Urban Organics is Kind of Lame

Last week I signed up for a weekly delivery of organic produce through a service known as “Urban Organics”. For a fairly reasonable charge of $35 Urban Organics claims that it will deliver a box of fresh varied organically grown fruit and vegetables to your door on a prescribed delivery date once a week, or less, depending on your needs. They also try to obtain their produce locally, thereby supporting the small farms in upstate New York. Sounds good, right? There’s only one problem. The place is run by irresponsible hippies with extremely poor organizational skills. My first box was supposed to arrive yesterday but it was a no-show. While they couldn’t master the art of delivering the product, they still managed to charge my credit card. Despite the fact that I sent them an e-mail early this morning, I still have not been contacted by customer service to explain what happened to my wayward Swiss chard and fava beans. I should have known better. Years ago I used their service when I lived at two different addresses, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx, only to cancel each time due to delivery issues. I’m surprised they are still in business.

For the average person, I suppose the botched delivery wouldn’t be a particularly vexing issue, but as a single parent working full-time I arrange my shopping trips quite carefully and the fact that I was counting on the box of vegetables arriving yesterday (they only deliver to each boro once per week) means I didn’t buy any produce on my weekly shopping trip. This translates into another time consuming trip back to the store. With all the competition from farmers markets and organic produce readily available in supermarkets, I would think that a company like Urban Organics would emphasize customer service. Ah well. Back to Stop & Shop.