Reviews for: Eating with the Seasons
I did enjoy being able to pick what I was getting, but that's the best I can say about it.
Choice: each week I have many many many options from which to choose fruits and veggies. Since Eating with the Season individually packs each customer's bag, it's personalized to my family's preferences and food plan for the week. Produce: I receive high quality produce, from area vendors. Often these are the same vendors I seek out at the farmer's market on the weekend--but the produce came to me! About twice in 7 years I've had a problem with what I received and Eating with the Seasons immediately apologized and gave me a credit to use next time. Service: EWTS's office team is great.
They did occasionally offer to replace items that were not satisfactory, but never fixed their process to get the right quality and quantity to me in the first place. They made it sound like nobody else had problems, but that would mean either I was the only one bringing home a half empty container of fuzzy strawberries, or nobody else cared enough to let them know, or they were lying when they said nobody else was having issues.
I canceled about a month ago, expecting a refund in a reasonable amount of time. No check arrived. I emailed last week to inquire, and was promised the check would be cut Wednesday and mailed Thursday. Still no check almost a week later, and now I'm being told that the check went out "for sure" on Friday (promised dates be damned!) and the delay blamed on the holiday.
Bottom line is using EWTS requires lots of patience and wasted money, and canceling requires even more patience. (I've NEVER had to email a company to trigger a refund check before!) You are better served going to the Farmer's Market and getting nice quality produce while paying for the quantity you actually receive.
In fairness, I must add, the produce is very good, the location very convenient, website is great, very easy to use, variety of organic products impressive.
However, I really disliked Jenny's attitude and do not want to deal with snobbish customer service. The mix-up with the PayPal account caused some accounting problems for me, and perhaps Eating with the Seasons office staff prefers to service wealthier customers.
All this organic and sustainability business movement is an an ancient lifestyle for people who do not just follow current popular trends. I am glad it is profitable, and therefore gaining popularity.
Thank you for your service.
I sent a check for my extra items right away, plus added amount for anticipated add-ons. The check was not cashed until about month later. I was also adviced that PayPal may be more convenient or I could give them my credit card. ( I prefer to use my "bills" checking account, as my VISA card was fraudulently used in Great Britain last time I made an online purchase).
I joined PayPal, put funds into the PayPal account, then placed extended my membership to August via PayPal payment. PayPal did not use the PayPal funds deposited, but debited my checking account for the payment. I was new to this service, realized my faux pas, and told Becky, the CSA owner. The payment to the CSA cleared my account via PayPal on 8/13. Jenny from the CSA called with a curt and cold demeanor asking for my credit card, which I gave her. I then called her back & asked if she was aware of my communications with Becky, she said no, I told her there is a payment via PayPal being processed and I do not want another charge & to not use the card I just gave her as I will not renew after August 2010, which is already paid for.
After reading the other disgruntled review, it appears this CSA has a problem with their customer service office staff who act like they are doing us a favor.
Multiple recipes were postponed or ruined over the course of the year because of mistakes in the orders, bad food (I once opened a bag of nectarines, but found four moldy lumps instead!), and underripe items. Unless you report this within 24 hours of delivery, you are out of luck, and if you do report it in time, the best they will give you is an extra item the next week, which means you are under-delivered one week and over-delivered the next. The phrase "two wrongs don't make a right" comes to mind.
When I did call to complain the woman running the CSA was bitter, argumentative, and downright rude. She would argue that oranges left on the counter will ripen even if they are mostly green (they won't and didn't) and refuse to give me a refund or extra item the next week. Sometimes I would just toss the problem food and forget about it rather than have to deal with her attitude.
Along with everything else, the food is not actually local, much of it being shipped in from as far away as Orange County, and the selection is mediocre at best, with very few unusual or interesting veggies and a small selection of your standard fruit.
Save your money for visits to the farmers market. This CSA is NOT worth it.
Comment
Wow, I'm really surprised you had such a bad experience. I have subscribed to Eating with the Seasons for about four years and have always found them really pleasant and easy to work with. I changed my subscription level and never had any problems. I've also never experienced any mediocre produce - their strawberries and heirloom tomatoes are fabulous! Maybe you should try out a service first before prepaying for a year so you know what you're getting into. And I don't know what you consider unusual or interesting produce, but you're not going to find things like Buddha's hand, etc in any CSA program. I tried a couple other programs before Eating with the Seasons and they never gave the option of selecting what you want each week so you end up with a giant box of squash every week for months and most don't have things like yummy granola and jam. Eating with the Seasons is the best program I've come across so far, but to each their own.
Comment
The CSA I belong to is Farm Fresh to You and you do not have to pre-pay for anything. They take out of your account once a month and do not charge you if you choose not to have a delivery. You can stop and start at any time, you can choose which things you do not want delivered. I have never had bad produce but if I did, I know they would take care of it. They are out of Capay but serve the San Francisco area. They have been around since the 70's, it's a family operation and they have a store at the Ferry building. They have always been really nice to me.
