FreshDirect — Restaurant in New York

I'm a long time customer since 2004. I have refrained from writing this review for a very long time but I only see things getting worse. Fresh Direct has an excellent product line and used to be a top notch company. Now, I continually have problems with the meat department who cannot follow simple instructions such as standard pack or vacuum pack; None, Tie only, wrap in bacon and tie. Some times my roast is tied, sometimes it is not, and I never know how it will arrive. You need to fire the person or persons who run your meat department and hire someone who is capable and who can train employees properly to follow simple directions and oversee what they do. It is not that hard to follow an order and carry it out correctly when the options are as simple standard pack/vacuum pack and None, Tie, Wrapped in back and tie. I should not have to be aggravated when my order arrives for something so simple and rudimentary to meat packing.

Also, the change over to putting grass-fed and pastured meat on a styrofoam try wrapped in plastic wrap is abhorrent. It used to be properly wrapped in brown butcher's paper. If one is buying meat from the farm meat it is not only for the taste but because it has less toxins. Styrofoam and plastic wrap are not "Green" products!! Now the meat comes and is dripping and that makes a mess in the refrigerator. I never had this issue when you used proper butchers paper.

Lastly, your new website which is no longer new, is a diaster. It takes me three times as long to place an order now. It's not efficient. If I put something in my cart, I can't hit back and get back to where I was but have to go back to "For You" and start from the beginning. Also, you can't display all "your favorites" in one long running page where one can just easily scroll through but must constantly go back to "For You" then "Reorder Favorites-- view all" and then in short order I have to click on "Show More". Once I put something in the cart I have to go through this process all over again. In addition, you used to have a nice drop down "Direct from the Farm" where one could easily find all the beef, pork and lamb products. Now I have to put "grassfed beef" in the search bar and not all of your product line shows up, so I have to try multiple searches such as grassfed roast, grassfed steak, pastured meat etc. As an on-line vendor you should have a top of the line website, not an inefficient one that makes placing an order a huge chore.

After more than a year and half of problems with your meat department, I am actively looking for a new place to purchase my quality meat. I'm having to call customer service much too often. While they have always been courteous to me and have offered me excellent customer service, it's clear to me that under your new ownership "Fresh Direct" has changed for the worse and is no longer the quality operation...

I have been a loyal customer for well over a decade and have stopped ordering with them. I usually ordered weekly and my orders were upwards of $150 each. The last straw for me was back on 12/12/22. I had a delivery scheduled early that morning and sprained my ankle before my delivery window taking recycling items down. I called customer service and said I cannot meet them downstairs as I normally do, nor could I go up and down stairs lugging bags, and asked if a message could be passed to drivers to bring my bags up a single short flight of stairs just for that day. I was told message was passed to drivers. I wait and wait and no delivery. After the delivery window passed, I checked the website and saw it said “Order Delivered.” My buzzer never rang. I never received a text. So, in spite of a swollen sprained ankle, I had to make my way down a flight of stairs and check to see if they left my bags outside without notification (as they have begun to do at times). No bags. I dragged my swollen ankle back up the stairs and called again and said that either they misdelivered or they left the bags so long ago without ringing the buzzer that someone came and stole them. I also reiterated that clearly my message to have them deliver to my apartment was either not passed along as I was originally told, or was ignored by drivers (which has also happened before when deliveries were delayed by hours and I asked drivers to not deliver the order because I may not be home, but they showed up anyway saying they never got message).

At the time I opted for a reorder of missing order, but later decided that I couldn’t take the risk with a sprained ankle of having a similar issue, so I decided to cancel the reorder and use Instacart. More expensive, but I needed to pay more for the assurance of items being delivered to my door and not further injuring myself, and the ability to get satisfaction and good customer care should something go wrong. I cancelled the reorder and sent an email of complaint to FD. I would think they would at least respond with an apology for someone who has been a customer since 2010. I never heard from anyone. So, I have not placed an order with them since and they have lost a loyal customer.

Don’t listen to any cookie cutter response they give here. It’s all for show when they couldn’t be bothered to provide a response privately and directly to a long-standing customer’s email. I gave them ZERO complaints during COVID, but it seems that was simply the start of them taking customers for granted. I am also probably one of the few people who actually completed post-delivery surveys where ai voiced displeasure multiple times with orders being left without notification. So not only do they not seem to take any action with the responses from THEIR OWN surveys, but they clearly ignore...

Mixing reviews of shopping in Fresh Direct Warehouse are misleading since they are not reviews of Fresh Direct delivery service. Agreed Fresh Direct has poor to non-existent internal communication. I want pleasant people to pick up the phone after a ten minutes on hold but more than that, I want knowledgeable people. More than a credit for poor quality vegetables or fruit in my order would be better quality control. Repeatedly lack what what I wanted to cook or eat because the fruits or vegetables were no good. Inaccurate product info details like salt content, or shrimp treated with chemicals that were not listed may get corrected if a customer bothers to call Customer Service. No one in Management appears to notice or to care about these things and take correct action.

Prices have greatly increased but unfortunately quality has decreased. Whole Foods is not an inexpensive grocer but Fresh Direct increasingly surpasses their prices. A Fresh Direct cauliflower was recently priced at $6.99. A head of broccoli, $5.99. Prices for fish increased dramatically. Fresh Direct increasingly sells farm raised fish. One order of farm raised fish from their revered Icelandic fishery I was notified (after I consumed the fish from my order two days earlier), the fish may have been contaminated by listeria. There is no way to know if my strawberries will be from Mexico or the United States and the price stays the same. Inconsistent quality coupled with higher than normal prices is not a winning combination. The in-process changes to the website, ordering online is increasingly time consuming and poorly executed. If there is no improvement I too...