Great Canadian Travelling Tea Box - Round 3 - Sign ups CLOSED - June 2014
The box got mailed today and it’s on it’s way to Calla! This was my very first travelling tea box and I really enjoyed it. Got to try out lots of teas!
Just wanted to note that Brenden from WP requested I remove a couple of WP teas that are discontinued so I did as he requested.
They were : Huang Zhi Xiang Phoenix Mountain Oolong and Yunnan Dian Hong Classic 58.
? Lots of tea in the box is discontinued. I bought and paid for that – they aren’t free samples – why can’t I share it with others?
Dexter – Ubacat and I had a short discussion on this via PM. What she reported to me was that Brendan asked the teas be removed because they may contain pesticides and the company had therefore discontinued them. We were unsure what we should do but decided to respect his wishes. I am not sure how much of those teas were left in the box. When did you purchase the tea? Perhaps you could contact Brendan asking for a refund?
This is the first I’ve heard of this. He contacts you guys but not me who has and bought the tea. I have to find out in a public forum…. so he was selling it – then decided it should be pulled but doesn’t contact his customers. Great….. I just lost all respect
I am not too familiar with WP. Please let me know what you find out – more out of curiosity now. I agree with you, I would think that if there was a problem the people who purchased the tea would have been contacted, or even a public post would have been made notifying everyone.
I got those in August – I’m not passing on 2 year old tea that he would have no reason to think is still around. If he pulled it because of a problem – but didn’t contact customers – yet then asks it to be pulled. Makes no sense to me.
I feel that this questions my credibility – it’s like you guys think that I put crap in the box. I feel like I haven’t contributed what I should have.
Editing this post – This is harsher than I meant – it’s like him asking to you to pull it is HIM saying that I shouldn’t have put it in because it’s contaminated – it’s like I shouldn’t have shared it but I didn’t KNOW – He didn’t tell me… I wrote that wrong – sorry
Dexter I felt really bad about this. It was me who requested you put some WP samples in. I really did enjoy them and felt terrible about this but felt I would honour his wishes. It is strange that the people who bought the tea would not be contacted though….
Dex – Please don’t feel bad. I certainly don’t question your credibility and I am sure no one else would either. Ubacat and I decided to post in this forum about removing the teas so everyone would know why. I believe this is a credibility issue for WP! I don’t think you or anyone else involved in this box (or in this community really) would pass on bad or contaminated tea. Love you, hugs :)
I’m not upset at either you Lala or Ubacat – I just think it is hypocritical that it was good enough for him to SELL to me, but doesn’t want me to GIVE it to others – when the customers weren’t notified. I didn’t know…..
I do find that questionable too. According to his note, it was found out later he could not verify if the tea was pesticide free.
This makes me sad. If there was concern enough to not want a tea travelling around, one would think there would be concern enough to let customers know.
I haven’t purchased from that particular company, but hearing this is making me think twice about ever giving them my patronage.
Agreed. Ubacat and Dexter – I think neither of you did anything wrong whatsoever, seems like there’s something fishy going on with WP here, and I don’t like it…
I’m a little concerned by this as well. I see that Brenden has tried to defend his actions here: http://steepster.com/Dexter/posts/282290#comments, but it still doesn’t clear it up for me. It’s either safe enough for everyone to drink, or it’s not.
I don’t see why a vendor should be involved in a TTB anyway. I’m not saying Ubacat did anything wrong by throwing the tea out as was requested, but Dexter has basically had tea wasted – expensive tea, that she expected others to enjoy… If there really are pesticide concerns, then everyone who ordered it should be notified. Not just people in a random TTB, or those who read posts on Steepster.
I think that’s where I get lost too. If Brendan had provided the tea for the box for free I could see a request to remove it. Otherwise, I think it was a bit out of his realm. It’s an unusual situation…how did he even know which ones were in there? I didn’t notice a thread update with the contents.
In addition to what Cavocorax said a teabox isn’t always about tasting for future purchases. Teaboxes have often contained seasonal items, teas from closed companies and discontinued items. This allows people to taste a tea they might of missed or to try a new style of tea to see if it is something they’d like to have in the future. Just because something is no longer sold by the seller is not an appropriate reason to remove it and quite frankly unless the tea has been tested for pesticide residue many of the teas in the box probably contain them. EU research has shown even organic teas often have trace pesticide residues.
I’m not upset at Ubacat or Lala. I’m not even really upset at the loss of the tea – when I put the tea in the box it stopped being MY tea and became part of the box.
I don’t like the comment:
" People that drink WP because they believe in the quality I strive for might drink this tea, and knowing that they might be drinking a tea with pesticide residue is enough for me to want it removed from a box meant to allow people to try different teas for possible purchase."
