinks it’s benign and actually showed the tumor to me.  Hopefully, she’s right, but I’ve about had my fill of canine cancer.  Aside from that, we’re moving, so this news comes at an inopportune time.  Zane is about to turn ten years old and is sprouting new lumps left and right.  I doubt we will do anything aggressive, even if the lumps are cancerous.  Still, it sucks.

It’s a good thing there’s wine.  I have a feeling I will need it.