I opened a pack of Dorset Cereals’s Simply Delicious muesli and bit down on something hard. I found it was a plastic nose pad from someone’s glasses. I don’t wear spectacles. The impact fractured my tooth, and I had to make an emergency dental appointment so that the tooth could be X-rayed and filled. I have been warned that, as the filling was so large, I may need a crown. I then saw a hygienist, as I was horrified to think something that had been on someone’s nose had been in my mouth. The total bill was £330. I complained to Dorset Cereals and, at its request, sent a copy of the bill along with evidence from my dentist that the tooth had been in good condition at my routine check-up eight months previously. That was more than three months ago and I’ve received no reply.
RC, London
The unhealthy silence of a company promising “a calm moment of pleasure at the start of the day” may be explained by the fact that, in the world of Dorset Cereals, the pandemic is still at its height. Until this month, its contact page informed customers that, due to the “current global situation” there might be a delay in responding to messages, and that letters would not get a reply as staff were working from home. It was removed after I queried it.
As it happens, Dorset Cereals, now part of the multinational Associated British Foods, finally responded the day after you contacted me, and has settled your dental bill. There’s no excuse for a 15-week delay, however, even if staff are still in their own private lockdown. But Dorset Cereals has come up with one, and it will be familiar to all readers of this column: a systems upgrade, or rather “technical problems associated with the introduction of a new software system”.
In fact, it tells me, it’s only covering your costs as a goodwill gesture because of the delay in responding. In says that all its cereals are X-rayed to check for fruit stones. “Our food safety controls are independently assessed and graded as being best-in-class, such that, incidents like this are, thankfully, very rare – in fact, in this case we are at a complete loss to explain how the item identified might have entered the packet,” it says.
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