Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Atlanta Cattle Exchange
6728 Highway 85
Cumming, Georgia
United States
www.thecattleexchange.net

On Dec. 6, a pair of men drove up to my house and offered to sell me frozen, vacuum-packed meat at a "real bargain", 40% off retail! I went out to look at their wares, and they had cases of meat, chicken, pork and seafood. The product looked very nice, vacuum packed.

They said they had a satisfaction guarantee, and would make me a great deal on the meat, since it was the end of the day and they wanted to get home. I ended up buying one case of steak and one case of mixed chicken/pork. The total cost was over $450.

One of the men carried the food up to our front deck while I paid the other. After they left, my wife and I started putting the meat away in our freezer. We were surprised at how little the meat weighed, given how much we paid. After checking the net weights on all the packages, we were surprised to see that we had purchased a total of only 38.5 pounds of meat, with about 16 pounds of that being beef and the rest a mix of chicken and pork. The per-pound cost came out to a little less than $11.85 per pound, which is expensive meat anywhere in America, certainly not 40% off retail!

I contacted the company the next day to complain, and was foisted off to a "manager" who took my complaint. He said that the records showed that I had received two cases of steak and one of pork/chicken. I told him that this was not true, and we argued for a while. He said he would contact his boss and would call me the next day.

No call came in the next day. I called and left a message. On Monday, I called two of their offices and was told I would be contacted the next morning. No call came in. I called again the next day, late in the afternoon, and was told that they were going to "give" me another box of beef.

By this time all I wanted was to get a refund for the meat and return it. This was not an option, according to the person who spoke with me. I told them I didn't want another case of meat, and didn't even have a place to put it, that my freezer was full. She told me to give it away as a Christmas present.

I was also told that "on the back of the brochure" it was clearly stated that I had only three days to complain, and that it had to be in writing (certified letter, I believe she said.) I tried to tell her that I had never seen a brochure (because I had not), but she talked right over the top of me and said she wasn't going to argue with me, that I wasn't going to get my money back. As far as that goes, it would have been nice if someone had told me about the requirement for a letter the first time I called.

With a "guarantee of satisfaction" and an unhappy customer with a lot of unopened meat, I'd think they would want to keep themselves from getting a bad reputation by settling things. But I've since then seen other mentions of the company on the Internet with complaints about bad customer service, so I guess I should have checked first.