Vitacost is an e-commerce company that sells vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition, and organic health and grocery products.
Vitacost was founded in 1994 as Nature’s Wreath Company, a catalog-retailer of vitamins and supplements.
In 1999 the company launched Vitacost.com and introduced its own brand of vitamins and supplements.
In 2008 Vitacost finished construction on its North Carolina manufacturing facility.
Vitacost went public in 2009, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol VITC.
In 2013 Vitacost started several new product lines, including pre and post-workout formulas, protein powders, flavored glutamine, creatine, and branched-chain amino acids. The company had $370.47 million in revenue in 2012.
VitacostVitacost is an e-commerce company that sells vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition, and organic health and grocery products.
Vitacost was founded in 1994 as Nature’s Wreath Company, a catalog-retailer of vitamins and supplements.
In 1999 the company launched Vitacost.com and introduced its own brand of vitamins and supplements.
History
In 2008 Vitacost finished construction on its North Carolina manufacturing facility.
Vitacost went public in 2009, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol VITC.
In 2013 Vitacost started several new product lines, including pre and post-workout formulas, protein powders, flavored glutamine, creatine, and branched-chain amino acids. The company had $370.47 million in revenue in 2012.
I received an email on July 26,2022 offering a 20% discount on my order. The offer expiry date was 07/25/2022….obviously already expired? The last time I received an email offer for 20 % off, the code didn’t work after I had all the items in my basket. I tried entering the code a few more times before giving up and canceling my order. I sent you an email inquiring about this situation, but never got an answer. I am considering not ordering from Vitacost anymore. When I first started ordering from you, I was able to get free shipping if I spent $100.00; now I am charged a shipping fee no matter how much I spend. There is also a cost for duty which was never applied before. With all of these extra charges and the exchange rate on the Canadian dollar, it’s really not worth ordering from Vitacost.
If you want to keep customers, you need to find a Better shipper than FedEx. Sure shipping is free on big enough orders, but when they are damaged or don’t arrive for weeks on end, you have a problem.
I placed order an order 12/28/21 notified it was delayed on 1/3. Then notified via email the next day it was damaged. Vitacost in Henderson Nevada resent order out on 1/6/22.
Today 1/11/22, I check and where is the order now, which should be in Chicago, it’s in SALT LAKE CITY UTAH??????? AND it’s delayed due to weather. When can I expect it, the end of January?
I checked another order via tracking, it should ship direct to Chicago, Salt Lake City is a real screw up.
I can’t rely on if / when orders will come. This is not new, been going on for awhile. The fact that the above order was damaged and reshipped, it should have been sent out expedited or overnight, FedEx should cover it.
I order a lot from Chewy, they deliver in 2-3 days. Obviously your doing something wrong and could learn from them. Maybe you should revisit your contract with FedEx, or find another shipper. Was good when I started with Vitacost, years ago. Box would come and looked brand new, think I read it was DHL. I’d rather pay a reasonable rate to have things delivered timely. I can’t plan in life this way.
Also Vitacost email submission on the website doesn’t work. Probably getting too many complaints now and shut that off.
PLEASE CALL ME ! My name is Carol and you can reach me at 630-842-XXXX
Your customer service has deteriorated to the point of being abysmally poor. Long hold queues. Thick heavy accent. Poor grasp of English. They are just following a script, with ZERO Meaningful Information and no ability to actually help with anything.
Perhaps a bit of re-education will help management understand WHY this is an issue: Simply put – DO YOU VALUE YOUR CUSTOMERS? Customers are what keep you in business, and why you get paid for what you do. When a customer calls ‘customer service’ it is because they actually require SERVICE. Not further frustration.
Part of the problem is the lack of meaningful information on the website: Your site needs to set proper expectations with respect to product availability. HOW MANY are in stock? EMPOWERING the customer so they can PLAN for availability is IMPORTANT – It is not sufficient to simply say that a product is “out of stock and we can email you when it becomes available”. May as well send that notification via the US Post Office, we’ll never see it. You need to MANAGE YOUR SUPPLIERS and specify WHEN products are expected so the customer can make appropriate purchasing decisions or buy from someone that does. And please stop popping up a meaningless display of other products (many of which are completely unrelated or sub-par substitutions) to check out in the meantime.
