You would expect a product that has been adulterated with the foul-tasting chlorinated sugar SUCKralose to be labeled as "diet" at the very least, or with a huge Mr. Yuk symbol if you're like me. I see from reviews on Amazon that I'm not the only one who resents this common craporate practice (Coca Cola's Nestea Pomegranate Iced Tea is merely one of several other examples). I bought Cafe Escapes Dark and Milk Hot Chocolates in K-Cup packages shortly after I bought the machine, but it was just last week when I tried one (the dark) for the first time. Except for one my wife bought at McDonalds, I had never tasted such a gross imitation of hot chocolate. I looked at the ingredient list and, to no surprise, found the culprit, sucralose, as the last ingredient. There is no excuse for this whatsoever (in fact, in the case of the Nestea, the first ingredient was HFCS!)
I called Green Mountain's customer service and was told to take it back to the store where I had bought it, which I found unacceptable. Why should I waste my gas trying to return an opened product to a store where I MIGHT have bought it, if memory serves me correctly, and they MIGHT agree to refund my money. No, I demanded that THEY authorized the return and refund me the full suggested retail price as compensation for their subterfuge. These craporate robots refused and countered by saying that the product was not labeled "natural, " so they could put whatever they wanted into it, no matter how vile. (Not that a "natural" label would have mattered, since even Hansen's "Natural" Soda contains this Frankenfood.)
I finally faxed a complaint to the CEO, to which I have yet to receive a response:
Dear
Sir:
It seems quite clear from several unsatisfactory conversations I have had with your customer service department that there exists a universal complacency among those representatives with dishonest and borderline hostile labeling (or lack thereof) on products like the Cafe Escapes Milk and Dark Hot Chocolates, namely the fact that the
adulteration with the foul-tasting chlorinated sugar sucralose appears nowhere on the packaging except for being hidden at the bottom of the ingredient list. It does not even qualify as merely marginally deceitful, as it might if it were touted as a low calorie product.
I cannot say that I am surprised by this attitude, which I find to be endemic to the current business climate, which has gone from the pre-Reagan philosophy of The customer is always right to the present-day There's a customer born every minute. I, for one, will be using my Keurig machine exclusively with the adapter that allows me to substitute the large hoard of Gevalia Kaffe I have accumulated, rather than purchase products from a company that
refused to rectify the matter by sending me an authorization to return this defective product for a full refund of the suggested retail price, since I am unable to return it to whatever merchant sold it to me without the receipt I navely discarded weeks before trying this grossly inferior product.
Disgustedly
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