Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Raw Food World - Worst Company in the Business

The Raw Food World is quite possibly the worst company in existence.  Worst customer service, worst bunch of people working there, and worst communication in the online raw vegan community, that's for sure.  They also have started carrying quite a few animal products, which is bad enough in itself, but that's not my gripe.  The story behind my issue with this company goes back quite a ways.  Please allow me to explain.

Shipping problems with this company have been the norm for this Sleuth.  At first, I would pay for my order with Paypal, and then wouldn't get a shipping confirmation.  After waiting typically 5-7 days or so, I'd write them and ask where my shipping confirmation was.  They told me they had problems with Paypal and weren't notified if I paid or not.  That was okay by me the first time they said it, but then it happened again.  It got to the point where I decided to start sending customer service reminder emails to tell them I placed an order and paid via Paypal.

Another problems I had with them regarded shipping partial orders without letting me know in advance that items weren't in stock.  That is a huge pet peeve to me, especially when the item that's out of stock is the main reason I even placed an order from them.  I mean come on, they charge me on average fourteen to eighteen dollars to ship to me from their location in California (highway robbery!).  So between the lag time on shipping, gouging on shipping prices, and shipping partial orders, I realized I was dealing with a group of amateurs who were lucky enough to be in on the "raw materials" orders that come in from other countries.

But the most recent problem was definitely the worst.  I bought several bottles of Vitamineral Green from the company, and they shipped them to me.  When the box came, I opened it as usual and reached in to grab what looked like well-packed bottles covered in bubble wrap.  Instead, as soon as I reached down I felt a deep pain in my finger.  I pulled it out immediately and saw that I was bleeding profusely!  The Vitamineral Green bottle was shattered and glass went right through the bubble wrap and into my hand.

Panic set in as I was in my cubicle at work, amazed at what had just happened.  In pain I went running to the first aid kits.  I tried to put pressure on the wound but I couldn't open the gauze because the cut was on my finger and I could not hold anything.  A coworker saw me struggling and started to help me wrap it.  We ran out of gauze and had to go to the main first aid area on the first floor of my building at work.  The Corporate Safety Officer came down and helped me, cleaning and wrapping the wound.  All in all I lost a decent chunk of my work day and had trouble typing due to pain and the amount of wrapping the wound required.

I contacted Raw Food World about the problem.  They had me send pictures of the broken bottle and my wound.  I followed everything they asked me to do.  They refunded my astronomical shipping cost and sent me a new bottle of Vitamineral Green.  I sent them a thank you email and told them I will remain their customer although I'd had so many problems with them.  I received no word that the issue was still unresolved.  But then this morning as I went to place an order, I couldn't log in to my account.  It said "access denied", so I changed my password and tried again.  I got the same message.  So I contacted customer service and said this:
Hi, i'm trying to place an order and every time i enter my password it says "access denied". Also, i used the change password feature, tried it with my new password, and again it says "access denied." I want to take advantage of the June/July at-cost specials and there's only 24 hours to do that. Please help!
Thanks, Rick
I received this in response:
Our company has chosen to exercise our legal right to not serve you.
No reason was provided, no "thanks for writing", no nothing. My response:
Why? I'd honestly like to know. I deserve a reason. I've spent at least $1000-2000 with you in just two years' time.

Is it because you sent me product that was broken and caused me to get a serious laceration and miss time at work? I am amazed.

I'm filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I'm posting about this on my blog and sending it to everyone I can possibly find in the raw community as well.

Thanks for showing me that you're quite possibly the most ridiculous company in existence.

Then I did precisely what I said I would and filed a complaint with the BBB. It turns out that RFW is not accredited with the BBB, but complaints are accepted for all companies. I submitted the following complaint:
The company sent me a package that contained broken glass.  I was cut badly and missed work time.  They refunded my money, and I talked to customer service who was nice about it.  I went to place an order today and was denied.  When I asked the company why I can't log in to their site, they wrote back just this: "Our company has chosen to exercise our legal right to not serve you."  That is unbelievable!  They've taken 2-3 weeks to ship in the past, they've left items out of orders they've shipped to me, and now they physically harmed me with an order.  Yet I look past all of that and attempt to spend another $300 today and I'm told they won't serve me.  No reason was given.  I am appalled and disgusted with how I've been treated as a customer.
I was never notified that they had a problem with me.  I am a paying customer, and know that this community isn't very big.  The pitiful customer service seems to run rampant in this raw vegan world.  Between this and last year's fiasco with Love Street Living Foods (another disgraceful company with shameful customer service and an owner who's full of himself), I am ashamed to be a member of this community.

Do yourself a favor and avoid RFW at all costs. I tend to be pretty upset when snubbed like this, so I am going to do some research into the company and Matt Monarch himself, as I've been concerned lately that he could quite possibly be a fraud of some sort. In my opinion, he's not the image he tries to project. He's just a marketer and seriously tries to sell things all day long, masquerading as a champion of health.  It's time to get to sleuthing - I'm going to figure out what the deal is and why it seems like they have the market cornered on lots of raw products.

