Sandy Wiseman Yates could laugh a little easier on Monday afternoon, but there was no laughter on Saturday evening when she set about preparing a cup of tea.
At 5:45 p.m. the Corner Brook resident poured the contents of the Day 1 packet of candy cane crush tea contained in a Davids Tea Advent calendar into a steeper.
When she looked into the steeper she saw more than candy cane bits and white chocolate pieces — she saw a large bug, which she is pretty sure is a cockroach.
“You can notice it,” said Wiseman-Yates. “It’s noticeable, it’s large.”
Her first reaction was to scream. “Very loudly.”
And that brought her family running to see what was up.
Wiseman-Yates purchased the calendar online. She ordered it on Nov. 26, and knew it wouldn’t arrive in time for Dec. 1. But she didn’t care, and planned to start on Day 1 and continue into January.
“I just like the surprise of what they are and trying all their teas, because I’m a big Davids Tea drinker.”
At least she was.
The calendar arrived on Dec. 10 and Wiseman Yates waited until Saturday to start.
When she calmed down a bit from the shock, Wiseman Yates looked up her email notification on the order and called customer service.
She told the man who answered what she was calling about and asked to speak with a supervisor or manager. She was told they were busy, but he would check.
After a few moments, the man returned and told her they were too busy to take her call and to email customer service and send pictures.
Wiseman Yates is the not the type to put negative stuff on social media, but getting bad customer service on something she knew was significant wasn’t good.
So, she shared her story and pictures of the bug in the tea on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
“I never would have done it had I not gotten poor customer service.”
And the posts took off, shared over 150 times alone from her Facebook post.
The manager of the local Davids Tea store was one of the ones who saw it and contacted Wiseman Yates Saturday night, very apologetic and remorseful.
On Monday she got two more calls, this time from a district manager with the company.
The woman also apologized and said it was an isolated incident and that she’d never heard of anything like it before.
The company will send Wiseman Yates a waybill so she can return the item for them to look at, which is all she wanted from the start. They will also refund her purchase.
She said it’s unfortunate that it took two days and the attention from social media before that happened.
She was offered some tea as compensation, but turned it down. Wiseman Yates said she’s not a Davids Tea drinker anymore.
“Maybe we’ll stick to our Tetley.”
