I used Pioneer Meats in Wasilla for two recent orders, one caribou and one moose. My experience was horrible and I could never recommend this business to anyone for a variety of reasons.
On my caribou order I asked if they could make as much stew meat as possible out of the misc pieces instead of turning it into burger. The woman taking the order said they could and indicated that on the order form. I ordered 20lbs of pepperoni and 20lbs of breakfast sausage and asked that anything that couldn't be turned into stew or these products after steaks, roasts and ribs were processed be ground. The woman taking the order assured me this would happen and drew up the order form as such.
When I picked up the order I had no stew meat, 40lbs of pepperoni and 49lbs of breakfast sausage and a bill that was $140 dollars more than anticipated as a result of the larger quantity of the more expensive products. In the meantime I'd dropped off a moose for processing.
When I went in to pick up the moose I brought my caribou paperwork in and presented the problem to the owner, presumably Lisa. Not only was she not sympathetic to the situation she insisted that it was somehow my fault for not catching their error and that she wasn't willing to offer anything to make it right. She eventually offered to take back the extra product and give me $97 dollars worth of someone else's burger in exchange which I had no interest in. I wanted my meat and to be compensated for the extra charge. As an aside, I'm not sure how they uphold their 100% "your meat back guarantee" while giving away people's burger to fix their errors.
So she wouldn't budge on the refund request. I remained tactful throughout and ended the conversation by informing her that she would be losing my business and recommendation, to which she replied she didn't need or want my business anyhow. Her attitude throughout was insulting at best if not downright rude.
I picked up my moose order and immediately noticed that it seemed like there was a huge amount of burger and not as many roasts and steaks as I would expect for a large bull and compared to past animals I've harvested. In looking through the meat I found about 9 pounds of backstrap and two small packages of tenderloin. I have no idea where the other 30 pounds of backstrap and 10 pounds of tenderloin went that should have been there. Either they kept them for themselves or ground them into burger. Either way I'm missing a huge amount of the finest meat on the animal.
None of the meat I picked up was frozen either making me wonder how long it had been sitting outside of the fridge or freezer over the week that it was in their care.
After all of this was clear I tried to stop payment on the check that I'd written them a few hours earlier and the bank said they had already cashed it, which leads me to believe that this is not the first time they have screwed someone over and run to the bank.
I am extremely disappointed that not only did this company steal money and apparently meat from me, they are seemingly fairly well practiced at it and definitely don't care about running a quality business. read more
