United States shipping delayed

If much more time passes with NO COMMUNICATION from Huel, I will be filing a dispute with my credit card. Can’t trust a company that is so quick to charge your credit card but is a black hole with any other information or follow-up.

@Teresa_Huel – I am a monthly subscriber and received an email on Sept 29th saying that my order would be shipped on Oct 2nd. I never received a shipping notice so I asked today if it was on its way. I was told that my order would not be shipped for another 10 days (!!!) due to the delay. It looks to me that others are receiving their orders before mine… Can you tell my why a monthly subscriber who expects delivery on a regular basis should be getting shipments after others who have just ordered? Doesn’t seem like good business to me… Wouldn’t you put priority on the people who are regular, repeat customers??

I love your product, as it has helped me immensely with digestion problems, but issues like this make me want to find an alternative, quickly.

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Hi all,

If I may, I’d like to offer another perspective here. I know everyone is excited to receive their huel, and in a world of Amazon’s 2 day shipping we’re all pre-programmed to get things pretty soon after checking out, perhaps look at it this way - Huel is brand new to the United States, and while I fully believe they had good intentions with their original shipping estimates, I believe that was based on volume up until that point.

Based upon the discussion board here and some light googling I did, it appears that Huel started fulfilling US orders in June of 2017, just 4 months ago. Now, I don’t know if they started with order #00001 or not, but let’s assume they did for the sake of being conservative with numbers. I placed my order on September 18th (#9958), it shipped 10 days later on 28th, and I received it on Tuesday 10/3. I did some math so you don’t have to - that means they were averaging about 900 orders a week up until me (and I get it, it probably was moreso increasing every week than a flat 900, but go with me here) - there is comment above by someone who was order #12405 on September 28th - just TEN DAYS after mine they were already 2500 orders beyond me. That’s a pretty significant leap, and while I imagine that they were aware of the rapidly increasing trends, I’d like to think this product takes a bit of time to produce and therefore can understand why it would take some efforts to ramp up their fulfillment.

Growing pains like this happen with most companies, so if it’s a product you’re interested in, stick it out and show these guys some compassion - I can imagine they are quite literally buried in emails with all of the same questions. Give them time, let them straighten it out, and then if you hate the product or the company disappoints you, THEN give them crap… but let’s all give them the benefit of the doubt for a bit that they’re doing the best they can with what they have, limited time and limited resources.

Also, I will say this - they included a very nice apology letter in my box and a little something extra to compensate me for the wait. I thought it was a nice gesture to acknowledge that they’re trying. If anyone lives near Massachusetts and is dying to get their hands on some vanilla, I’d be happy to give you a sample.

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Well put Erin, while I am irritated at the wait I am not by any means going hungry. I have been a long time user of Soylent and about a year ago they had a recall and halted production of their powder which prompted a forum fiasco from their subscribers similar to this. I did then, and still do stand by their product. If it is growing pains then I hope they learn from this and get better, just as Soylent did.

What Erin said^^

It took over two weeks for me to get an answer about where my order was, only to find out it had been mis-delivered to the wrong address and some unscrupulous character had signed for it rather than admitting no one with my name was there/the driver was at the wrong address. As soon as I notified Huel of this, they fulfulled a new order and I had it just a few days later.

In my experience, the problems Huel is having are minor compared to most growing companies, and certainly minor compared to most companies that have had the challenges they have faced (multiple hurricanes, over-stressed delivery services like USPS, UPS, FedEx, huge increases in order numbers, etc).

They’ve only been in the US for a few months and they’re giving out extra shakers, which is going to hurt their bottom line, especially when compared with the sheer number of orders they’re adding these to. Take in to account the number of people who are probably demanding refunds because they can’t handle waiting more than a week and a half or two and I can’t imagine how crazy it is trying to deal with all this. I wonder how many orders have had to be unpacked because someone demanded a refund as their order was being processed?

