Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

1.

I had my Christmas Eve dinner almost ruined by the Cajun Grocer’s incompetence.
I ordered a complete meal from them on December 13. They had said on their web site that they ship on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays so that orders will be received on the following weekend. Christmas Eve was a Monday so that left me with the entire weekend to make sure that the turducken would be completely thawed by Christmas Eve.
They shipped my order on Wednesday, December 19. I took a day off of work on Friday, December 21 since that was the day that the Fedex web site said was the delivery date.
I was nervous about shipping it with only two days to get from Louisiana to Chicago but I trusted that they knew what they were doing .. even at the busy holiday season.
When Friday came and went with no update from Fedex as to the progress of my package other than it had left Louisiana on December 19, I began to get nervous.
Saturday morning, I saw that my package had arrived … in St. Paul, Minnesota!! Now, Chicago is not like a small town where you can easily miss the exit on the interstate for us.
I tried to contact the Cajun Grocer on Saturday to see what they could do to help me. They had been promoting their products for holiday dinners, so, on the weekend just before the big holiday, of course, they were not working at all.
I saw later on Saturday that my package had left Minnesota on Saturday morning at 5am. It had arrived somewhere in Chicago on Sunday evening but, after that, there was no further information. By 11:30am on Christmas Eve, when there would be no time to defrost the bird for dinner, I called Fedex to tell them that I would refuse delivery of the package and then called American Express to dispute the charge for the dinner that I never had.
I had to throw something together at the last minute for my kids and their dates. Because my guests were my kids, they understood. But, as for the Cajun Grocer, they will never get my business again. As far as I am concerned, they are an outfit that is not big enough or organized enough to handle a large volume of orders in a time crunch.
I will stick to local food providers from now on. I advise you to do the same.