‘You literally ruined Thanksgiving.’ Missed food orders enrage California families
Some customers of a grocery delivery startup in San Francisco received notices their Thanksgiving food orders wouldn’t be delivered until early Thursday morning — and then still never got their food.
Others never heard anything at all, leaving them scrambling to find a replacement holiday meal, according to complaints flooding Twitter.
“We are devastated that we let some of you down,” wrote Good Eggs chief executive Bentley Hall on Twitter. “We will do everything we can to make it right.”
The company, which promises “absurdly fresh groceries, delivered,” fell behind packing orders Tuesday, then was hit by an hours-long warehouse system failure Wednesday morning, Hall wrote in a series of posts on Twitter.
“Once the system was back up and running, we were too optimistic about how long it would take to fully catch up and get all of your orders out the door,” Hall wrote.
In a notice posted on the Good Eggs website, the company says refunds for missed or delayed orders will be issued by Wednesday. The company also offers credit on future orders, a gift box or a food bank donation as additional restitution.
“I made some poor decisions earlier in the day that led to a lack of timely, clear communication,” Hall wrote in the notice. “We left many of you in the dark. That is inexcusable and we will never make that mistake again.”
Complaints from customers, many of whom had placed orders for Thanksgiving turkeys, pies and other groceries weeks earlier, flooded Twitter on Thanksgiving.
“Nothing makes this right,” wrote one customer. “You should be all hands on deck today, including your CEO, delivering orders. Not one person should be enjoying their Thanksgiving meal while you have deprived so many of theirs. Inexcusable.”
“For you, it’s just a single missed delivery, but for us it’s an entire missed holiday,” read another post. “It’s a Hallmark movie cliche, but I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that you literally ruined Thanksgiving.”
“This is unbelievably ridiculous,” wrote another customer. “I hope my order gets here by midnight after staying home all day waiting for it.”
“Making it right would mean that my family would be having a complete Thanksgiving dinner,” reads another post. “Sadly we had to thaw frozen chicken for tonight. Such a disappointment.”
But other customers were more sympathetic to the company.
“Stuff happens, and it’s Thanksgiving after all!” wrote one person on Twitter. “Thanks to your team for delivering beautiful organic food to my family every single week of this pandemic, and for supporting our farmer friends.”
Before the holiday, Good Eggs had boasted about acquiring 3,700 turkeys for holiday deliveries in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Mercury News reported. The company was founded in 2011.
This story was originally published November 29, 2020 at 12:13 PM with the headline "‘You literally ruined Thanksgiving.’ Missed food orders enrage California families."