A> I bought the tea trusting the WP reputation of quality – I guess I was wrong.
B> People participate in traveling tea boxes for various reasons and the only one who can state the purpose of THIS BOX is Lala – she started it.
I too don’t understand – I agree lots of teas have trace/residue pesticides on them – so why this one such an issue? If there is a KNOWN issue with it then EVERYONE should be warned about it.
I don’t know how the laws work in the US – but in my world I have to keep invoices/revenue statements etc for 7 years for income tax purposes – how can he not have customer orders from 6 months ago (and really he put one of these up as discontinued 3 months ago – so at that point he didn’t have records from 3 months ago?)
This thread caught my attention and I’ve read it as an outsider to the TTB in question. I don’t think any of the participants did anything wrong, anyone who’s been on Steepster for a while knows you guys are trustworthy and honest.
At the same time I can understand Whispering Pines/Brendan’s actions. I do not think Brendan meant any harm and he was truly doing what he thought was the right thing. I myself have an extreme chemical sensitivity and have not had issues with any WP teas. It may seem odd he got involved in this TTB, but I think that shows he does care. I’ve read his responses and took them to mean that this was purely a quality issue and not a safety issue. He even offered to donate tea to replace the 2 that were removed.
I usually wouldn’t get involved in something like this, but I do stand by WP as a great company and I know things said here can hurt a business. He might not be tech savvy and therefore unable to recover previous customer records. For financial purposes he would just need transaction amounts captured by PayPal or his merchant account, which don’t always show items purchased. He might not have thought in the past he would need purchase records for an issue like this, so it is something he can correct going forward, lesson learned. I see stuff like this all the time at work (e-commerce Web dev). This is probably a first for him and I’m writing it off as a learning experience. It can be hard to be graceful under pressure. :)
This is just shady and I won’t be purchasing from Whispering Pines. I understand mistakes, but this is too much. It’s the supreme lack of effort I see coming from WP that makes me want to distance myself from the company. They could have at least contacted those on Steepster who have these discontinued teas in their cupboard, made a discussion post explaining why they were discontinuing these teas, something, instead of privately contacting one person and just asking them to throw away the teas. From what I can tell, Ubacat felt like they had to throw away the teas due to WP’s request, not that the teas might be unsafe.
It’s just shady and I want no part of a company that won’t be upfront with their customers.
Hello all,
Well it appears a storm has been brewing. As most of you are aware there was a situation regarding Whispering Pines asking for a few teas to be removed from the box. I will not go into detail as it is aready detailed in this thread and in another separate thread.
I want to say that when the teas were removed, I had no idea it would cause such a stir. I made a decision without having all the information. The decision I made was the one in which I thought was best at the time.
I would like to apologize to the group. I should have asked for all members to be involved in the decision as the tea belongs to all of us. In the future my intention is for any of those decisions to be made on this thread and not behind closed doors.
I would appreciate any discussion on how we can make this box better. I do not want any further discussion of the WP debacle on this thread. There is a separate thread designated for that. I would like to keep this thread for the purposes of communicating about the TTB.
There is no blame being placed on anyone in this group.
Thanks to all for being awesome participants. Happy sipping!
Lala, you did what you thought was best for the group. No need to apologize. You are doing an awesome job running the box and I am really grateful to be apart of it.
I agree with VariaTea. You did what you thought was best as did I and I appreciated your input.
Thanks Lala for bringing this up as a topic for future discussion and future travelling tea boxes. I agree that by involving all participants in the discussion for future boxes is a good idea. This was a whole new situation I gather (I don’t know since it was my very first TTB).
Hi all,
Just an update. Tracking says the box has been delivered to Calla. I just have a PM in to her making sure she did actually receive it.
Hey I got the box :) I shall enjoy it this weekend and send it out sometime this week. Any requests ?
Hey everyone I caught that nasty flu this past week, so I haven’t gone through the box yet, As I didn’t want to contaminate anything. I’ll be sending it out probably this weekend or on Monday.
well it’s just lala and i so i know i’m ok with that..hope you’re felling better. :)
Hey everyone , here’s an update: the box is all nice and packed and ready to be sent out tomorrow morning. This week was kinda hectic and flew by, my apologies. I have two goodies in the box that I purchased at the Toronto Tea Festival that happened last weekend. I will be sending Sil the tracking number when I get off work tomorrow .
It’s here! took me forever to find the thread again.
I am drowning in tea at the moment but will try to get this out to you as quickly as possible lala
Enjoy the box Sil, sorry I didn’t post the tracking , I sent the box out before work that day and lost the receipt :p. Drowning in tea seems like a nice way to go _
I got a pm about if I wanted anything in the box quite a few days ago and I replied…….
Did you send another one? Nothing is in my PM box. Damn steepster
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