Has anyone else had a problem with this awful company?

22 comments:

Addicted to Veggies said...

Yarg! What a story you've just told! Thank you for your honesty!
I have to tell you - I was so shocked by this tale that when I went to type in "Raw Food World" into Google's search engine (in an effort to search for more reviews like yours) I typed "Holy Cow" instead.
No joke.
I guess I should go have a cup of tea and wake up now. ;)
~S

Dollbaby said...

:( So sad to hear this. I've actually had a pretty poor experience with them recently myself, though not as bad as yours.

I live in Australia, so I pay a premium for shipping. On their site they have tiers of shipping cost based on price so I aimed to stay below the $200 mark in order to keep my shipping cost at $56.
However after my order 'Mark' emailed me to let me know I had an excess of $80 in shipping costs to pay.
I asked him if he could remove some items and he refused to do so, letting me know that he had thousands of orders per day to worry about. I asked if he could give me some guidelines so that I could avoid this problem in the future and he directed me to the website and highlighted the section where it said 'shipping costs may vary'.
So I cancelled my order and re ordered with less items. I got the same scripted email from 'Mark' and when I asked again for guidelines to avoid a huge shipping cost he sent me a scripted email once again, identical to the previous one he had sent. He continued to send scripted emails even when I told him that I couldnt afford to keep cancelling and re-ordering to see what amount would stay within the limits :(

Dollbaby said...

:( So sad to hear this. I've actually had a pretty poor experience with them recently myself, though not as bad as yours.

I live in Australia, so I pay a premium for shipping. On their site they have tiers of shipping cost based on price so I aimed to stay below the $200 mark in order to keep my shipping cost at $56.
However after my order 'Mark' emailed me to let me know I had an excess of $80 in shipping costs to pay.
I asked him if he could remove some items and he refused to do so, letting me know that he had thousands of orders per day to worry about. I asked if he could give me some guidelines so that I could avoid this problem in the future and he directed me to the website and highlighted the section where it said 'shipping costs may vary'.
So I cancelled my order and re ordered with less items. I got the same scripted email from 'Mark' and when I asked again for guidelines to avoid a huge shipping cost he sent me a scripted email once again, identical to the previous one he had sent. He continued to send scripted emails even when I told him that I couldnt afford to keep cancelling and re-ordering to see what amount would stay within the limits :(

The Health Sensei said...

dollbaby, wow, they screwed you. same as with me. I don't know if "Mark" is a real person either, and that "thousands of orders per day" is a big sack of horse shit. I am going to keep reminding people of how awful the RFW really is; hell, that company is now advertising all over alternative news sites on the internet. Their scam is working, Matt Monarch is a self-proclaimed multi-millionaire. It's despicable.

Anonymous said...

i placed an order quoted shipping was 18 dollars days later after theyd processed the paypal amout I was billed an extra 20 dollars (38 dollars in total) I cancelled the order but also asked for some help guidelines as to how a breakdown/criteria of the costs to help me order with them .I got a rude unhelpful reply .Today I decided to google them for complaints and got to your site -thank you everybody because without yor info I might have spent time and energy trying to re-order. I have found another company with very good international shipping rates and I will not be using RWF again

Anonymous said...

I ordered a water purifyer system and some of the parts were missing. They would not return a email or phone call (always get answerinf machine) I had to contact manufacturer to order the missing part

emf1111 said...

I used to be subscribed to their you tube channel, but when I commented that Angela probably called him Bar bar all the time because he looked like Baba the elephant, they cut off my subscription and that was a long time ago, a year or two, and still I am banned from subscribing because I have tried it a couple of times and they still block me because of that comment. She doesn't call him that any more I noticed.

emf1111 said...

when I commented on their you tube channel that
angela probably called him Bar bar because he looks like Baba the elephant, they blocked my subscription. she doesn't call him that any more.

Elle said...

Thanks for spreading the truth about this snakeoil sales team; I trust that the truth will come out sooner rather than later and these two will be shut down for good ... Sad that they are using this amazing platform they have for their own selfish gain ... Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about the problems you had with RFW, especially with broken glass. They company's lucky that you didn't decide to sue. I was just about to place an order for some chia seeds because the low pricing but decided to do some research first. After reading your blog and everyone else's comments, however, I think it'd be better to avoid all the trouble and go with a more expensive but trustworthy company. People like that don't deserve to run a business.

shugee said...

The company is a scam-artists dream! I ordered Yucon Oil 3 weeks ago and they sent it to wrong address as verified by their tracking number. Web site does not state who they are shipping with, by the way. Long story short: product never received, numerous phone calls and emails to them, no response to actual problem, instead pretend they did not receive my inquiry and then claimed waiting for return of product and then resending. I emailed and called (my number was blocked by them apparently and forced into answering system) and directed them to refund my account several times. They ignored. I filed complaint with my credit card company. Now the Raw Food World people are playing games. Emailing me that BOTH they are resending product AND then that they will EVENTUALLY refund the SUBTOTAL. I have confidence my credit card company will handle the refund because I well-documented the demand for refund repeatedly. However, what an expense of my precious time and energy, and I WILL NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH THESE MONEY-GRUBBER IMMORALS AGAIN!!