VITACOST AS A COMPANY HAS FALLEN COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH WITH THEIR CUSTOMER BASE: You cater to an educated customer – acknowledge that we’ve chosen specific specialty health maintenance products FOR A REASON. If something else would suffice, we’d not be asking – over and over and over and over again – when the specific products we require will be back in stock.
Your site and customer service team was once one of the best – but has deteriorated to the point of being dysfunctional. Somebody deserves a good kick in the pants for the mess they’ve made of Vitacost – please pass this along – OWN THE ISSUES AND FIX THEM. If the acquisition by Kroger is to blame, then please separate from Kroger – we want our best of breed supplement company back!
I’ve been pretty happy with your service… up until now. I placed an order on 5/10, it shipped on 5/10 and was supposedly delivered by your contracted vendor (FedEx) on 5/12 – it was not delivered to me on 5/12. On 5/12 I requested a replacement order – now 6 days later I still can’t get an answer as to why 8 days ago my order shipped the same day and now, 6 days after requesting a replacement it’s not even in your system. I’ve tried chatting with your “customer service” (please note the quotes) and I keep getting the same garbage, boilerplate, no-answer answer – it’s being processed???? Whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean. Incredibly poor service to say the least. If you or your vendor screwed up the delivery then replacement orders should take priority in being filled since the customer has already been delayed.
I have been a customer for sometime and have been very happy with your service including the quickness I have gotten my orders.
I want to compliment you and all of your employees during this health emergency we find our county in. Your shipping has been a bit slower but… it came within a week of being ordered. My recent order had 20 items and everything except one item arrived and it appears this item was cancelled as it was out of stock.
Please pass my THANK YOU!!!! to all of the wonderful staff who work for you, especially those in stocking and shipping. They are appreciated.
This, coming from a long time vitacost customer, is a formal complaint and recommendation to improve your website, certainly not the first you’ve received on the subject of proposition 65 and issues it causes at check out. I understand the purpose of prop 65 and your commitment to it, but the manor in which it is handled at check out has lost this customer.
Surely you cannot believe that California online customers are willing to take the time and go to the trouble of going back and forth from their cart to check out, deleting one item at a time then going back to check out to see if that is the item blocked from shipping to CA; if that is not the item in question, adding it back to the cart then delete another and so on until the item in question stops preventing check out completion? I think not.
In my humble opinion, vitacost would be better off shipping the item with the prop 65 info as was done in the past, and leave it to the customer to return or keep it. The customer service rep I spoke to about it says vitacost has no control over it, have no way to identify the product to the customer … that seems highly unlikely to me.
Surely your software engineers can find a way to make it easier for your customers, for example, add a NOTE on the item just above the “add to cart” that this product cannot be shipped to CA.
Meanwhile, vitacost will receive no further orders from this household.
Sincerely,
Kathryn McNeill
California
I have been a customer for quite sometime. I went to place an order with a 20% discount I had been emailed and 2 items were out of stock. Customer Service had no idea when they would be in stock and told me Management made a decision that when they were back in stock, I could not receive the 20% discount. So I am being penalized because you do not have the items I want in stock. Very bad management decision That is not a positive way to make your customers happy.
I will place my order with another company.
I am concerned about Vitacost using GMO ingredients in their products. But Vitacost offers good deals, and I have been a customer for years, I simply check and avoid GMO. However, the recent blog post by John Egan (plus an unusual email coming from Vitacost, sending me TO this post) has made me decide to quit being a Vitacost customer – forever. And to also share my concerns, and suggest others (who I often referred to Vitacost) stop using their products. The article: suggests and promotes the idea that GMO ingredients are not only possibly not dangerous, but possibly ‘good for you’. Of course Vitacost would promote this – because Vitacost now uses GMO ingredients……
I intererviewed a world renowned physicist in the 90s, speaking on the dangers of GMO products, how their GMO seeds required farmers in India to begin using carcinogenic chemicals on their crops (which they never had to do for thousands of years, until they began using Genetically Modified Seeds) and how those ‘cancer causing’ chemicals in the pesticides now end up in our food (over 90% of pregnant women have been found to have this specific Monsanato pesticide chemical in their body. This chemical causes cancer.