I placed an order on 10/4/17, today (10/10) I got an email saying that my order should ship in 10 business days. That means they are expecting to ship my order 14 business days after it was placed, which works out to be a 4 week delay counting weekends. Wish they had been more transparent when I placed my order, the lack of customer service is making me think this will be a one time deal.

Just an update to my prior post, my order, #12936 made 9/30 (10 days or 7 business days), has just been given shipping information (10/10), so hopefully all orders prior to mine should have been shipped as i also have a very large order, 112 meals.
I hope that those not reasonably far after my order should be seeing theirs shortly :smiley:
I would also like to thank @Teresa_Huel for reaching out to their shipping department directly, to check on the status of my fulfillment seeing as it was odd that my order was so delayed compared to an order 200 orders after mine.

Obviously there are kinks in getting everything out, but they are the best they can do under the circumstances.

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I recently made the same comment about Amazon.

I got a confirmation today that the package is ready for shipping. I ordered 9/29. I was told before placing my order that they were swamped. I thought it was only the Vanilla product back logged. After a few days I came to the forum to see what’s up. A pinned note made it clear.

I don’t have a complaint here at all. I am very happy to know that a sustainable and nutritious food is being produced for Americans … and we’re demanding more than Huel was prepared to supply!

They’ll get it figured out. I’m voting with my dollars for a product (and company) with a mission I want to succeed. We, humans, need to do a better job managing resources (including and especially food) or we risk further scarcity and imbalance in the future. I hope Huel will meet this challenge.

“I was ordering that stuff when it only had 5 digit order numbers” - us in 10 years. :wink:

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Order my official subscription for the 112 meals last Thursday Oct, 5. Today Wed Oct 11. I had a delay of 2 1/2 weeks when I ordered my 28 meals before this order. I received an email TWO different days telling me the 10 days to ship that everyone gets.

I am curious if my order will take longer than others being that I ordered 8 bags versus just 2?

Also, now that I am subscribing for future orders should I expect delays when my subscription reorders in the future? I want to avoid gaps in my HUEL intake moving forward if possible.

Felber, your order will likely take longer to come because of ordering 8 bags versus just 2 bags.

“smaller orders have been prioritized over larger orders” as stated by teresa_huel

I don’t know the exact degree to which the smaller orders have been prioritized but for my order, 200 others were fulfilled before mine (i had 112 meal order), though i was informed this is unusual.

As for the delays in subsequent orders, i think it depends on your reorder schedule and when they resolve the back order issue. maybe get your next order a bit ealier as to make sure you have enough, and then once the back order situation has been resolved you can adjust your scheduel to what you actually need.

Hi Paul, I’m sorry that we weren’t able to ship your order out as planned. However, it is officially official, no doubts about it, that your order is now in transit and is scheduled to arrive on Monday 10/16. I will private message you with a tracking number. :hugs::tada:

I have reached out to the warehouse team about your order again and will report back what I hear from them. I’m sorry this is going on longer than expected. :sweat: If you would still like to cancel your order and be refunded, please email support@huel.com and we can assist you there.

Can you please private message me with your name and order number so I can look into your order for you? You can also email support@huel.com if you would prefer that option.

I just wanted to chime in here. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Huel and the staff. It’s well worth the wait.

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Hi J,
I’m sorry for the headaches you’re experiencing with your first Huel order. I can assure you that this is not the typical routine for us. We recently launched in the US and were simply put, unprepared for a big leap in demand that depleted our inventory faster than our manufacturer could keep up with, causing our delay to go on longer than originally anticipated. We are taking the proper steps to build our inventory to where it needs to be to better serve our customers. All in all, it has definitely been a learning experience and we will absolutely use this as an opportunity to fine tune and improve our overall customer experience.

Hi Joe, could you please message me with your order number and name used to place the order so I can look into it for you? Thanks!

