UPDATE: I have recently published a new review for 2013 of the Graze product.
Almost a month ago, I stumbled across an advert in the local newspaper for a service called Graze.com. The service offered healthy food, delivered fresh to you desk on a daily basis, along with a free trial of the service. I had never previously heard of a service like this, and was understandably curious about what it offered. A quick trip to the Graze.com website explained that the service delivered a box of fresh, healthy food, direct to your home or workplace.
I received my first box from this service about two weeks ago, and a second box on Tuesday this week. After receiving the second, I thought I would write a short article on what the service offers and my impressions of it.
What’s on offer?
Graze.com offers “a wide range of fresh fruit, delicious nuts, seeds & dried fruits, tasty crackers & olives, as well as some well deserved natural treats”. A quick look through their Food List shows that this is indeed true. There is everything from freshly cut pineapple, Apple Strudel (Dried apple, naturally dried apricots & dried cranberries), nuts, chocolate buttons, cherries, cashew nuts, and much much more. The selection is incredibly varied, if sometimes a little on the strange side. There are some products in the list that I would never have tried without this service. This was certainly the case in my last box, where I received wasabi peanut crackers. I was skeptical, however they turned out to be fantastic, and they quickly got set to ‘Love’ in the preference section.
How does it work?
When you first sign up to Graze, the system will ask you what sort of box you want. You can choose between either an automatic system, which will build a box based on your likes & dislikes, or you can manually construct your box.
The automatic selection works by a user first selecting what sort of box they want constructed. This is like telling the service what purpose you want the box to fulfil. The current options are: ‘Eat Well’, ‘Energy’, ‘Well Being’, ‘Pre -Workout’, or ‘Post-Workout’. Once you’ve selected this, you tell the site the sort of food you; Hate, want to try, like, or love. Graze then constructs a box based on your preferences, and can work a little like Amazon’s Recommended Products system. Graze will always try to send you your preferred items, however if some items are out of stock (Grapes were when I first signed up), they will send your next preference.
Graze can also let you construct your own box, selecting what you want in each section. I guess that this option could remove any healthy benefit that you may gain from using this service, though it is great for the more picky eaters among us.
The boxes themselves are divided into three sections. one large, one medium, one small. The large is fresh fruit, the medium is a dried fruit selection / mix, and the small is normally some form of snack food.
The boxes are shipped via Royal Mail priority mail, which means it should arrive the day after it is shipped. I’ve only had two so far but neither has been late, and both have been very well packaged, and arrived in perfect condition (even though it has suffered the internal mail system).
How much does it cost?
The standard box, which consists of one large section, one medium section, and one small section, is priced at £2.99. This includes next-day delivery. I would argue that the service is well priced for what you get, however the same could be achieved for less if you made up a box yourself. The disadvantage this would have is the amount of time it would take to build your own selection, and you may not get to try some of the more exotic options Graze has on offer.
In my opinion, I think Graze has found a currently untapped market. Their products appeal mostly to the busy office-worker or businessman. The product may air on the expensive side in today’s climate, but very well priced for what is on offer.
Want to try it out?
If you would like a free trial of this service, which will get you one free box, then please use the following code when signing up: VGWR1QH
Links
- Graze.com (link includes free trial box)
Update
13/05/2013 – Over the next month I will be writing a new up-to-date review revisiting the Graze Product. I will try to cover a lot of the frequently asked questions in the comments section of the post, especially how to cancel your Graze orders. If there is anything you would like me to look at specifically, please leave a comment below.
Following on from some of the comments I have received, I have contacted Graze.com directly and informed them of this review and its feedback. They have conveyed their thanks for the feedback, and asked that anyone having problems please email them at getintouch@graze.com .
