Cyclone Gabrielle: Frustration after ‘aggressive’ HelloFresh advertising in Hawke’s Bay

Fiona Goodin was left feeling frustrated by HelloFresh when she tried to cancel her subscription after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Paul Taylor

Fiona Goodin fended off calls and emails from a meal-kit service reminding her of “what you’ve been missing” as she dealt with the main route between her rural home and Napier being cut off by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Goodin lives on Kaiwaka Rd, off State Highway 2 between Napier and Wairoa.

She was a customer of HelloFresh and decided to cancel the rest of her weekly orders after the cyclone, as the highway was unsafe to drive after the devastation caused by Gabrielle and she was unable to retrieve them from where she picked them up in Napier.

But the “aggressive” marketing, and the calls asking her to restart the service, kept coming.

HelloFresh says it’s now giving additional training to its teams so they stop reaching out to those in cyclone-affected areas.

Goodin says the box she had ordered before the cyclone was refunded after a message from HelloFresh which said they were unable to get deliveries out.

As she had no road access to collect any further boxes, she immediately attempted to unsubscribe through the website, but found that she couldn’t.

Goodin tried to follow up with customer service over the phone, but she said it felt like they didn’t understand or even try to unsubscribe her from the boxes and correspondence.

“Since then though, I have still been inundated with phone calls and emails on how I could save or get 13 free meals and keep my subscription going,” Goodin said.

She said that she was told over a few calls that her situation would be noted, but she got the impression that they had not done so.

“By the third time, when they were still trying to upsell me to go back and purchase HelloFresh, I lost my cool and tried to explain again the situation of there being no road access to get back to town and pick the box up.”

She was still getting what she describes as “aggressive marketing” emails from HelloFresh as recently as last week.

Goodin said the emails continued, even after selecting an option to be removed from the mailing list.

She said she was concerned Hellofresh were using the same marketing with other cyclone-affected people who weren’t able to access the service, which she believes is “unfair” and “frustrating”.

“I don’t think it is appropriate to market like that, I think there should have been some empathy and understanding when you tell someone you can’t access your road because there has been a cyclone.”

Goodin said call centres for many common subscription services could be based overseas and have staff that do not understand the situation on the ground in Hawke’s Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle, which could lead to similar situations to hers.

A HelloFresh spokesperson said the company had been offering regular updates on when services recommence and when “we were able to resume deliveries to them”.

“All our customers that were unable to receive deliveries in cyclone-affected areas were refunded in full,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said HelloFresh was giving additional training to its teams so they stop reaching out to those in cyclone-affected areas.