Just updating this because in all honesty, I am just tired of dealing with it now.
You can see by the date of my original post that I ordered from Bakers on 12/4. The no shipping because of being on vacation week is very well documented, so I will skip that part. What has not been documented were my attempts to get in touch with Dale and the other frustrations concerning this deal.
I emailed him immediately after placing my order asking about the buy 3 get 3 free promotion he was doing. I wanted to make sure that I was actually getting 6 boxes, not just the 3. 2 guys from work went in on them, so we got a nice assortment of peppers looking to do a "pepper challenge" video. I also asked what types of peppers he usually included with the freebie boxes, were they superhots? Stuff that he doesn't have listed on his site? Random assortment of whatever he has laying around? No reply.
I sent a message here on 12/6 asking if he had gotten my message, and asked again about the buy 3 get 3 extra promo. He replied on the 7th saying that I was in fact getting 6 boxes. Great! We were all geared up to look like fools at work and see who was "manlier". Vacation was NOT mentioned.
12/12 I still had not received anything, so I checked out his site and saw that nothing was shipped. That sucked, I literally waited for my mailman EVERY DAY while I was off to make sure that I did not miss him, wasting 4 hours of my off days for absolutely no reason.
12/13 I go back to work empty handed. Co workers asked about the peppers, I told them we did not get any yet, miscommunication at the store with shipping. All is good, they will be out monday. We have watched many videos, spent lots of time researching recipes, and basically doing everything you guys do, lets add to the order and make some sauce on our week off!
12/15 additional order placed! Might as well get 3 more boxes and the 3 freebies right? The others had not shipped yet, no reason these couldn't be added right? PLUS that puts us WELL over the $75 to get some free dried peppers also! No reason to not take part in such a great deal! Order placed, email sent requesting that the order be combined, no reply
12/16 Peppers DEFINITELY shipping today! They only ship on mondays right? Nice big juicy order, everyone is rested from vacation, no reason why they would not be in the mail today! 2 days and we will all be hunched over tearing up ice cream trying to stop this burn, woot woot!
12/17 1:09 am Electronic shipping info received...WTF??? They did not go out yet?? They only ship on mondays, thats why it took an extra week to go out? Dammit, oh well, at least the order went out. Pepper city by wednesday!
12/17 3:00 am Electronic shipping info received..WTF again??? DAMMIT! My order was not consolidated! Why not? I emailed them sunday! Great, no dried peppers I bet. Oh well, its priority mail, if it ships Tuesday, should have it by thursday. Tampa is not that far.
12/17 3:45 am..Pm sent to dale, email sent asking the same question...asked if my order did in fact get us the free dried peppers. No reply.
12/17 7:15 PM Acceptance? ACCEPTANCE? Its JUST getting to the post office? After closing hours the NEXT day after its supposed to have been shipped...when were these boxed up? Did he get my message? He didn't read it here, surely he must have checked his email. He apologized about the delays on the forum, surely he did not mean to intentionally NOT ship me what I bought. He is a businessman, I may be small potatoes, but I know he will get get me the best possible product, right?
12/19......nothing. Why hasn't the mail shown up yet? Let me check the tracking....Dec 20th?? Damn, its delayed an extra day. Great. Now I have to go to work AGAIN and tell these guys we still do not have anything for the $100+ we spent over the last 2 weeks on some damned peppers. Sure, I got a "fix" off of facebook and it was here 2 days later and I have grown my own stock from dry seeds since ordering from Bakers, but they will be here tomorrow. We are off a week, so now I have to drive 34 miles each way to divvy up the goods with the guys who put in. Its only fair, I was the one who placed the order.
