Follow Up: General Mills Customer Service

Read the original blog post here:
http://bigbobsreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/customer-service-review-general-mills.html

I stopped and checked the mail yesterday.  Aside from the usual admail and such, there was an envelope with the General Mills logo on it.  Hmm... this must have something to do with the human hair I almost ingested when eating their Honey Nut Cheerios.

I was quite curious to find out what the standard 'apology' was for a situation such as this.

At home I opened the envelope and found 2 pieces of paper.  The first of which had an apology letter printed on it.  "We're sorry"  "We take great efforts towards food safety" etc...Maybe I'll scan and post the letter later.

The second page had on it 4 printed coupons - each for a free General Mills product.   Each coupon has a silver holographic strip on it so they can't be reproduced.

I didn't report the hair issue for personal gain.  Had that been my intention I would have spoken to a lawyer.  But this was a bit of a slap in the face.  "Hey, you just chewed on the hair from one of our employees heads... have a few coupons".  I could have consumed another human being's hair and they send me 4 coupons for product that will probably not cost them more than a few bucks total.

You can bet I'm going to milk these coupons for all they're worth.

Customer Service Review: General Mills Canada / Cheerios

So every weekday morning I have a bowl of cereal for breakfast before work.  90% of the time the cereal of choice is Cheerios.  I like the fact that Cheerios comes in several flavours. 

Some of my favourites include:
Multigrain Cheerios
Honey Nut Cheerios
Chocolate Cheerios
Banana Nut Cheerios

I enjoy most of their varieties.  A bowl a day keeps the doctor away (not necessarily).  As far as cereal's go, Cheerios are kind of middle of the road in the health aspect.  There are healthier choices and there are far worse choices.

Anyway, this isn't a review of the product.  It's a review of the customer service provided by General Mills Canada, Cheerios' parent company.

One lovely morning I had poured a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and sat there watching Breakfast Television enjoying my cereal and coffee.

But wait, what is that in my mouth???  Let's try to retrieve this.  Hmm... this appears to be a human hair.  Ugh...  yup, a hair, about 7-8" in length.  Way too long to be mine.  Certainly not a cat hair, and not my wife's either, she was still in bed.  Plus it seemed to have a Cheerio pressed/baked around it.

Later that same day I decided to report this find to General Mills.  I didn't expect anything to come of it.  It's not like they'd issue a recall of thousands of boxes just because I found a hair.  I just wanted to let them know so they could review their manufacturing/packaging process.

So off I go to their website looking for the contact information.  I filled out the customer service form detailing what had happened.  WITHIN THE HOUR they were calling me to apologize and ask for more details about their tainted product.  They could not have been more apologetic.

OVERALL: Although I was not excited to find a hair in my cereal, I was very impressed with how they dealt with the situation.  I was left feeling that they were truly concerned and that they would review some of their processes.  I will certainly continue to purchase their products and have no ill will toward them.  Sometimes things slip through the cracks. 


Read the follow up to this blog here:
http://bigbobsreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/07/follow-up-general-mills-customer-service.html