This doesn’t really rate its own thread, but I don’t know where else to post.
There’s a Chewy commercial where a guy calls Chewy’s customer service. He says his cat won’t eat the food he bought, and how can he return it? The customer service agent says, ‘You can just donate it to a local animal shelter.’
So… ‘Return the cat food? Are you some sort of moron? No, you can’t return it! Just give it away. Or throw it in the trash. We don’t care!’
They don’t accept returns on food but they do refund the purchase price.
I’ve been getting Chloe’s food from them for years and donated a delivery (timing was really off) once.
They don’t make it clear in the commercial.
Here’s the commercial in question, I assume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQoRyakvExM
“You can donate what’s left to a local animal rescue”
I assume that would only work for something like cans. Would any shelter/rescue take an open bag of food? It’s sad to say but wouldn’t they be worried about tampering from an open bag?
I thought he wanted to return the cat?
I’ve had seed/plant companies who’ve made an error and sent the wrong thing, or had the shipping screw up so that it arrived in bad condition, send me a replacement and tell me to keep or give away the wrong or damaged item.
The cost and hassle of shipping it around again, I think, makes it not worth it to them to have me return it; even sometimes for non-perishable items.
Mrs. L.A. was ordering cat litter from Chewy. I get it from Amazon now, or else from Petsmart because Chewy’s shipping is expensive.
Since I have not dealt with Chewy myself, and Mrs. L.A. never tried to return anything, all I know about their return policy is from the commercial – which doesn’t make it clear that they will refund your money and let you keep the item.
It’s possible that there is some shelter out there that might take it, but I’d generally expect that a shelter would only accept donations of unopened food packages.
When Harvey died, we gave the opened bag of kibble to the local Humane Society.
Some shelters might take it if it’s a open bag. But I have had Amazon tell me to keep the item on occasion when they refunded my money. Somethings are not worth shipping back.
There was a lot of information flashed across the bottom of the screen, white type, not easy to read. I did catch the word “return” several times, wasn’t able to read everything the first time and honestly, wasn’t interested enough to watch it a second time.
We use Chewy for almost all of our pet needs. When one is ordering large amounts, shipping is free or very reasonable. I wouldn’t use it for a single pet. We’ve never considered doing a return because a cat managed to fool us into the old “eat food like its the best food ever, until the people get stoopid enough to buy a large amount, then instantly snub it and go on a hunger strike” trick. When that happens, we just call ourselves dumbasses, feed it to the other cats or dogs and move on.
I’ve been doing privately organized pet rescue all of my adult life. I have never heard of anyone donating food that has been tampered with. We accept opened bags all the time, single open bags donations are split between aggravated picky pet owners and broken-hearted ex-pet owners. We also happily accept broken bags of pet food from grocery stores. Hungry bellies need to be filled, rescues are always underfunded.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I often end up with open bags +/or boxes of pet food. I always donate them to the local cat rescue.
Like Flatlined said, “Hungry bellies need to be filled”. The rescue is always very happy to get the food.
That was my take, too. Cat won’t eat the food? Swap it for one that will. It’s like the firearms method of training horses to jump hurdles. Any horse that can’t jump, shoot it. You’ll eventually have champion jumpers. Same with the cat. “It took 15 adoptions and returns before I got a moogie that eats Gato-Gard’n.”
“Not applicable to all returns. Limitations apply.”
Really depends on what kind of rescue/shelter you’re talking about. A large organization probably won’t accept open bags. A small organization without an actual shelter that’s one step above six neighbors feeding the feral cats probably will-especially since those donations will come from people who personally know one of the six.
My aunt used to run a huge rescue. I don’t recall her ever making a point of only taking unopened food. She seemed to be willing to take just about anything she could get her hands on. If they’ll take what you have left of unused medicine, why not what you have left of unused dog food?
I’m not sure what the concern is, but if it’s that someone could have (purposely) tainted the food, there’s really no reason why they couldn’t do that to a still sealed bag or do something to it and reseal it.
Doing some very, very quick googling and admittedly not reading anything very closely, I’m seeing some sites saying they’ll accept opened dry food and some saying that they won’t. One or two even mentioned that they’ll take it, but it gets used for other purposes (wildlife instead of pets).
But they are cats. They’re much more likely to trade in the human.
When my Zircon died, we still had quite a supply of allmhis Diabetic supplies–insulin, needles, Rx cat food.
Once I was able to speak without crying, we talked with the vet who had euthanized him. I know there is a large senior population (people, not pets) in our area, so I gave him Zircon’s stuff with the stipulation he give it to a cat owner who would have trouble paying for it.
Oh, I still miss that cat!
~VOW