12/20....nothing. Again. I can not fully blame Dale for the post office being SWAMPED with Christmas and all, but I can blame him for NOT GETTING MY ORDER OUT ON MONDAY... AGAIN. I can blame him for delaying my order even longer during the busiest 2 shipping weeks of the year, right? Its been a minimum of 4 days now since my order has been packed up, possibly 5 if they did in fact start processing them on monday. Maybe they even pack them up on sunday to get them out on monday, who knows. According to the tracking, they will both be here tomorrow. One had an expected date of 12/20, the other 12/21. How "fresh" will these be now? Were my dry peppers included? Should be no problem, "I" was not late in paying for my order, and I bought another before this one was processed, why shouldn't they be consolidated since it was their fault right?
12/21...my expectations are minimal. I fully expect to get some "almost fresh" peppers that have been sitting in warm boxes for 6 days, no dried peppers, and surely no "my bad, won't happen again" note in my box.
Will keep anyone interested updated tomorrow. My initial reason for buying these was to goof off a bit at work and try my hand at cooking a few things while we were there. We are in Louisiana, we love spicy foods, why not take it up a notch! Well, thats just not going to happen now. No way can we wait another week till we are back on shift to try these as a group as we had intended. We wont be able to do this while we are off being that we all have families and its a super busy week. The best we can hope for now is trying to get some friends to pass by to eat an insanely hot pepper that will most likely have you in agonizing pain for 3 hours, followed by lower intestinal cramps and a horrible "second burn" that will have you laying on your stomach watching TV if you are off of work. I don't see too many volunteers lining up for that. At least at work we were getting paid, lol.
My intent here is not to flame Bakers, its to document the experience I have had so far while coming out of pocket around $120 or so. I may get the most beautiful box of peppers the world has ever seen tomorrow, and I do hope that thats what they are. I can say to myself, "Their customer service absolutely sucks, but man are these the freshest most beautiful pods you have ever seen in your life!" and I can go on knowing that despite an almost total lack of communication, the product stands for itself and I can order from them again if needed and I will get quality. On the other side of the coin, if these do not show up tomorrow, it will be MONDAY before they pop up. Great. No sir mr postman, there is nothing perishable in those boxes...excuse the rotting smell and flies
We shall see.
You can see by the date of my original post that I ordered from Bakers on 12/4. The no shipping because of being on vacation week is very well documented, so I will skip that part. What has not been documented were my attempts to get in touch with Dale and the other frustrations concerning this deal.
I emailed him immediately after placing my order asking about the buy 3 get 3 free promotion he was doing. I wanted to make sure that I was actually getting 6 boxes, not just the 3. 2 guys from work went in on them, so we got a nice assortment of peppers looking to do a "pepper challenge" video. I also asked what types of peppers he usually included with the freebie boxes, were they superhots? Stuff that he doesn't have listed on his site? Random assortment of whatever he has laying around? No reply.
I sent a message here on 12/6 asking if he had gotten my message, and asked again about the buy 3 get 3 extra promo. He replied on the 7th saying that I was in fact getting 6 boxes. Great! We were all geared up to look like fools at work and see who was "manlier". Vacation was NOT mentioned.
12/12 I still had not received anything, so I checked out his site and saw that nothing was shipped. That sucked, I literally waited for my mailman EVERY DAY while I was off to make sure that I did not miss him, wasting 4 hours of my off days for absolutely no reason.
12/13 I go back to work empty handed. Co workers asked about the peppers, I told them we did not get any yet, miscommunication at the store with shipping. All is good, they will be out monday. We have watched many videos, spent lots of time researching recipes, and basically doing everything you guys do, lets add to the order and make some sauce on our week off!
12/15 additional order placed! Might as well get 3 more boxes and the 3 freebies right? The others had not shipped yet, no reason these couldn't be added right? PLUS that puts us WELL over the $75 to get some free dried peppers also! No reason to not take part in such a great deal! Order placed, email sent requesting that the order be combined, no reply
12/16 Peppers DEFINITELY shipping today! They only ship on mondays right? Nice big juicy order, everyone is rested from vacation, no reason why they would not be in the mail today! 2 days and we will all be hunched over tearing up ice cream trying to stop this burn, woot woot!