Erin said...

Dr Mercola and I ordered from them before we knew better years ago and got BROKEN items, an expensive (over 100 dollar tech item) with no directions and no apologies, no response from customer service and I wrote from my Mercola email (didn't matter) I have met these 2 clowns and did a retreat with them years ago. That was an awful experience too. I won't even get into what I think of them as human beings I'd stay far FAR away.

SkyGodSam said...

This company was responsible for a huge promo a few years ago for Black Mica / Adya Clarity.Matt made a Big long infomercial basically claiming all sorts of health benefits.
Turns out the stuff was basically battery ACID, contaminated by the Japanese nuclear accident to boot, AND full of aluminum! It was brought to light that this stuff was a total SHAM, and then Matt claims he would refund everyone's $$. Well guess what, my $500 order got "lost" from their records and therefore couldn't be refunded. He "claimed" he was refunding money to stay out of prison, where he belongs! Total SCAM Ripoff co... stay away!!!
Here's the ripof report:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035664_Adya_Clarity_black_mica_extract_complaints.html

The Health Sensei said...

Hi everyone, it's the original poster (former Sleuth, now Sensei lol) and I love that people are still commenting this many years later. When I killed this blog this was the only post I left published because I stand by my words to this day and I appreciate everyone's input.

Unknown said...

i learned and will NEVER EVER use them again. i question whether the reviews on other sites are even real. Too perfect one time reviewers. i think it's total BS

Radiant Kiko said...

wow... how horrific!
I spent thousands of dollars so far and ended up being stuck with their store credit. I have placed an order with them over 2 weeks ago and after many attempts, I was told today that it is still in the shipping department being on hold. This is absurd. I am skipping many other unpleasant experiences with them.
They have lost their credibility completely.

Unknown said...

Boy...I wished I had done my homework before I ordered last week from the RFW. Today I found you blog...this is incredible! This is the perfect scam company. They really messed up my order...they only send me half of what I ordered. I have emailed and called and left my phone number up to now I have not got any reply from anyone. There's got to be a way to stop them or get my money back. Anyone have any idea?

Real me said...

I just knew that they both used each other with thier family help contacts to build up scam company market the fake marketing thier life on line .. I was first thought they come across all cool etc. Till I did check up on the company and both of them.i m disabled woman I made comment on thier website hangout yesterday Matt never honest in his response. I notice how he puts his own daughter on display like surely family life private... ok blog or video not bring kids in public .. in my view . Not cool

Anonymous said...

I ordered from them and paid for a product of 900mg and was sent 250mg. Three bottles worth. The 900mg cost $437.00 with shipping. The 250mg cost $134.31 plus shipping. BIG DIFFERENCE! They have not gotten back with me as I have sent 2 emails, made 1 phone call and left a message AND sent a message on their site. Not good business at all!!

Former Raw Food World Customer said...

Wow that is awful! I wish I found your blog before I placed an order with them a few weeks ago! It arrived this week and they completely misrepresented a product I ordered (b12 patches) online. They sent me a completely different type of b12 patches ($70). They also didn't didn't send me a promised "gift" for ordering more than $99. When I emailed them about it they told me that I was the one who was wrong. When I sent them screenshots of the product page from their own website with the description of what I ordered, and a photo of what they sent me, they never got back to me. I was not willing to let this go so easily, I called their "customer service" number and spoke to Daniel. He literally told me that I have no common sense and that I am a waste of time, but not before I was able to get him to admit that they had made a mistake (for whatever that is worth). I demanded to speak to his manager about the shoddy treatment and he claimed that he is the only manager and no one else would waste their time dealing with me. In the end, he said he would authorize an exchange for the product and would send me email instructions, but those never came! This place is a total scam. I am trying to become a vegan and was struggling with finding a decent b12 supplement. I thought I had found a good one through them but it turns out they are scam artists! I am not joking when I say that I am giving serious thought to eating meat again because of them. I know the product wasn't that expensive compared to some of the others on here (my order totaled around $140), but being insulted and hung up on was pretty bad. I will be urging everyone I know to stay away from the Rae Food World.

Dkc said...

I used to order from them a few years ago. Most of my orders were filled properly but every so often I would get an order that was incorrect but they always made it right.......... until the last order. I ordered around $300 worth of product and waited. After a reasonable amount of time I called or emailed, I don’t remember which, but I wasn’t worried yet because in the past they had always come through. Well, needless to say we went back and forth a few times; whether or not it had actually arrived, they would send it again, they would remake a refund. In the end to get my money back I had to dispute the charge to my credit card company. And that folks is why that was my last order!!!

Anonymous said...

I used this company a few years back. With one order, I was sent all wrong products. I emailed the issue and received a negative email back as if it was my fault that I was sent the wrong order. I have not ordered since.