42 responses to “Graze.com – Review”
Hi,have checked out this website and im going to order one now! really excited, however i am looking at constructing my own box do you know how to do that? and how much do you get in each section? thanks xx
Thanks for reading my article. I’m glad it’s been of some help. In the self-constructed boxes, you should still recieve one large section, one medium section, and one small section. If you take a look at the pictures on the article, it should give you an idea of how much you get in each section. Unfortunately I’ve never constructed my own box, but they should be the same as the auto-built one.
I hope that helps! ^.^
I was conned by Graze.com! i bought a Groupon deal of four boxes and then they started taking unauthorised money from my account and sending me unordered food! i was furious and so tried to contact them. they have no contact numbers and their website is so complicated its impossible to cancel everything. this left me pretty mad i had to send an email asking them to phone me. i still await a response. my advice is stay well clear!
Christina
If you contacted them using their on-site contact form, then it might be easier to email them directly. Their address is: getintouch@graze.com .
I hope this is of some use to you and I hope your issue is soon resolved.
Thank you for the feedback! 🙂
so how much did that company pay you for this article?
Absolutely nothing. I reviewed the product after I tried it of my own accord. I heard about it through a newspaper article, decided to try it, and just thought I should review it. Guess I wanted to try my hand at writing a review, and it seemed like a nice simple something to start with.
This company are a rip off, the contents are not worth £2.99. You can not contact Graze directly, they have no telephone number. I have forgotten my password and have asked for it 3 times, it has not arrived. I contacted them with a technical fault, they still haven’t replied. They keep taking my £2.99 each week and I can not stop them. Now my bank have had to to write to them to tell them to stop taking the month, this can take a month. So they can continue to take £12 and yet I can do nothing about it. My bank have told me they are not impressed with companies like these who take a regular figure each mont but it is not a direct debit or standing order and so you can not easily cancel your order.
All I can really suggest for contacting them is to use the ‘Click here to send us an email’ link available at: https://www.graze.com/help/contact then select that you can’t log in. I’ve had nothing but good experience with them so far, but I accept that there may be issues others have that I don’t. Good idea trying to cancel it with your bank. i’m sure they’ll be able to put a stop on all transactions to them eventually. Try contacting them again none the less to see if you can expedite the process.
Thanks for your feedback, and best of luck!
I love Graze!
The contents are definately worth £3 although I prefer the Graze Nibble box which gives you 4 selections of nuts, seeds, dried fruit etc. I’ve been to my fair share of health food shops and you just can’t find the selection and combinations that Graze offers.
I have to say I haven’t had any problems financially, but I have had to cancel direct debits through my online banking before which hasn’t been a problem. Also, for all financial things like Graze, my online mobile phone account, Paypal etc, I do ensure I have the passwords should any problems arise.
Good luck in sorting out the problems and just keep enjoying those boxes every week!
THESE ARE COMPLETE CON ARTISTS, You get offered a free box and they take your card details saying they wont take any money without your consent and low and behold after your first free and totally rubbish box with contents in worh about 50p from the weigh house they keep sending them twice a week which costs £6!!! This is the dearest bird food i have ever bought.
I seem to be hearing very mixed things about Graze from people. Personally I’ve never had a bad experience with them, and neither has my Uncle who also uses the service. It sounds like they are kinda hard to contact directly if people have problems though, which is a shame.
Admittedly I’m not getting the boxes at the moment as Im trying to cut down on what i’m eating overall.
Thanks for the information about your experience. I’m sorry you’ve not had the best time with them, and I hope that any problems you have with the service get resolved to your satisfaction.
I agree that they are complete con artists. They offer a free box and as I got the link to the site from O2, I was only a little worried when they asked for credit card details “to verify details?”. I came back from holiday to 7 boxes on my doorstep that I am sure I never ordered and the money had been taken from my account. After two contacts they have only offerered me refunds for three of the boxes. The box contents seem reasonable but I did not order or want them. I must also mention that it is a circuitious route to cancel completely on the website. ie you get options to only cancel for a week or a fortnight etc. If you are going to order the free box and do not want any more then I suggest that a print out of each page you go through is worthwhile.
