Bought a tin of FW Whitlock Peri Peri Chicken soup…long string of plastic in it…hummmm better tell the manufacturer of their problem…now the website on the side of the tin Whitlock.co.nz actually takes you the world-wide kraft/heinz website - no mention of fw Whitlock and no way to contact them. QR code on the side of the tin seems to be purely decorative. Contact Woolworths…hummmm… only way to do that is via Facebook and you have to follow Woolworths (who wants to do that!) but I did and got the generic reply of "if you aren’t happy take it back to the store for a refund " but that’s not the point. I wish there was some transparency in contacting these people.
7 Likes
Welcome to the Community @rodo
Thanks for posting. I was unaware of the history and how many brands KraftHeinz owns these days.
An abbreviated version of FW Whitlock’s ownership.
With the last buyout
that provides a clue.
While Watties is usually thought of as a NZ company it is another of the long list of KraftHeinz takeovers and the Watties.co.nz web site goes to, you guessed it, kraftheinz.
KraftHeinz being a proud multinational has contact information for consumers, one being for Americans and the other Canadians. As for the rest? A number of their brands list have websites that do not resolve to kraftheinz, all called ‘Error 404 Not Found’.
Since Woolies is your retailer you could post a complaint to them (via FB usually gets some attention) including aspects of how their supplier raises barriers to their consumers, and ask if Woolies is happy about that and can they provide a direct consumer contact. It could not illicit a worse reply than the status quo, and could possible get a working contact.
5 Likes
Thanks Phil……asked Woolies via Facebook for a Whitlock contact and ….radio silence……doubling down on the frustration
3 Likes
I have always found Woolies social media to reply even if days later. Sometimes they need to research and do not always reply with a ‘please wait’ message. After a few days plz let us know if you made progress.
For now KraftHeinz has posted this atop their web page but I do not know when. My first look when I replied to our post did not register how badly their site seems broken. Even their contacts for US and Canadian customers is essentially inoperative.
Kraft Heinz is addressing some website issues that may make certain features temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to restoring access to all of our sites as soon as possible.
Maybe when whatever it is, is resolved all will be as expected. We can hope.
3 Likes
Hi @rodo, welcome to the community.
Next time you are at Woolies, take the can and string to the customer service counter. They should fill in a incident/product quality report and possibly will give you a refund.
Woolies will send the report to the manufacturer to investigate and hopefully resolve so it doesn’t happen again.
We have done this (a couple of times over the past 30 years). In one case, the manufacturer wrote to us apologising and gave us a $5 gift card for the inconvenience… which was in addition to the Woolies refund of a couple of dollars.
6 Likes
I shop at Woolies online, and when I had a similar issue (wire in a sausage!), I took a photo, logged into my Woolies account online, chatted to chatbot “Olive”, uploaded the photo and the complaint details, and got a refund. I think I got some kind of email confirmation that the issue would be dealt with, but I never heard anything else.
I suspect if customers uploaded photos to a social media platform with the descriptions, someone at Woolies would follow up and/or an aspiring influencer looking for a cause.
In the old days (1970s) when I got a hard stick in a jar of peanut butter and raised the issue, someone came to my door with a courtesy box of peanut butter goodies.
3 Likes
Contact Woolies, yep, agreed it’s not possible. I complained here about softdrink pricing a while ago and one of the Choice poster’s responses was, contact Woolies and complain - I didn’t bother to tell them it’s not actually possible to do that.
It seems that way now with a lot of big organisations, I tried to contact Montague Orchards to find out when the Sweettango apples will be available (picked and distributed) again, no way to contact them.
Sometimes big organisations have a number, or a form, but no one resonds to these and the phone number usually has a recorded message with the website address … thanks!
Try (03) 9658 5912, their contact form, or a message on their FB page. Unless you meant there is no reply after a few days or they do not answer?
My experience has been that Woolies always responded, variously via their FB page or the Rewards program phone/chat/form - have not tried their main customer service 1300 number but have successfully used their online chat.
Sometimes patience is required to get to the head of the queue since as with most companies, they are (always) having a higher than normal call volume 
1 Like
Thanks Phil
That number is for Stella’s Restaurant, not the Montague Orchard … not to worry, I have been down that rabbit hole before, doesn’t work.
No one responds to the contact form, I’ve tried that before too.
The Facebook page, looks like Montague, but is for the restaurant
*Currently boycotting Woolies because of their Australia Day/Voice carry on, so will skip that for a while
1 Like
GHOSTBUSTERS! I Can’t Hear You