Comment
Thank you so much for your review. I have never joined a CSA, and was considering this one. You addressed many of the issues that caused me to hesitate. My husband is disabled, and with a teenage son we are on a very tight budget, I will stick to my local Farmers' Market and growing my own tomatoes and herbs, with supplementation from Whole Foods.
When we subscribed to CSA's in the past, we ran into a few difficulties:
- Inflexibility: What do you do when you get Fennel for 5 weeks or if you have an eggplant allergy in your family? Or what if you grow your own tomatoes and just can't handle any more?
- The Off-Season: The Bay Area has a plentiful & long growing season, but from November to February, we are often left to fend for ourselves as farmers markets clear out and CSAs wind down. It's understandable, but what to the "average" consumers do during that time? Many turn to Safeway.
Technology offers some quick fixes for these challenges and by focusing on the NETWORKING & outreach of a traditional CSA, Becky works with the clients and allows the growers to focus on growing.
Here's what we like about eatwiththeseasons.com:
- The email reminder keeps you up-to-date and makes sure that you can have a say in what goes into your box. And if you forget, your box is still packed for you.
- Their system of choosing what goes into your box allows you to avoid food your family might be allergic to (or that you know you just won't eat), or that you might be growing yourself while staying with what's in season & local.
- The flexibility in the SIZE of box available makes this a great option for single person households as well as larger households. And there are always options to order additional vegetables, if available.
- This sounds petty, but the fact that they accept credit cards in a HUGE convenience factor and I would imagine that it saves them time in having to track down people who might forget to send their checks.
- Their MONTHLY accounting system also allows for flexibility in the ebb & flow of daily life (some of us need more veggies during certain months than others- or eggs- or whatever)
- There are limitted "off-season" subscriptions for loyal customers. Choices are more limitted, just like the local farmers market, but it is there as an option.
- Their alliances with multiple growers, ranchers, egg producers, coffee & tea providers and local farmers market regulars allows them to offer a great variety of items at a convenience. And each of these producers is introduced by Becky as our intermediary, who can introduce us to them. This is a big help in navigating the ever-increasingly complicated & sophisticated landscape of "organic, local, sustainable & all-natural" producers.
Becky & eatwiththeseasons.com has become a figure we feel we can trust in figuring out what to get, from whom and in a way that our family can manage in the midst of Silicon Valley "Busy-ness."
Comment
As the owner of Eating with the Seasons I was devastated to read about Dionne's dissatisfaction of our CSA program and poor treatment by an employee. I take this complaint very seriously and have given her a full refund for the produce she received during the entire 2009 season. Though the review states she spoke with the owner directly, this is not true. The employee who did handle phone calls has been replaced since I find it completely inappropriate to mistreat customers. Had I known a member was feeling this dissatisfied at any time last year I would have contacted her to see how we can resolve the issue sooner. I urge anyone considering joining our CSA to give us a try. Like, Jessica N above, we continue to serve many longtime members who remain satisfied with our program and we will do our absolute best to fulfill your needs, too. Like all other CSA's, we offer fresh, local food at a price that allows us a comfortable income and the ability to pay our bills but by no means do we aim for a large profit margin therefore we designed our procedures on how to handle any issues without involving money. We are constantly fine-tuning our operation which includes striving for 100% customer satisfaction with the quality of our food and accuracy of order packing. As mentioned above, unlike most CSA's, we do let members pick what they get each week. In the rare event a farmer does not have the fruit or vegetable they originally thought they would have, we do ask that you select two alternate items to ensure your replacement item is to your liking. Again, because we work so closely with the farms, this is a rare occurrence. I regret the consistency of Dionne's poor experiences and assure you this is rare as well. My business partner constantly works with members of our staff who fill orders to avoid any unsatisfactory food from going out to our members. Our food is local and we work closely with three main vegetable growers in San Benito and Santa Cruz Counties to comprise our list of offerings: Phil Foster Ranches in San Juan Bautista, Herbert Family Organic Farm in Hollister and Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville. We also work with a handful of other local farms which lends them another market channel beyond wholesale and farmer's markets whenever they have a surplus of their produce. Some of these folks include: Far West Funghi in Moss Landing, John Tobias in Hollister, the Rodriguez Bros in Aromas, and Larry Hirahara Family Farm in Madera. Our goal is variety and our longtime relationship with a multitude of farms allows just that. Over the years members have requested we add citrus to our list. The most delicious fruit in this category we have found comes from Southern California. If we can find fruit in closer regions, we will surely offer those as well but the fact is for a better part of the year you can only find organic citrus from this region. On our weekly list, we let you know what farm the item is coming from and where they are located so if you prefer to stick with a local diet within 100 miles of your home, for example, you will know to shy away from the fruits labeled from Southern California locations. These fruits are offered for variety not because we don't care about locally raised food. While we appreciate members who pay for the full year in advance, If you are a consumer considering joining us for the first time, I encourage you to first sign up for a 4-week trial to see if the program works for you at all, and if so, use this time period to figure out what membership level will be suitable to your lifestyle, too. If you have questions or have specific needs, do not hesitate to call or email us to see how we can fulfill them. I assure you, you will have a friendly voice on the end of the line or in email. Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!