Hi Stuart. Thanks for the feedback. I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a negative experience with the service.
It unfortunately does sign you up automatically after the trial period. I guess in some ways its no different to most free trials; they work on the basis you’ll forget to unsubscribe.
I have just had my first Graze box and was impressed. I opted for the Nibbles box as it seemed the best value.(First box free and second half price with the o2 rewards). As items such as nuts and dates are expensive anyway I thought with the postage included as well it is a fair price. It will be interesting to see how it goes. For those who want to/have had problems cancelling it is easy. Just go to https://www.graze.com/help/faqs and it tells you how to. If I have any problems I will post again.
Follow up: Unfortunately I have decided to cancel my Graze boxes. Every single one I received was a day late (I ordered an extra one). The second and third boxes I had wanted to take with me while “out and about” but I couldn’t do this because of the non-arrivals. This is probably a fault with our postal service and not Graze.
It was very easy to cancel and I did fill in the short and concise questionnaire to say why I was cancelling. I added that should they find a way round this problem of late deliveries I would probably re-join.
I know I will miss the boxes and will be tempted to re-join anyway, but the reality of it is, I can’t really plan around wondering if the boxes will arrive when expected or not.
Pauline how exactly did you cancel it? I cant find out how?
Log into http://www.graze.com using the login button on the top right of their website. Enter your email address and password. Now go to the ‘Weekly Boxes’ area on the right hand side, and you should be able to cancel your weekly box in there by selecting it and clicking ‘cancel’. I haven’t got an active subscription to them right now so I can’t test the cancelation procedure, and i’ve not done it in about a year.
Hope that helps a little though. I suggest that if that doesn’t work, try emailing them.
Having recently being setting up a trading site, I have being trying to anticipate & avoid the problems users here have had with Graze.
The first minus I noticed was that there appeared to be no company address on the site, or if there is, it isn’t displayed conspicuously. If they are a limited company, which I expect they are, to comply with the law they should display company details ie. address, company registration info on the site. As they collect & retain data, I would have liked to see reference to their registration under the Data Protection laws beside this.
Personally I would avoid subscribing with companies who do not display both a telephone number and address. This is to me a warning sign. I would like to see clear instructions on how a subscription can be cancelled, the notice period & a note saying “If any problems please tel,,,,,,,”
I would disagree with Tristan that it is either ethical or usual for non-scam programs to sign you up automatically after a free trial. – This is fine if the site states that this will happen, but not otherwise. The customer should know that repeat payments will be taken from then on & have the opportunity to cancel. If they do not advise & clearly that they will be taking out further payments following the free trial they are in breach of consumer law.
Seems overall the product is ok but they need to provide better customer protection.
The other service problems mentioned may be due to lack of organization of a young site
My sister received the ‘free’ box through a reward from O2 and also input her card details to ‘verify details’. Now she is receiving boxes every week and when trying to log on to the website it says they don’t have a user with those details.
How can she call someone when there are no telephone numbers given??
And how can she reset a password when the website says shes not a member????
This what I did, having had my wife check her bank account only to discover that money had been deducted from her bank account on an O2 rewards offer which consisted of the now famous little cardboard box full of delicious healthy treats.
I phoned O2, insisted on a refund for the hours we spent to sort out the problem….100 free min’s accepted.
I then phoned her bank and insisted on a refund of the money deducted from her account….No joy they said, nothing to do with them.
I then phoned the bank again using the disputed tranaction line
gave them the disputed amounts and dates. My wife’s card was cancelled, she received a refund of all the amounts and a new card within two days.
Time taken inbetween being fobbed off and pushed from pillar to post…..no less than 5 hours. Was it worth it? You bet it was!
We went straight out and had a pizza to celebrate followed by a bottle of champers and I gave our dog some extra doggie biscuits.
