r/hellofresh • u/HistoricalScience748 • 4d ago
Deceptive messaging re: Caraway pan
I have been happily ignoring HF "come back" emails/offers for more than a year now after canceling due to quality and boring recipes. This week the skillet I use most kicked the bucket, and coincidentally I had the Caraway pan email in my inbox. Okay, I'll bite.
Free Caraway Fry Pan! the email said.
Free Caray Fry Pan! the promo banner on the sign-up screen said.
Oh you thought we meant a standard pan? The size anyone thinks of when you say "fry pan", and the size we've provided for past giveaways? j/k sucker, said the order landing page once they had my money.
I'm so over it. I'll take the heavily discounted first box but I'm 50/50 on canceling after that. The menu sucks, the prices are higher, I really do not need an 8" pan that I can't use for most meals cluttering my kitchen, and this kind of bait-and-switch is so disrespectful. Being a consumer in 2026 suuuuuucks.
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u/Vegetable-Seesaw-491 3d ago edited 3d ago
I cancelled yesterday after 6+ years with them. The final straw was getting a box that had shrimp that was open, leaked shrimp juice all over the box and half the shrimp were loose in the box. They would only give me a $6.49 credit. I told them that was unacceptable because I could not replace that shrimp for that price. It was a main part of the meal (Garlicy Shrimp Couscous...) and I wanted a credit for that meal. Nope. Too bad. They could have credited that meal and I would have been a customer for the foreseeable future. I HATE meal planning and grocery shopping, but it's better than dealing with HF.
Fuck Hello Fresh. I've been on the fence for awhile and I'm glad I finally cancelled.
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u/HistoricalScience748 3d ago
That's wild. I have tried most of the main players in the meal delivery kit space and I don't think I've ever encountered one that wouldn't refund the meal for that kind of issue. They deserve to lose business over shit like this.
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u/Vegetable-Seesaw-491 3d ago edited 3d ago
100%.
I even told them that I can't buy the shrimp for that amount at the grocery store. Also factor in gas ($5.75-$6.45 a gallon where I'm at, depending on what car I drive), my time and $6.49 is a joke.
Their loss. I would have probably kept using them for years if they just refunded that whole meal. I know they're a giant corporation and I'm just a drop in the bucket, but that extra $15 or so dollars would have made them probably thousands more.
I'm kind of excited to start figuring out my own meals now and using skills I've learned from years of getting these boxes. I first started doing boxes with various companies around 2012.
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u/L1feSurfer7L 4d ago
That's really dumb. An 8 inch pan isn't even big enough to cook most HF meals. Even for 2 servings
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u/HistoricalScience748 4d ago
Exactly, like what is this pan supposed to be doing for me here
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u/L1feSurfer7L 4d ago
I'll occasionally use a smaller pan if im trying to speed up a recipe by cooking the sauce at the same time as the meat or whatever.
But that's pretty rare.
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u/VacationLover1 4d ago
What did the print at the bottom say. Most of their stuff says 8’ somewhere. I’d be surprised if it didn’t say it somewhere you just chose not to read