Oh boy! Wendy tackles the latest processed cheese problem

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You’d think that food producers would currently be taking complaints about food quality more seriously than usual.

Sadly, that wasn’t the experience for Lynette Yelland of Durban North when she purchased the iconic South African product Melrose only to open the wedges and find them hosting some very off-putting mould.

Now you’d think that in the wake of the Listeriosis crisis, which has left South Africans more than a little paranoid about the sanitisation protocols in food processing plants, that any such complaint would have a company’s customer response team responding as quickly and reassuringly as possible.

Well, not so in the case of Parmalat, I’m afraid.

On 10 April, Lynnette bought a pack of Melrose cheese wedges from her local Pick 'n Pay. The next day when she spread one of them onto a biscuit, she thought it tasted “funny”.

“I then opened another wedge to find it full of mould,” she told me, attaching a stomach-turning photo of it to her email. The best-before date on the product is July 16.

Lynette phoned Pick 'n Pay and was told they would take the product off the shelf and she was offered a refund. Good response.

The same can’t be said for Parmalat. Lynette emailed me when the company hadn’t responded to her complaint in two days.

I emailed the company’s marketing department about Lynette’s case on 15 April. Ten days later I got a response from a Parmalat representative apologising for the delay, saying there’d been a problem with receiving emails in that inbox. She asked me to please send the complaint to her email address, undertaking to forward it to the customer care department. That despite the fact that I had fully documented Lynette’s complaint in my original email.

During the space of the next week or two, I received a call and several SMSes from customer care people mistaking me for the consumer who’d had the bad experience.

I’ve yet to receive a response to my media query of 15 April. Meanwhile, Lynette was madly trying to get the company to respond to her.

“I would think that with all the hype around food safety - and this pack was three months before the expiry date - the companies would be eager to at least see a picture of what I was talking about,” Lynette said.

Finally, on Wednesday, she got a response. It read: “One of the main causes of mould growth in this product could be the poor sealing of the foil."

“Mould growth could also occur if the cheese is smeared on the outside of the wedge. We have as a result of your complaint implemented the following actions:

1. Increased sanitation of the line and final product during production;
   
2. Increased machine cleaning and sanitation and frequency (every three hours)."

The thing is, Lynette was by no means the only person to complain of mouldy Melrose, within its best-before date.

In January this year, a Mr Ismail posted on complaints website HelloPeter that he found mould in a new 250g of Melrose spread when he opened it.

The customer response team apologised and said the complaint would be forwarded to head office.

Last May, Trix R complained on HelloPeter of finding mould in Melrose wedges in two packs of the product.
“I still haven't been contacted by Parmalat with corrective or preventive action,” she wrote. “It seems as if my complaint was ignored. I cannot believe that such a big company doesn't have a time limit to respond to complaints. Especially since this is a food safety issue! I am disappointed!”

She got this response: “We understand the frustration you have faced in your attempt to obtain results and answers. Kindly note that we have escalated the complaint to our head office for urgent attention.”

In November, Landi V posted that she’d found Melrose cheese wedges with mould in them. This after her three-year-old son had eaten two of them.

“They collected the pack and I didn't hear anything for a month,” she said. “I followed up numerous times to no avail. Logged again, complained on the Facebook page & received a new reference number."

“After following up again requesting the test results from the lab, I was finally told that the cheese was never even tested!"

“The calls were recorded - they told me they would have the product tested at a laboratory & results will be given to me. I cannot believe how the customer service line lies to its customers.”

The response Lynette got is mystifying, as it suggests that it was her complaint which prompted the company to introduce better cleaning and sanitising protocols in their plant when they’ve clearly been getting mouldy Melrose complaints for at least a year.

It’s 2018 - companies are expected to respond to their customers’ complaints or queries within hours, not days, much less weeks.

Consumers are extremely unforgiving of those which don’t respect them enough to ensure that that happens.