I have been using Graze for a couple of years after a friend in Manchester introduced me to it. I thought the value, including the free box, was pretty good. However, things began to slack a little after one payment refused to leave my bank account. The card was declined (even though the money was in there), and the problems began. I contacted Graze using their email address, (as there’s no phone number!) and received a polite email saying that my card had been resubmitted as my default card. I tried again, to no avail. Same problem. I wrote to Graze again, but this time no answer. Eventually, after two days, I asked that they delete my account.
Nearly a month later, I am deciding to give them one last chance. I have tried to create a new account, but Graze will not accept my bank card. This troubles me – do Graze actually keep a record of every card on their system?! Even from those of us who have cancelled the service?! I’ve emailed them, will update to let you know what happens.
Keitcha
I too have never seen a contact telephone number for Graze. Upon emailing them a few weeks ago to make them aware of this very article, they did ask that I post up their support email address. It is: getintouch@graze.com .
I hope this is of some use to you. Please do comment back and let us know how this turns out.
Thank you for your comment!
From one very wary customer, here is the email I sent to Graze today…
Dear Sirs
Your website is not working correctly and I am unable to either cancel my orders or change or delete my card details.
I have become suspicious as there is no contact tel number on your website, nor an office address or even an email address to contact you if there are any problems. This is particularly poor customer service. I have managed to get this email address for your office from Tristan Findley’s website where I have found a whole list of unhappy customers who are all complaining about the same things as me.
In the meantime I have rated all products as ‘BIN’ so there are no items to send to me at all. I therefore do not expect to receive anything from today’s date and for my account not to be debited from today’s date.
Please confirm that you have cancelled my subscription with immediate effect and that no further boxes will be despatched.
Regards
Sarah
If you take a look at the article, there is a support phone number that Graze issued to me after I made them aware of this article and its feedback.
Hope that helps
I recently started ordering these and it seems they have been much improved and updated with fresh artisan breads and dips and crackers. I have a code for a free box if anyone wants it 9VJ2ZWZ. It got me a free first and fifth box. Yum!
Received free box as husband wanted to try them after receiving an pamphlet through the post. He was put off with lack of pricing, having to submit bank details.
I have cancelled the bank details and have confirmed I don’t want to receive further boxes, also e-mailed asking for confirmation that my account has been closed and they won’t try to extract money from the bank.
The foods I received looks delicious and I would be interested in subscribing in the near future. Just too wary of having to submit bank info for a free box, it sets the tone that it may be difficult to get out if I wished. Hopefully it isn’t the case.
Hi,
I’m trying to get hold of Graze as I’ve typed in the wrong email address and it won’t let me log in. I’ve ordered my free box, but obviously I need to log in so I am able to cancel it if I don’t like it. I have emailed them several times, but no response. I have used both the contact us on their website and the get in touch email address. They are going to continue taking payments from my account which I cannot afford to them to do.
You said they issued you a contact number, which is on your article, but I can’t find it.
I don’t know what to do. It’s a poor customer service if they are unable to put a contact number on.
If anyone can help that would be great.
Elene
Thanks for your comment. I’ve just had a look through my records and I’m unable to locate the original email Graze sent to me with the contact number in it. I would suggest contacting them through the email address getintouch@graze.com and flag it Urgent.
The lack of two-way communication from Graze seems to be common complaint. If you don’t want it any more it might be worth contacting your bank and stating that you have attempted communication with them with the goal of cancelling the payments and got nothing, and could they please block payments at their end.
This service works on scam basis. You get your first box for free not paying much attention to what agreement you sign. Then they use your details to send you more of their boxes, but at that point they start charging you without notifying. 4 pounds is not much, but the way they do it is just foully.
And these tiny portions of nuts and other stuff? You can buy stuff of just the same taste and quality in every store for 10x lower price.