Do not try to tell me GMO foods are safe, or even ‘good’ for you. Monsanto spent a million dollars per year on attorneys, staffed specifically, to put ‘natural farmers’ out of business, to promote their GMO seeds. Vitacost has just lost me, and every person I know who cares about their health, and chooses to follow.
I have called Brian Helman many times to hear my compliant but he won’t return my calls. I spend over $500.00 a metric nth and the service is terrible starting with Mary the director at the North Carolina office. She’s a mess and never returns calls.
I still ha I not heard from Vitacost
If you contact me a former dessert storm vet at anthonythewaj@ gmail.com I want to destroy this company legally as much as we can. The more people the better
They are in freefall. I am a loyal customer with a lot of issues with delivery, damaged delivery, out of stock items, etc. The system is broken.
Hello, Karine:
Thank you for the quick and pleasant reply – very much appreciated.
I want to ask you to escalate my inquiry…I think someone at Vitacost should be aware that its delivery service is not delivering.
It seems unfair that a customer like me – who orders frequently – should have to pay an extra $3 per order to prevent my shipments from being dumped in a public area.
All the Best,
Gia
On Dec 9, 2015, at 12:50 PM, Vitacost.com Customer Support wrote:
Dear Gia,
Thank you for contacting Vitacost.com. Please accept my sincerest apologies for any inconvenience you have experienced!
For the future, please note that we do offer Fedex Home for a $2.99 upgrade fee (if you already qualify for free shipping).
For the inconvenience, we would love to offer you the free shipping upgrade on your next order. Please place your order and then email us the order number. Once the order ships we will be more than happy to enter a refund in the amount of $2.99 or to have this honored right away you may call in your order at 1-800-793-2601.
If you have any other concerns, please feel free to contact us via chat, phone, or email us at customersupport@vitacost.com.
Your business is vital to us – we are grateful to have you as a Vitacost.com customer!
Friendly regards,
Karine
— Original Message —
Received: 12/8/15 3:23:26 PM EST
To:
Subject: Request
Comment: Hello, and hope your day is going well. I am a long-time customer. I feel that I cannot order from Vitacost anymore as long as you continue to ship by LaserShip. LaserShip dumps packages in the lobby of our condo building, where they are usually stolen. I was lucky enough to have a neighbor see my latest delivery in the lobby…and call me to tell me it was there. Can you not offer an option for delivery that actually delivers to your customer’s home, rather than dumping packages? Please answer this email so I know if I can continue shopping with you. A happy holiday season to you –
I will never again purchase an item from Vitacost. Upon opening a package I ordered, two of the items were broken. A bottle of bbq sauce emptied on my kitchen floor and my shoes! The second broken bottle went down the drain only because I wisely opened it over the kitchen sink. When I notified Vitacost about the ruined shoes (cheap at only $45), they only offered me either a credit for the two bottles of bbq sauce useable on my next order or a refund for the two broken bottles of bbq sauce. From now on, I will order the same products from Amazon or IHerb (or any other companies that carry them). I do not appreciate Vitacost’s lack of customer service.
Ex employee and can’t get ANYONE to return my phone call to answer me in why I have not received my last paycheck or why someone can’t change my employment status so that I can cash out my 401k. Someone needs to get with me soon!!
Dear Jeff: is there anyway that my account can be tagged with no surepost delivery for my items. We do not have a mail box at the street (had credit card stolen), and so the Podunk, local post office here (town of 1800) will not delivery if you dont have a box. Go figure. So last week when my pkg arrived “surepost UPS” and was delivered to the podunk post office, they sent it back because we did not have a box at the street. Again, go figure. Maybe that’s why the post office is in such debt, little “phyfdoms” . Anyway, UPS is great, UPS surepost is not, but fedex is even better. This is the first time anything like this has happened, and including this note to you, it has taken me 3 hrs to locate the pkg, and finally with Kristen’s help got the order redelivered. Not a whole lot of fun, and frankly not worth the effort.
Christine Rossney