“If people can change chocolate, they can change the world,” joked Miss Abraham. Well, i dont think it’s a joke, because i think changing chocolate for the better is changing the world and making it a better place. This quote came from a news article which was emailed to me at 7.50am from someone who knows the importance of chocolate. It’s about how Cadbury, mirroring Coke’s ‘New Coke/Coke Classic’ situation of the 1980s, has changed its recipe back to their old recipe. I had to write a blog about it:
1. because i loved old Cadbury.
2. because i had an awesome pun to use as the title and that’s what blogging is all about.
I disliked the new recipe and disliked Cadbury for making me eat it (at least they were generous enough to put it in smaller portions so the pain was short lived…). But this makes me love Cadbury again – they listened to the customer and the customer is (mostly) always right. Sure, its a little bit embarassing for them, and sure they’re still saying they substituted cocoa butter with palm oil for smoothness (and not cheapness), and they did downsize their products without downsizing the price, and they did sell rubbish products for a few months, but now they’re giving the customer what the customer wants and all will be forgotten (especially if they through in a couple more gorilla suits and kids with funny eyebrows, or maybe even a gorilla with funny eyebrows – now that would be advertising genius)
This time i let all the other customers fight cadbury on my behalf and things got changed. Seeing their efforts be rewarded makes me feel empowered. So, I have made a new (belated financial) year’s resolution – everytime i don’t like a product i am sending an email to customer services. Obviously it works. And even if the company don’t change the product back to how it was in the good old days, but if the company knows whats good for them they will know if they repond to my complaint i will love them more. So, I might at least get a cheque for $3.45 as a refund for my snakes alive complaint (they only have 2 blue snakes – not good enough!!!). And, any cheques received this year wont be cashed, they’ll be kept as trophies because for some reason that would be highly satisfying.
I’ll keep you posted.
Comments
Yeah, fight the good fight Mads.
Writing complaint letters is awesome. You should post your emails to companies here. Then google will pick them up. And the companies will, if they’re any good at PR, monitor what people say about them that comes up on google.
At least admitting you’ve done something wrong and take steps to fix it makes you look better in the consumer’s eyes than ignoring their complaints.
My mum once made a complaint because they found a goat’s head thorn in a bag of frozen beans, she got a cheque for $10 for it (more than covering the cost of the beans!)
Another time she made a complaint about Whittakers chocolates (I can’t remember what was wrong – I think it was Whittakers anyway) and they had a rep in the area so they sent the rep to take her a box of sample chocolates. Unfortunately the box he brought her was a bit heat-affected but she understood sometimes you can’t really help that in Townsville :P
I very much doubt they’ll be returning the chocolate to the original size though. But that may be a good thing really.
wow, I’m excited!
I have it on good authority that the new (old) recipe will take some time to flow through the supply chain to the shops…something about lots of stock of the current stuff.