Hi Craig, your experience is exactly what we don’t want for our customers and I’m so sorry you’ve had these delays. Unfortunately, I can confirm that your order is still listed as unfulfilled and that I’ve seen larger orders have a slightly longer delay than smaller orders. We are working incredibly hard to manufacture and ship out as much Huel as we can, as fast as we can and we have truly taken away a lot of learnings from this situation to improve the overall Huel experience moving forward.

Your future subscription orders will continue as planned despite this delay. If you would like to edit your next shipment date, we can certainly help you with that. Email support@huel.com where we will be able to assist you.

You’re missing the point.
The issue isn’t their turn around. I’m fully aware of how long this kind of product can take to manufacture and what kinds of challenges that are inherent in the supply chain. (Disclosure: I work for the biggest consumer goods company in the world, and was in the dietary supplements division prior to my current assignment.)
The problem they have, and that they will continue to have if they don’t fix their system, is that they’re making promises they can’t keep.
You were order number 9900 on the 18th, or thereabouts, yes? And yours was 10 days late. That’s okay. That happens from time to time. Every company has issues, especially at startup, and it seems the start of the issue was around the 21st.
The problem lies in the fact that I was 14075 on October 4th (a day after yours arrived from being late) and, at the time of my order, it claimed on the site that it would be shipped same day and would arrive within 2-3 business days. Now, it says on the site: “Due to increased demand, please allow an additional 5-10 business days for your order to arrive. Thank you for your understanding.”, when we’re all well aware, given we’ve placed our orders and are waiting, that the wait-times are up to twice that.
The problem, from a business standpoint, is that they’re misrepresenting themselves and are going to cost themselves a lot more in the long run than if they just simply posted the truth up front. I want this to be successful. Soylent makes me nauseated. The worst thing Huel can do is ignore the feedback they’re getting.
My guess, and it is simply a guess, as I do not work for Huel, but am familiar with this industry, is that they are having a contract manufacturer make it here in the United States, as Huel is UK based, and there was a quality issue with a batch. Now, that might sound like a bad thing, but, in reality, it’s probably a good sign that they’re out of stock because they scrapped the off-quality material. Now they’re short because they had to order additional raw material in, expedited, have to do the quality tests on the raws (because their supply chain is too new to be on reduced testing), which includes microbiological testing, which can take 7 calendar days, plus a couple if they’re having to use contract labs as well as a contract manufacturer, which is likely, plus getting on the CM’s (contract manufacturer) schedule, plus testing the finished product, again, Micro being the long lead item, minus safety stock, plus the raw material acquisition time, so, call it 3 1/2 weeks behind their anticipated timeline?
And if their management is smart, they’ll have an eye towards building inventory to prevent this issue in the future, as well as running a cost/benefit analysis based on returns, lost productivity, and lost sales vs. the cost of establishing in-house capabilities.

That’s just my thoughts on it, though. :slight_smile:

I wasn’t missing the point at all - just trying to remind people that supply and demand is a very real thing. Your points, whether accurate or not, still point to the same root thing: less supply, more demand. The main point I was trying to drive was that Huel in the US is new and every company should be given a fair chance to work out their growing pains. Yes, they absolutely could have been more transparent with the messaging on their website, but I’m a glass half full kinda girl - I’d like to think they merely missed that as a corrective opportunity at first because they were overwhelmed with everything else. The messaging on their website is corrected now, so I see no value in continuing to point out their past mistakes.

Sorry, not really looking to get into a debate on this, just figured I ought to reply if you’re going to tell me I’m missing the point. By the sheer nature of offering “my perspective”, it’s my opinion and therefore hitting whatever point I was trying to make. Everyone is welcome to their perspective, just trying to encourage everyone to have a little compassion here, we all want the same thing!

It’s not their past mistakes that I’m looking at, Erin. They’re still not providing transparency. These forums are obviously monitored by members of the company. Likewise, they are a new company, or at least a new branch on this side of the pond. It’s meant to be constructive feedback so they can improve their system. I’m not saying they suck. I’m saying they need to re-evaluate their practices and improve them, which I haven’t seen them do yet, and they’re obviously still small enough to be nimble.