Around the 4th of July, we put a bag of Orville Redenbacher's popcorn in the microwave. We stood by it, waiting to hear it begin to pop. Within 30 seconds, smoke started to billow out of the microwave. We opened the microwave door, and even more smoke poured out and set off the smoke alarm. The popcorn package was scorched and our home was filled with smoke, all within 30 seconds, way less time than it takes to pop the contents according to the package directions.
The next day we reported this to ConAgra Foods, Inc. We were afraid that the fumes could be toxic, since it sure did not look like popcorn in the bag. They said they would send us coupons for more popcorn, something we did not want. We had our next-door neighbor, who is a fireman, look at the popcorn package, and he agreed with us that it certainly did not look at all like popcorn in there. He suggested that it might be plastic of some kind and that it looked like a solid square of something. Our microwave was ruined because we could not get the smoke smell out of it. One of their customer support people told us to put a cinnamon stick in some water and microwave it, and the smell would be gone. Obviously it did not work and only put more smoke smell into the house.
We contacted ConAgra again, and they said someone else would contact us. They asked us for a photo of the microwave and asked us to send them the scorched bag and contents. We sent these things to them and requested some kind of reimbursement for the new microwave we had to buy.
Several months later, we received a letter saying that ConAgra's lab had evaluated the contents and claimed that it was popcorn inside the bag and that we had just let it cook too long. Basically, they called us liars and dismissed our claim. They gave us instructions for how to correctly pop popcorn. If we had, as they claim, left the bag in the microwave for too long, we would have no reason to pursue this for as long as we have. I do not care anymore whether we get reimbursed a lousy $79 for a new microwave. I am just very concerned about their lack of concern for a very real problem: foreign material in their popcorn bags and an inability to admit they made a mistake.
They used their own biased lab to do the tests. They would not believe that it had been in the microwave for under 30 seconds. And of course now we do not have the package as evidence, because we sent it to them to evaluate, trusting them to be fair. We thought they might be concerned about quality assurance. Wrong.
We called ConAgra one more time to dispute their letter to us, but they were unwilling to discuss it any further.
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