grace g.

Live insects in salad, Horrific experience after being a customer for over 10 years

Purchased Asda spinach and pea shoot salad, both listed as "washed and ready to eat". To my surprise as I'm tucking into my salad, a green and yellow caterpillar gets up out of it and glides out of it. As expected I threw the salad away immediately. About four hours later I began feeling nauseous and sick, and then was sick several times. I was sent home from work that evening and was off work the following day as well, the sickness continued throughout the day. The next day I decided to contact Asda as I was worried about the origin of the caterpillar and curious as to what parasite may have been in there. The response was not what I had expected from the customer service advisor Roselyn. Her response, was that Asda stopped using pesticides so you are now more likely to find insects in your food, amongst other possible things. I did not find this a satisfactory answer to something that is supposedly washed and ready to eat and the packaging gives no indication you are more likely to find insects in Asda products after the production/sourcing changes they have clearly made. She also rudely sent me a link that tells you how to wash fruit and vegetables. She treated me like a child telling me how to wash food, despite her company packaging saying it wouldn't need to be. She then sarcastically said that she's no medical officer and could not give me an indication into why I was being violently sick and made no attempt to investigate the complaint further. Frustrated, I politely advised this response was not acceptable. I also asked to be refunded for the food considering it had all gone in the bin, something Roselyn was too superior and lazy to do. Her colleague Ian then responded, again made no attempt to investigate further and disregarded all my original comments just like Roselyn. He replied asking what it is that I wanted…. I mean how lazy can you be that you have to ask a customer how to respond to the complaint, do these people have no training at all? I then advised him that I had not even been refunded for the food which I think was around £3. I then get an email saying here have an extra £7 on us as goodwill, and basically go away. As my sickness progressed and Asda made no effort to find out what was in that salad, my GP arranged a blood test. A few weeks later I finally have my test results and am now having to go through an injury lawyer to make a claim against the poisoning, the poor customer service and my loss of earnings from work. This could have all been avoided if I had help from the team at Asda, but it was overall a disastrous and stressful experience.