Dear Galaxy customer service representative

Good morning to you, I hope I find you well and in fine fettle! I have a small complaint to make about one of your products, but please, let me paint a picture with words about the whos, what, whens and whys of how I became slightly disgruntled with one of your products. I implore you, dear customer service representative for Mrs Galaxy and her delicious silky chocolate, to not take any comments I make personally, they are aimed solely at Mrs Galaxy, I realise reading complaints is part of your job but it can’t be nice having to respond to disgruntled customers every day, so I apologise for my negative tone, I hope it doesn’t impact on your day!

Picture the scene, I am looking for some snack foods for myself and my wife, it is our 53rd anniversary (not our wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of the first time we saw Gone with the wind together, a pivotal moment in our relationship). I was walking up and down the chocolate isle in Tesco desperately trying to decide which sweet treat we could have. I wanted something we could share, preferably something in a bag so that our hands would touch on occasion while we were both going to get some of the said snack, it may not sound like much but it’s little things like this that keep the romance alive. At first I thought about getting a pouch of M and M’s as they are meet all my other criteria (large number for sharing, in a pouch, easily edible, meltable chocolate), but alas they don’t seem to make just the chocolate ones anymore, just the peanut ones (I can’t eat peanuts, I’m not allergic but they give me too much energy and cause my legs to spasm in bed) and the with new “crunchy” M and M’s the last thing I want from a snack is something that’s going to break my precious teeth.

So I looked at the Cadburys pouches of chocolates, but they have priced themselves out of the market, they’re very much a high end luxury chocolate now and I don’t know why their chocolate has gone downhill since Kraft took them over, heaven knows why they are now putting crackers covered in chocolate on sale, it’s the very definition of madness. So Cadburys was out, I obviously will have nothing to do with Nestles due to their abhorrent practices. So my eyes drifted from one shelf to the other, the colours and smells sent me into a revelry, my head was spinning, I wanted to get the perfect chocolates but the choices were overwhelming. Then I happened to move down the aisle slightly and came across the galaxy range of chocolates. Galaxy chocolates are not something I would ever think of buying as it is exclusively a ladies chocolate as your adverts attest to. I once ate a Galaxy ripple bar and while it was delicious and silky the embarrassment I felt eating ladies chocolate was too much for me, especially as my son and a family friend were mocking me as I ate it, they suggested I become an attractive young lady living in a loft apartment in new York who hides lumps of chocolate around my apartment for when I want to have some ‘me time’.

But ‘no’ I thought, it was nice, it was smooth, silky and tasted just right so I threw caution to the wind and decided to buy some Galaxy chocolate product, but which one? Your range is not something I’m familiar with, there were Minstrels, Counters and Bites in pouches. I’ll be honest, they all looked identical to me, the only difference I could see was the slight change in shape, one was a sphere, one was an circle and one was a flattened sphere. I didn’t have my reading glasses on, I didn’t think I would need them, I can see fairly well without them, I only need them for reading small print, so I decided that the shape of galaxy chocolate I wanted was spheres thus I went for the Galaxy Bite option.

So the time came, my wife and I sat down to watch Gone with the wind and as Clark Gable made his first appearance we opened the Galaxy bites. The delicious smell wafted from the pouch and we tucked in, both popping three of them in our mouths. A few seconds later a look of confusion came across both or faces, the chocolate coating had melted but there was a substratum of caramel hidden beneath the chocolate crust. My wife and I abhor caramel! We were expecting solid chocolate balls but in reality we got a hidden globules of chewy caramel. We couldn’t eat them, the caramel plays havoc with our false teeth! We looked at the packet and it took us some time to see in the top right hand corner, in very small pale brown letters the words “chocolate caramel”. Had I seen this I certainly wouldn’t have bought them, I would have gone for one of your other pouch based chocolate products. So the nature of my complaint is that the words “chocolate caramel” needs to be made easier to read, lest someone else fall into the trap of expecting solid chocolate but getting a nasty hidden chewy surprise!

The only upside to my wife and I not wanting the chocolates was when my son came into the room I offered him the chocolates and said “Paul, you can have these if you want, but be warned they have chewy caramel in their centre” to which he, quick as a flash replied “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” which if you don’t know is a reference to a very famous line in Gone with the wind! Which made us all laugh. He then snatched them from me and took them to his room and apparently at them all in minutes.

So there you have it dear customer service representative, if you could pass that on to whom so ever designs the packaging also I shall make sure in future I fully read what the food I’m buying actually before I make the same mistake.

Thank you for your time in reading my rambling electronic letter, I hope you have a lovely day

 

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Their reply

Dear Mr Thax

I was sorry to learn of the problem you have experienced with our Galaxy Bites. Thank you for taking the time to contact us; we appreciate all feedback that we receive about our products.
Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience that may have been caused. If you would like to forward your full postal address and further details from the product, for example best before date and batch code, then I will ensure that full reimbursement is sent to you. I do hope that this has not affected your confidence in our products.

Yours sincerely

Wendy Smith
Consumer Care Team

My reply to their reply

Good Evening Wendy, First of all let me thank you for your very rapid reply, as a customer I feel very cared for!

Secondly I would like to thank you for the offer of an reimbursement for the Galaxy Bites but that is not at all necessary, because A) they were eaten and very much enjoyed by my son and B) I has thrown away the packaging. And as I noted there was no fault with the food in itself, simply the poor contrast of the text on the cover of the wrapper, the word ‘Caramel’ needs to be in a darker hue.

My confidence in your products has not been affected by this, unfortunately I’m still a staunch believer that Galaxy chocolate is lady chocolate but a silky smooth chocolate second only to Cadburys of the mid 90’s, and while I’m confident that it is lovely, I’m not so confident in my own ability to read labels anymore, yes my confidence has taken a knock, it has slightly affected my marriage, Margaret has been mocking me for getting chewy chocolate all day. She made me a cup of tea while Bargain Hunt was on and gave me a toffee instead of a biscuit! We only have those toffees for guests. I didn’t speak to her for 20 minutes, and only then because the contestants had bought a tea caddy very similar to one my mother owned.

If you feel the need to reimburse someone for the disappointment my wife and I have suffered then by all means make a small donation to a charity of your companies choice instead!

Again thank you Wendy for your swift, short and succinct reply!

Yours sincerely

Cecil Thax