By: suzy greenburg
(Oct 9, 2010)
We go to Royal Oaks Apple Orchard in Hebron and have been going there for the last 6 years. This year we went there like every other and were EXTREMELY dissapointed with the lack of apples they had and he quality of the ones that were still left. We decided to ask for our money back and just purchase the apples we knew were good in their store but were given a VERY hard time. After we were given our $ back we were approached by the Quality Control Man and he had a TON of excuses and never apologized. Instead he told us we were entiltled to our opinion and when we called him out for puting flags on apples that weren't even ripe yet his response was 'the people would just pick them anyways" So he told us to go out in the orchard and try other apples in hopes that we would change our minds so we did. We really didn't find anything to our liking so we decided again to go and purchase them inthe store. When we were walking to the store we noticed an unmarked bin full of apples and saw similar bins in the field and assumed they were for picking. So my three small children and my husband and I all tried these new apples and liked them. Suddenly we were approached by the boy that gave us our money back and he was yelling at us and pointing his finger at us telling us "Who do you think you are returning your bags and now you're taking apples from us!" We were in shock and tried to explain that we were not aware that they weren't for trying and he continued to badger us and basically calling us thieves. My daughter started to cry and I was so upset I was nearly speechless! The other man came over and told us we had been nothing but trouble and we needed to leave!!!! Appparently if you voice your dissatisfaction with their product this is how you are treated there! We were sent away in tears with no apology but instead just more ridicule! I will NEVER set foot in that place again!
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Unfortunately no matter how we tried to resolve this situation, we were going to lose. We are a Bio-intensive IPM orchard and our apples are not going to be grocery store shelf perfect as they had wanted. We had been so busy during the season we were running out of apples that were at 12% on the Brix scale and opened apples up for picking that were at 10% Brix so our customers would have some apples to pick. We had to open them up because they were the next closest apples ready to pick and customers were starting to pick them before being flagged as ready. I even tried to offer this couple a free peck of apples that were pre-picked. The bin they were picking from was in our packing room area which is posted off limits to customers due to insurance reasons. They refused our free apple offer and used the F word in front of their own children at least 25 times. Then they called us filthy names, so we asked them to leave because they used such filthy language. This was most unfortunate.