12/17 1:09 am Electronic shipping info received...WTF??? They did not go out yet?? They only ship on mondays, thats why it took an extra week to go out? Dammit, oh well, at least the order went out. Pepper city by wednesday!
12/17 3:00 am Electronic shipping info received..WTF again??? DAMMIT! My order was not consolidated! Why not? I emailed them sunday! Great, no dried peppers I bet. Oh well, its priority mail, if it ships Tuesday, should have it by thursday. Tampa is not that far.
12/17 3:45 am..Pm sent to dale, email sent asking the same question...asked if my order did in fact get us the free dried peppers. No reply.
12/17 7:15 PM Acceptance? ACCEPTANCE? Its JUST getting to the post office? After closing hours the NEXT day after its supposed to have been shipped...when were these boxed up? Did he get my message? He didn't read it here, surely he must have checked his email. He apologized about the delays on the forum, surely he did not mean to intentionally NOT ship me what I bought. He is a businessman, I may be small potatoes, but I know he will get get me the best possible product, right?
12/19......nothing. Why hasn't the mail shown up yet? Let me check the tracking....Dec 20th?? Damn, its delayed an extra day. Great. Now I have to go to work AGAIN and tell these guys we still do not have anything for the $100+ we spent over the last 2 weeks on some damned peppers. Sure, I got a "fix" off of facebook and it was here 2 days later and I have grown my own stock from dry seeds since ordering from Bakers, but they will be here tomorrow. We are off a week, so now I have to drive 34 miles each way to divvy up the goods with the guys who put in. Its only fair, I was the one who placed the order.
12/20....nothing. Again. I can not fully blame Dale for the post office being SWAMPED with Christmas and all, but I can blame him for NOT GETTING MY ORDER OUT ON MONDAY... AGAIN. I can blame him for delaying my order even longer during the busiest 2 shipping weeks of the year, right? Its been a minimum of 4 days now since my order has been packed up, possibly 5 if they did in fact start processing them on monday. Maybe they even pack them up on sunday to get them out on monday, who knows. According to the tracking, they will both be here tomorrow. One had an expected date of 12/20, the other 12/21. How "fresh" will these be now? Were my dry peppers included? Should be no problem, "I" was not late in paying for my order, and I bought another before this one was processed, why shouldn't they be consolidated since it was their fault right?
12/21...my expectations are minimal. I fully expect to get some "almost fresh" peppers that have been sitting in warm boxes for 6 days, no dried peppers, and surely no "my bad, won't happen again" note in my box.
Will keep anyone interested updated tomorrow. My initial reason for buying these was to goof off a bit at work and try my hand at cooking a few things while we were there. We are in Louisiana, we love spicy foods, why not take it up a notch! Well, thats just not going to happen now. No way can we wait another week till we are back on shift to try these as a group as we had intended. We wont be able to do this while we are off being that we all have families and its a super busy week. The best we can hope for now is trying to get some friends to pass by to eat an insanely hot pepper that will most likely have you in agonizing pain for 3 hours, followed by lower intestinal cramps and a horrible "second burn" that will have you laying on your stomach watching TV if you are off of work. I don't see too many volunteers lining up for that. At least at work we were getting paid, lol.
My intent here is not to flame Bakers, its to document the experience I have had so far while coming out of pocket around $120 or so. I may get the most beautiful box of peppers the world has ever seen tomorrow, and I do hope that thats what they are. I can say to myself, "Their customer service absolutely sucks, but man are these the freshest most beautiful pods you have ever seen in your life!" and I can go on knowing that despite an almost total lack of communication, the product stands for itself and I can order from them again if needed and I will get quality. On the other side of the coin, if these do not show up tomorrow, it will be MONDAY before they pop up. Great. No sir mr postman, there is nothing perishable in those boxes...excuse the rotting smell and flies
We shall see.
