by Hope
I order our milk from Amazon. We only drink 2 ingredient almond milk. And I know it’s expensive, but it makes a difference in our health and our options for healthy options in our tiny town are very limited. I’ve done it this way for several years now.
I get a case of 6 individual pints (I think that’s their size, about 1/2 a 1/2 gallon) or maybe it’s a quart. I don’t know. When I see we are down to the last two containers, I order more. (I used to have a subscription that came like clockwork, but we just don’t use it like that anymore.)
When I went to eat some cereal a few weeks back, a brand new box, I had found on sale. A real treat for me. I spit out the first bite thinking my milk had gone back. It was terrible. Come to find out they had sent us Cashew milk instead of our normal Almond milk and I noticed too late after the return date. (In my defense the containers look exactly the same.)
2nd and 3rd milk order
Fast forward, I ordered a new case. And waited anxiously for it’s arrival. Because I wanted to eat my cereal! Then I got notice, on the day it was to be delivered, that it was undeliverable. Ugh!
So I ordered another case…third time has to be the charm, right?!?
It arrived. Packaged differently than any other case I’d ever gotten. I opened it to find at least one of the containers had busted. And not only that, but they knew that and just wrapped it in plastic and sent it. It smelled so disgusting.
So I immediately get on Amazon, well in my return window, and it says this item is not available for return. What!?!
The only me, would probably have sucked up the loss. And at this point stopped ordering almond milk from Amazon. But I’m broke and I don’t have anything to lose. I got on the phone expecting a fight to get my money back.
Nope, he returned my money immediately. And said that I didn’t need to repackage the contents to return them. Thank god, because it was gross.
But I got to thinking, I need this milk. I still wanted to eat my special cereal (special because I have stopped buying cereal because it’s not healthy and it’s so expensive.) I found this box on sale for $3. Which I know is still high and still unhealthy, but it was a treat.
I dug through the gross. Dealt with the sour smells. Washed each of the 5 containers that had not busted. And damn it, I have milk. I’m going to be cautious when I open them to use them, and make sure they haven’t soured per se. Does almond milk sour? I mean, the busted one was so gross, but in general?
The moral of the story is that sometimes you just need to pick up the phone and call. Even if at first, they say this “item is not eligible for return.”
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
Since it is just you why not go to a store and buy your milk?
There are no fillers in this nut milk. But I might could try making my own…maybe. We will see.
I mean, you’re going to do what you want, but if I was struggling to pay my bills, I would stop drinking milk, if my only option was that expensive of milk. Milk isn’t a need, you can snack on cereal dry or eat something else.
We don’t drink it. It is only used for cooking and occasionally cereal (but cereal is SO HIGH that it is a treat in and of itself.)
You probably don’t need to order six bottles at a time anymore and maybe go back to much cheaper cow milk until things improve financially?
You are probably right but I don’t know any place to get this limited content milk locally. And the shelf life is substantial so it’s okay to sit.
Since I ended up washing off the 5 viable containers in this last busted package, we will use it up before I purchase others. And since it’s just Beauty and I now…well, it should last a while.
But I can’t do cows milk, it’s taken me years to really get my health, ie diabetes and IBS under control so don’t want to go backwards.
You could maybe still do this with the cashew milk, too. I once bought a light fixture from Amazon (a pendant light for above my kitchen island). It arrived, and sat in a box for far too long before my husband finally had time to wire it in. We have existing wiring in the home above the island, but no lights their currently. Anyway, when he went to wire it, it didn’t work. We ended up calling an electrician who confirmed there was faulty wiring and recommended simply NOT having a light (explaining that due to the position, it would be very difficult and costly to do new wiring). By this point, I was way past the return date for the pendant light. But mentioning it to a friend, she said she does this all the time! I called Amazon and explained the issue – the light was fine, but I couldn’t use it and was past the return date. They said no problem and refunded the money! Especially since the original shipping mix-up was their fault and not your own, I would think there’s a good chance they’d do the same for you.
We ended up using the Cashew milk, the kids were fine with it. And I didn’t notice when I used it for baking. So it didn’t get wasted.