This is a tough review to write, because my wife and I have shopped at T&C for many years. But…read morefacts are facts, and rotten customer service is rotten customer service, no matter how you cut it. So, for what it's worth, here goes. On Friday or Saturday, April 12 or 13, 2024, I visited T&C to purchase a large (2 lb) container of chicken salad. I've lost count long ago of the number of times that my wife and I have purchased this product, which, in our opinion, is the best chicken salad to be found in the area. T&C's chicken salad isn't cheap (it was more than $25 for the 2 lb container), but we've always thought that it was worth it. This time, however, something was a bit off with the salad. When my wife opened it the following day to make a sandwich, the salad just didn't smell quite right, and the taste matched--something was a bit off. That's never happened before, but rather than risk an infection by a food-borne pathogen, we chose not to consume any more but rather to return the product for a replacement.
That happened today (April 17), or at least I tried to make that happen. Instead, I was met with a rude, utterly unaccommodating individual behind the checkout counter (I don't know whether she was a manager or owner), who abruptly told me that the chicken salad couldn't be returned because it was perishable; that she was unwilling to give any refund to me for the product (I never asked for a refund; I merely wanted a replacement but I could hardly get that out before she stridently jumped in); and that, for my trouble, she'd offer to make a sandwich for me. She further said that the store has this "policy" (the best that I can discern, the "policy" is not to stand behind what they sell), because they have no way of knowing how a food product like this was handled or stored when it left T&C. Fair enough, I told her, but, in my case, I purchased the chicken salad, drove straight home to Oxford (about a 13 minute drive), and placed the container in our refrigerator (which is set to 37 degrees, per the manufacturer's recommendation). The T&C employee/owner replied that "of course, everyone says that," to which I asked whether she was implying that I was lying to her. The interaction went downhill from there, although it's hard to fall from the floor.
If this had been a bag of chips or some other, inexpensive product, I wouldn't have bothered. But T&C's large container of chicken salad is north of $25. The right thing to do would have been to take the product back and provide a replacement, which is all that I wanted. This individual, however, thought that the better course was to act rudely, implicitly accuse me of lying, and then, in essence, to tell me to pound sand because this was a "perishable" product. Of course, it's perishable. But that doesn't mean that it can be sold in a state that is or may well be spoiled. Moreover, I wasn't asking T&C to put the product back in the deli for further sale; I was merely asking for a replacement.
As I said, we've shopped at T&C for years. Today, they lost a long-standing customer and every ounce of goodwill that they had developed over those years. For the rest of you, buyer beware. T&C doesn't stand by its food products.
