Today saw the delivery of our monthly "Subscribe & Save" order from Amazon.com. We order several items on a recurring basis, and once every month Amazon ships those that are due that month. So far, so good.
Today also saw a prearranged bulk waste pickup by our local trash company. I planned to put out several larger items that wouldn't fit into our regular weekly trash collection. I'd managed to haul a couple of them to the curb when the Post Office mail van arrived with our Amazon delivery, among other things. Also, so far, so good . . . but that's when things went wrong.
The nice Post Office gent hauled our boxes to the front door while I was puffing and panting, dragging a heavy item to the growing pile next to the curb. As he drove off, I suddenly noticed a sort of white sandy trail where he'd walked, and my heart sank. Going to the front door, it was clear that one of our boxes was leaking a white powder - and that spelled trouble, because one of our deliveries today was a 10lb. bag of Xylitol, a sugar replacement that my wife and I use. It's great, but it's also deadly poisonous to dogs; less so to cats, but still potentially risky for them. To make matters worse, our neighbor's cats were already sauntering over to investigate the new boxes.
Hurriedly I closed up the garage, then picked up the leaking box and took it into the kitchen where it wouldn't trail any more poison - only to find that our cats followed me, curious about the white powder still falling from the box. I swooped on them (to their annoyance) and shut them in the bedroom, then chased away the outside cats (to their equal displeasure). I then spent more than an hour sweeping up every grain of Xylitol from our driveway and path, for the sake of passing dogs, and from the front door to the kitchen (for the sake of our cats). I mopped inside as well, as even a small dose of the stuff can be lethal to some animals. Finally, I took out all the other items shipped by Amazon in the same box, cleaned them off as best I could, and put them aside for further attention. I then got a garbage bag and dropped the entire box, along with the by now half-empty bag of Xylitol, into it, and took it all out to the trash.
Heaving a sigh of relief that I hadn't seen any animals trying to lick up the white powder, I turned back towards the garage to carry on getting our trash out - only to see the bulk waste pickup truck arrive, scoop up all that I'd already laid at the curb, and head off with a cheerful wave from the driver. I guess I'll have to schedule another pickup next week to get rid of the rest.
Gritting my teeth, I went online and tried to arrange a replacement bag of Xylitol from Amazon. Their automated system was no help at all - it merely informed me that no refunds were available for that item, and wouldn't let me go any further with an inquiry about a replacement. Fuming, I finally managed to get an associate on the chat line, explained the problem, and asked for a replacement bag to be shipped. Unfortunately, she couldn't do that, but as an exception to their policies was able to arrange a refund. I'll reorder the product from scratch. Full marks to her - she was as trapped as I was in the entrails of an unsympathetic computer system, but she did her best and came up with a satisfactory solution. I've had many less productive customer service interactions, so she helped to make my day a little better.
For the first time in a couple of hours, I'm finally able to sit down with a mug of tea and catch my breath . . . but both cats are now sitting next to my chair, glaring at me in an accusing fashion for locking them in a bedroom for so long, and demanding cuddles, milk and treats to make up for this shabby treatment.
Oy.
Why did I get up this morning?
Peter
18 comments:
At least you cleaned it up, that is more than a lot of folks would have done.
Why did you get up this morning? well,it wasn't up to you, was it?
My wife deals with mail ordering stuff. Since the covidiacy, orders are screwed up about half the time. Dealing with 3rd world "customer relations" is also screwed up way too much. Automated systems seem designed to frustrate and deter you from successful resolution.
You do realize just how insane all this activity was don't you? If this substance is that lethal to dogs and dangerous to cats it really can't be doing you any good either. Just sayin.
Wow. You actually got to talk to someone at Amazon?
Glad you at least got a refund!
When our cats are mad, sometimes they stare and sometimes we get the "cold shoulder".
Be safe and God bless.
Amazon is notorious for shipping food items with inadequate packaging and padding. And yes, their policy is they will not replace defective items of that nature.
I've had items in jars show up with the lids loose, the glass smashed or cracked.
I refuse to order items like that through Amazon any more. It really is a generic problem with them.
Good man for sweeping up the poison. Good people do good things when no one is watching.
We switched to Monk Fruit, the real stuff not the 5% Monk Fruit 95% erythritol sold in most grocery stores. Not cheap but no after-taste. Only downside is needing a 1/64th teaspoon as that is the equivalent to a teaspoon of sugar.
