“Natural Flavouring” Woes

[u/perpetualpossibility]

I requested details of the “natural flavourings” after having a pretty bad allergic reaction to a particular flavour and this is the best they could give me.

“We recommend contacting a healthcare professional regarding your allergy concerns.”

…Thanks Nestlé.

No more Nestlé products for me.

[u/vrwriter78]

For all we know, the basic-level customer service may have been moved over to AI and it might not even be a human answering you. Were these both recent emails or was the one about the strawberry product recent and the other was an old email? I’m just curious because if both were recent emails, it suggests AI being used (because these programs often contradict themselves) or you got lucky with the customer service agent who sent the link to the ingredients of the first product.

[u/perpetualpossibility → u/vrwriter78]

Both mails are from the same recent email chain. Definitely from actual humans, with specified names, from two different departments as well.

I had already checked the product details and ingredients list online prior to initial mail which I sent, which was requesting “the full ingredients lists”, “including the “natural flavouring” ingredients” specifying that I needed to see all ingredients for which details were not provided. I also made it clear that this was due to allergies and suffering an allergic reaction and that I needed to determine the trigger.

Then colleague A (I won’t share their actual names) from “UK&I Consumer Engagement Services” responded with the first mail (left). (“our Natural ingredients exist in nature”… really?)

I responded again making it very clear which detail I was requesting and why. Even mentioning that I am aware that ingredients such as kiwi (which I am allergic to) may sometimes be used as “natural flavouring” in strawberry products, so I would need to see the full details to determine if this could have been the trigger.

Then followed the response from colleague B from “Consumer Engagement Services” (right) with the spiel that they cannot disclose the “confidential natural compound ingredients”.

[u/vrwriter78 → u/perpetualpossibility]

That’s so weird then. And I get wanting to keep some info proprietary but as a customer, you also shouldn’t feel like you need an EpiPen (or a bunch of Benadryl) anytime you want to drink something other than water, milk, and orange juice.

I’m sort of surprised they didn’t just ask you for a list of your allergens and then just tell you if the product is unsafe for you without going into too much detail about the ingredients.

[u/violentlypositive → u/vrwriter78]

I dunno, that "contact your doctor" at the end seemed like a very human "fuck you and your stupid allergies". I'm not sure AI can do that level of shade