A hypothetical game where food hygiene laws do not exist:
You own a business supplying meals that can be kept at room temperature for quite a lengthy period of time. Orders are sent by standard postal service, running from Monday morning to Saturday midday.The meals arrive from the factory to your business early on a Wednesday morning, but you don't know which day the meals are made - they just come in fresh on a weekly basis. Your website advises your customers that orders will be dispatched on Wednesdays and Thursdays to ensure maximum freshness on arrival.
Sometimes you have meals left over at the end of the week, but they don't have a 'sell by', or 'use by' date. The meals can be stored for a good few days, sometimes weeks depending upon the meal.
One day, a customer emails to say that their order wasn't dispatched until Friday and didn't arrive until Monday, the packer put heavy meals on top of squashable meals and everything was so rotten the meals can't possibly have been fresh when they were sent on Friday.
There is no physical proof that the customer is telling the truth, or has good judgement when it comes to freshness. You have to take the complaint on face value and the customer has to take the company's claims of freshness on face value. You do know from your own records, however, that this order wasn't dispatched until Friday.
How would you, as the business owner, respond to the complaint?
Comments (42)
Gonna call it Deja-food
:)
As the owner when this person complained to me I would say, Oh I'm very sorry that happened. How may I make that up to you?
The customer might say I want a refund OR they might say I would like the same meal at no charge.
The owner knows this is a good deal to give the customer a refund or a free meal but he would rather give her a free meal because word of mouth will get around that the company made good on a bad situation.
It will be much cheaper because if the customer writes a bad review in the Comments of their website he could lose future customers which would affect his profit.
The situation is no where near a lawsuit because damages haven't been proven.