Spouse gets ours here: one, three or six packs.
https://www.healthrangerstore.com/products/organic-monk-fruit-extract-powder-low-carb-sugar-substitute-0-7oz-20g
Is having a toxic "sweetener" in your diet that important?
If one of your furry pets knocked over a container of it and ate it while you were away, what would be the expected results?
Yikes! Xylitol? Even though I'm diabetic, I hate that stuff. It gives me rancid gas at best, and at worst, rancid gas plus the trots plus my stomach feeling and sounding as if a herd of buffalo are stampeding back and forth. Splenda or Stevie is much more friendly to me.
A couple years ago, I ordered a Barnett crossbow crank cocking system from Amazon. I was watching for the delivery but the only extra item delivered was a bubble envelope. I opened it to find - I kid you not - a small plastic envelope containing a single rubber band marked with the correct SKU for the crank. When I contacted customer service, they kept trying to set up an exchange which would have had me driving 30+ minutes to the closest UPS store. I finally convinced them that they didn’t need the rubber band and I eventually got the crank. I assume some sort of employee fraud at the warehouse…
Erythitol is increasingly correlated with cardiovascular events, so the "monk fruit" sweetners aren't inherently better. And all artificial sweeteners are correlated with weight gain -- it's not just about calories...
Stevia tastes funny,and nearly every fake sugar causes me some sort of gastro problem.
The only one I could use, Sweet&Low, decided to expand into selling generic Aspartame. Nasty stuff, as it causes my hands and feet to break out in skin ulcers. Since they seem to also manufacture the generic versions of S&L, I had to stop using it entirely.
A Big problem is that if a food producer uses Aspartame in a food line, any other food produced on it gets contaminated with that crap. Lots of countries forbid it to be sold or imported. Someone was bought off in the Food and Drug arena to get it legal to sell here.
Your lede here led me to believe your Amazon packages were picked up by waste services...
And yes, I agree their "environmentally friendly" packaging results in more loses than gains to shareholders but what do I know... Have had a whole host of issues on that front that I'm not going to belabor.
Regardless, always save packaging for Amazon returns even if you dump the product.
Haven't ever had an unsuccessful resolution there but have had some pain in getting customer service to follow policies to a T -- with "lifetime" auto parts warranties being a particular pain ) YMMV.
Dang. What a saga. Thank the Lord none of the furry friends were hurt. Fwiw, I've found Erythritol, Allulose, and monkfruit make more than adequate substitutes for xylitol (for the uses I put it to anyway, including baking, cooking, etc) and they're all much less/not at all poisonous to animals. I have enough stresses, heh, so not worrying about the possibility that I might goof and accidentally poison my pups...it's helpful for me. But of course not everyone is as incompetent and prone to absentminded errors as I am. Again, so glad everyone was okay, and I'm glad you got someone at Amazon who was willing to help! (Oh, and fwiw, if you have a long record of purchasing from them, and you're politely insistent enough... eventually you'll usually get ahold of a sufficiently high ranked supervisor, and they'll fix whatever went wrong. But it takes time and stubbornness. No Amazon customer service rep wants to have an unsatisfied customer report on their record. Especially a long-time customer.
I like Stevia root powder as a non-dangerous sweetener that also has supplement values.
I get out little except to the docs, so Amazon is here several times a week. NOTHING is more difficult for me than trying to tell Amazon something in a box of other somethings did not arrive as they say it did. The AI system is totally useless and unrelenting in its determination to not let me talk to a human. When I finally get to a human it's sugary sweet ineffectiveness for quite a way in. And they are getting worse with delays.
Heh. Seems you need to deconflict Amazon and bulk pickup days! Hope you have better luck next round.
"trailing white powder"...?
You're lucky DHS or the DEA didn't come calling, along with 20 or 30 of their closest 80-IQ friends, in full tacticool gear.
I see a lot of other comments questioning the health effects of sugar alcohols and suggesting you look into alternatives. I'll add my voice to that. The FDA suppressed evidence for years on bad side effects for aspartame, and only recently has the evidence come out on Splenda (creates holes in the intestinal wall), erythritol associated with significantly increased cardiac issues, all sugar alcohol's known issues with disruption of the gut biome and gastric discomfort. The industry fought stevia for years because natural molecules can't be patented, but quickly lobbied for GRAS approval (generally recognized as safe) when they needed an alternative to artificial sweeteners. It has it's drawbacks (not stable at really high temperatures, like cooking, but okay in hot beverages; even in purest forms has an aftertaste that takes getting used to), but it remains the only one that has hundreds of years of use without any sign of adverse side effects.
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