So to conclude: they save your details to make you pay for overpriced snacks you never ordered without asking packed in cheap recycled packaging. 0/10
Paul
While my experience with Graze (both with ordering and cancellation) went very smoothly, I am starting to conclude that this service is something that a very large number of people have a problem with. Both with price and with cancellation after the ‘trial’ period has ended.
I agree with you that you can purchase the same at the supermarkets for far less, however you pay for the convenience of the product.
Cancellation of the product is something that is giving lots of people problems. Firstly their lack of telephone support is inconvenient for people who run into trouble. Secondly if you loose access to your account (judging from what I’ve seen here) regaining control is extremely difficult, and thirdly the cancellation procedure seems to confuse a lot of their customers.
While I agree that their service (while very efficient for what it provides) is good for some people but not others, they should spend more time on focusing on these small hangups. Granted lowering the price may not be possible for the service they offer, however they could increase the size of the portions slightly at I’m sure very reduced cost to themselves.
How anyone can defend this outfit when the cancellation system simply does not work is beyond me? They are thieves.
Hi there.
Have you tried logging into your account and going to the ‘Deliveries’ tab? From there you should see a sidebar on the right where you can click on your scheduled delivery and select ‘Cancel this delivery’.
If for some reason this doesn’t work, you should be able to email their support team directly via their web form at: https://www.graze.com/uk/help/contact.
I detailed how to cancel orders in my more recent review of the Graze product as a number of people had problems with this – http://tfindley.co.uk/news/graze-review/
I hope this helps.
I absolutely agree
I have been “Invited” by Graze to enjoy a free sample of their wares as thie leaflet was included in my last Amazon order. Had I known how difficult it was going to be to cancel, I would never have accepted the “free” trial. I’m wondering what my local Trading Standards department will have to say.
I am sorry to see that you’re having difficulty. You an many others seem to be having issues cancelling their subscription. I would suggest taking a look at my Three month review of Graze (http://tfindley.co.uk/news/graze-review/) as there is some information on cancelling your subscription in the article as well as in the comments.
What exact issues are you having though? Feedback is always welcome.
Hi there I’m trying to set a graze account but it won’t accept my new card. It’s just keep saying try again! Why? I’m typing all the right details in. Help please!
Hi there Rebecca.
Unfortunately I do not work for Graze and would be unable to assist in this instance. It has been a long time since I’ve been through the sign up processes, so all I can really suggest is double check all the details that you’re entering, try a different web browser, and maybe even a different card. If all else fails, you are able to contact Graze directly via their web form at: https://www.graze.com/uk/help/contact. I’m certain they’ll be able to assist you further from there.
Regards
recently i cancelled my graze account and even though i had cancelled it they still send out another box and took money out of my account even though i cancelled all the payments and any more boxes being delivered, there website is down at the moment and need a way to contact them i have been looking all over the internet but cannot find a number and i aint a happy customer with them…
Santins
I’m sorry to hear that you’re having an issue with Graze. You need to log into your account at Graze.com to cancel your subscription. There is a walkthrough on how to cancel your subscription in the comments for this article, and there is also a walkthrough detailed on my second review of Graze.com here.
I hope this is of help to you.
Regards
Suggestion: There should be a paypal option
I do not think this is a scam, I’m assuming it work like any other trail subscription which I’ve signed up to many times. Clearly people are afraid to directly put their bank account information to a company they have never heard of before, especially a “food subscription”. I mean, who typically signs up for a subscription for snacks? So just a suggestion in helping your marketing efforts.
Kiwi
Thanks for your comment. I actually agree with your suggestion – It would be great to see a PayPal payment option on Graze.com .
Like you’ve pointed out, it is not a ‘scam’ as some people seem to think it is – simply a subscription to a service. Like any subscription, it can be canceled if you need to.
This Company are a total Rip Off and I would advise no one starts any payments with them, Once they have got you and you find you don’t want it anymore you will have trouble stopping the payment Very Poor Customer service and should not be aloud to trade in this way