A rotten eisbein, bought by Edenvale pensioners Mr Errol and Mrs Julia Michel, left the couple with more than just a foul smell in the kitchen.
Mr Michel told the NEWS they bought the meat from the Stoneridge Fruit and Veg City on Saturday, September 25, only to discover one of the two eisbeins they had bought was rotten and had its original “use by” date of September 20 covered with a new label and a new “use by” date of October 5.
The couple contacted the store immediately after realising the meat’s initial label had been covered with a new ‘use by’ date.
“They said sorry and told us to exchange it or refund us. However, my concern is they knowingly lied to the consumer when they covered up the old ‘use by’ date with a later ‘use by’ date.
“The inconvenience and time wasted is also aggravating and it is a huge health hazard. If this happened overseas, they would be closed down,” said Mr Michel.
“We spoke to the butchery manager who did not seem interested. He said the label was changed as the meat had been frozen. He said a new ‘use by’ date was added after the meat had been taken out of the freezer. He said he will exchange the meat and when I asked whether they can at least deliver instead of us wasting more petrol, he said no,” said Mr Michel.
“I also spoke to the general manager who apologised and told us to speak to head office. Head office put us through to its consumer complainants department and all they said was they will compensate us with a voucher but they did not even take down our details to send the voucher,” he said.
Fruit & Veg comments
“We first became aware of Mr and Mrs Michel’s complaint, regarding the rotten eisbein purchased from our franchised Stoneridge store, on September 28, when they contacted our Customer Care Department to lodge a complaint. Our Customer Care Department immediately brought the complaint to the attention of the Stoneridge store management and requested them to resolve the complaint with Mr and Mrs Michel as a matter of urgency,” said the spokesperson for Fruit & Veg City Group Holdings, Ms Mirella Gastaldi.
She said feedback received from the Stoneridge store was that both the butchery manager and store manager apologised to the customers for their experience and offered to either replace the rotten eisbein or to refund them for the value of their purchase.
“The customers elected the refund and they where further afforded a 10 percent discount on their purchases on the day they returned to the store for the refund. The store management conducted an investigation to determine how the original label reflecting a ‘use by’ date of September 20 on the packet of eisbein was covered up with a new label reflecting an extended ‘use by’ date.
“The conclusion of this investigation was that it was the result of incompetence on the part of a butchery employee. The employee has now been through a disciplinary process and has been given a final written warning. The outcome of the investigation and the action taken against the responsible employee was communicated to the customers,” said Ms Gastaldi.
“While we are pleased to see that the management of the Stoneridge store took concrete steps to engage with the customer to resolve this complaint, we are nonetheless extremely disappointed that an expired product, carrying an incorrect ‘use by’ date, was made available for sale in the Stoneridge store.
“We do not condone this practice and we have on numerous occasions communicated to our stores the severity of selling expired stock, or stock with altered date markings. To this end we have sent a letter to our Stoneridge franchisee advising that we consider the altering of the date marking on the eisbein to be a breach of their obligations in terms of our Franchise Agreement. We have further demanded that they carry out a thorough audit of their entire store, and in particular their butchery department, to ensure that there are no products on their shelves that have expired or have altered date marks. This audit will be overseen by our regional food safety advisor who will report back to us in this regard,” said Ms Gastaldi.
“We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Mr and Mrs Michel for this terrible experience and give them our assurance that we are fully committed to ensuring that this unfortunate incident does not occur again in any of our stores,” said Mr Gastaldi.
