As I used to mention here often but haven't lately, the main beverage in my life is water. I don't drink coffee or tea or juices or soda or milk or turpentine or Drano® or…well, fill in the name of any liquid that is not water. And my favorite water is Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water, which is available in many areas under many labels. They bottle it under their own name. They bottle it under other names. In some markets, two versions of Crystal Geyser water are sold side-by-side with different names on them and often, different prices. But it's the same water in the same bottles.
I buy a dozen gallons at a time and when the weather's hot, as it's been lately where I am, a dozen bottles don't last long. I just had a dozen delivered and it took the delivery guy a long, agonizing time to transport them all from his car to my porch, just as it took a helluva long time for me to transport them from my porch to where I store them. Why?
Because the bottles had no handles on them. You see those paper handles in the picture above? My bottles arrived sans handles.
I called the market from whence they came. The manager there said, "Yeah, that's the way they've been arriving and we're getting lots of complaints. And don't think we aren't complaining to the company."
Well, I figured, if they can complain to the company, I can complain to the company. I called the Crystal Geyser folks, accessed their Consumer Support line and got a message telling me to press "1" if I was calling about the lack of handles on their gallon bottles.
"1" was pressed and I heard a recording that explained that due to "an interruption in our supply lines," they have to ship the gallon bottles out without handles. The message apologized and said they're working on the problem (including looking into alternative packaging) but it stopped short of saying the problem would be fixed soon. So I guess it won't be.
I may have to find another drinking water, at least for a while. Those bottles are difficult to handle without handles.
I could not reach an actual person there but I left a voice message of despair and abandonment. If you would like to leave one, the phone number is here.