I thought I'd update those who recently purchased PB2. I ordered mine on January 26th and still haven't received it. I emailed the company and got the reply posted below. Apparently they were totally bombarded when Hungry Girl featured the stuff. I'll let you know how I like it when it finally does arrive.
--Jennifer
Here's the email:
Dear Valued Customer,
Please excuse this email, but I felt it necessary to
communicate with everyone that has signed up with Bell
Plantation as a customer. I know that many of you are
having problems, problems with ordering, problems with
paying with credit cards, getting emails to us and
especially in calling us. I apologize for all of
these problems and can only tell you that we are
working very hard to correct all of them for the
future.
We have fixed most of the problems now with the web
site, the credit card system, the addresses on the
confirmations and even the confirmation system itself.
We have taken out the email form that so many of you
had problems with and replaced it with our email
address so that you can just use your own software to
send an email.
The phone problem we have not worked out. The problem
that caused the initial crash of our web site and
ordering system is still overloading our phone and
answering service. According to our telephone system
(BellSouth) we are getting over 400 calls per day,
with a high volume of almost 1,000 calls in a single
day. We have two lines coming in for calls and there
are two people to answer the phone. For the ones that
get through to us, there are hundreds per day that get
sent to the answer system. The answering system can
only store about 75 calls before it is full, so it is
full very early in the day. We can't hope to answer
all of the messages that are left, but we answer as
many as we can.
I am answering 250 to 300 emails per day but can't
even keep up with what is coming in. Please bear with
me and I will get back to all of you.
We are indeed a real company and make all of our
products right here in our own plant. In the near
future we will have pictures of our plant on the web
site for all of you to see. We are shipping out about
500 orders per day now and speeding up on that. We
have hired a temp service to supply tempory workers to
help us get out the orders quickers. FedEx has sent
help to prepare forms and to load trucks. In the next
few days we hope to be sending out over a 1,000 orders
per day. We will build in any system necessary to
keep all of you, our customers, happy.
Before Hungry Girl wrote about us in her newsletter
she made the best understated comment I have ever
heard. She told us that we might see a bump in
demand. Wow, what an understatement, we have over
190,000 hits on our website, over 6000 phone calls and
thousands of emails, a slight bump. Hungry Girl has
quite a following.
Please bear with us and enjoy your PB2 and other
products when you get them. We will be totally caught
up on our order shipments in a few days and all of you
will have been notified by FedEx and us to confirm
shipment including a FedEx tracking number.
Thank you for giving us a chance.
J. C. Bell