Complaint Review: Jolly Grub

On October 7th I preordered a 1050g fully iced Bronte Christmas cake listed on Jolly Grub's website for $28, plus $12.95 for shipping. They took the money out of my account and into pending, then put it back in. Upon calling, they told me they would take the money out when they actually shipped the product, as they were still waiting for the shipment from their supplier.

Fair enough.

Then around the first week of November I called to ask for a status update because a different cake (681g, $20, only iced on the top) had appeared on their website and the cake I ordered had been removed. They said that they were having some issues with their suppliers and hadn't actually gotten their cakes yet and took the Bronte cake off the website accordingly. And while they hadn't gotten the Bronte cakes, they had got the other ones and their supplier assured them that they would be getting their Bronte cakes any day. They told me that if for some reason they didn't get the Bronte cakes in then they would call and give me the choice of either a full refund or a partial refund and one of the smaller, lesser quality cakes.

Fair enough.

A few days ago the money came back out of my bank, but less than what it had been originally. Having received no call or even an email to explain, I was perplexed, but waited to get my package so I could see the shipping invoice and figure out what was up.

Well, I didn't need to look at the invoice. They didn't get any of their Bronte cakes in and took it upon themselves to take my money and send me something I didn't order! On top of that, what they sent me is more expensive, gram for gram. The Bronte cake would have been 2 cents per gram while the cake they sent me was 3 cents per gram, which means if it had been the proper size and not smaller it would have cost $32.25.

Fair enough? No. Not even a little.

So now I have the better part of $40 tied up while they send me a shipping slip to return the cake they decided to spend my money on without my permission. That leaves me juggling my money around trying to make sure I can still pay my bills, buy what I need to for Christmas and now buy yet another Christmas cake with money that another company is keeping a hold of until they get back the product they never should have sent me!

And to top it all off, when I called to complain the person on the other end didn't think there was anything wrong with how they handled this situation because they'd been nice enough to only charge me the $20 list price for the cake instead of charging $28.