Chantal Cookware Keeps Your Tea Kettle Whistling
After two years, the whistle on Ruby's Chantal Cookware Livestrong teakettle finally gave up its zest for life. Chantal Cookware's cleaning recommendations couldn't revive the ailing whistle, so Ruby resigned herself to buying a whole new kettle. Before pouring another $60 down the drain, she emailed Chantal Cookware to ask if it was at all possible to replace just the whistle...
Ruby writes:
Most companies (including my own workplace) are short-staffed these days, and customer service usually suffers the most. But today I'll like to commend Chantal Cookware for some amazing customer service!In 2007 I bought a beautiful, bright yellow "Livestrong" teakettle from Bed Bath & Beyond by Chantal. It cost a little over $60, but was well worth it. My favorite part was the whistle - it was extremely loud.... but sadly it stopped whistling over the past 2 years. I've tried the cleaning methods described on Chantal's website, nothing worked, and as a last resort before buying another kettle, I sent an email to the Chantal customer service, asking if there's any way to replace just the whistle. It's been about 2 weeks, I received no response, so I forgot about the email and prepared to head to the store this weekend to pick up a new kettle.
And today, a package came in by UPS from Chantal Cookware. Inside was a brand new, beautiful Livestrong "Loop" Teakettle.
All I sent was one email, a shot in the dark about replacing a part on a product purchased 2 years ago, not under any sort of warranty.
Attached is a photo of the brand new kettle before I even opened the box, big thanks from me and the bunny Toffee :)
Great work, Chantal Cookware! Although, responding to Ruby's email wouldn't have been misread as tooting your own horn.
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Comments:
@Mackinstyle: well hopefully in that case she could return the new one she bought. it would be a pain, but not an eventual waste of money
That's awesome! I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on the email; maybe it got eaten by the spam monster?
So did the rabbit come with the tea kettle?
@Mackinstyle: We have no way of knowing if a email was sent and for some reason not received. I give the benefit of the doubt to the company on this one.
Is it just me, or does $60 seem like ALOT for a tea kettle? It does seem like a really nice one though.
@mizike: That tea kettle appears to actually be able to pour water without steam burning me, this is worth a good sum over my current steam burning model.
@mizike: Considering that the person who pays $60 for a kettle is probably the sort of person who will use it day after day after day, I'd imagine it's a pretty justifiable expenditure.
$60.00 for THAT? The original tea kettle whistle died after only years? I'm sorry, but might I suggest you go to eBay & buy a used (anything pre mid-90's will be made in USA quality) Revere Ware copper bottom tea kettle that will whistle its ass off for another 100 years without any cleaning for under $20.00 delivered? The copper & stainless steel will look new forever (unlike the enamel finish on that thing). IMO, Chantal is fairly low quality metal & ceramic ware when compared to other similarly priced items, and many lesser priced (think le Creuset). $60.00, WOW! Marketing & pretty trendy colors do work!
@Bogart's Falcon aka Philly Falcon: Yes, unfortunately the internet can be just as good at loosing your mail as the post office is, and no one's the wiser about it if it doesn't show up.
Love the customer service, and can second the other poster's recommendation of an old Revereware kettle, but [www.simplexkettles.co.uk] is hands down best tea kettle I've ever owned My wife probably uses 3-7 times a day, and even at 8 years old it works as well as the day it was made.
We bought one of these kettles, too, though it was discounted to $39. Their whistles suck. Ours deposited a small tab-o-metal in the tea strainer after a couple months. I opened it up and discovered the bonus iron supplement was one of the kettle's two whistle reeds.
For $39 they could have put more than an afterthought into the whistle design. A pan and timer does as good a job.
The kettle now serves double-duty as our humidifier, because you can never have enough steam in your kitchen.
@Mackinstyle: Yeah, I wouldn't have been as patient as her and would've already bought a new one, haha.
@Megalomania: "Considering that the person who pays $60 for a kettle is probably the sort of person who will use it day after day after day, I'd imagine it's a pretty justifiable expenditure."
I don't drink tea, but I was thinking the exact same thing.
Most people pay much more for coffee makers.
@mizike: given that it's Livestrong branded, I would guess part of the profits go toward the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Products associated with a charitable donation generally have a higher price tag than they would otherwise.
@wvFrugan: I've never quite understood why people will pay an arm and a leg for the hopelessly trendy "Livestrong" branding.
After looking at your photos, I would tend to think the problem is with the lid rather than the whistle. On a tea kettle you are depending on the lid to fit tightly so pressure will develop to make the whistle sound. Over time the lid may not seal as tight as it did when it was new.
Off Topic: Toffee is SOOOO CUTE!!! I demand more consumerist photos of cute bunnies!
Well... WE'RE SNEDING YOU A FREEE KETTLE!!!
could easily have been caught by a spam filter.
I sent BumbleBee an email about some really awful not-at-all-"solid white albacore tuna" (rather dark & in little bits) I had purchased a couple weeks ago & got a canned (no pun intended) automatic email response that someone would get back with me. I heard nothing more, until a rather nice letter arrived today explaining that the machines that sort & process the stuff sometimes goof. Also a couple free coupons were enclosed. Maybe the lack of a personalized email response is SOP for these folks if mailing something? It works for canned tuna, but other stuff could be problematic. Regardless, I think that even 2 weeks can be a bit long to let a bad perception linger in a customer's mind, especially if the response is positive (as this & mine were). Nonetheless, I always appreciate quality customer service even if a bit delayed or handled unexpectedly.
Not if you love tea and its a big part of your life. Tea for a lot of people is more than just a drink it represents peace, relaxation and purity and other things to them. For me it represents those things and helps me clear my mind. I have expensive tea items because it shows my respect for the activity and what it brings to me. I have a beautiful handmade teacup from etsy that was over $30 and would spend more. I buy them meaning to keep them forever.
Who the fuck in their right mind would pay SIXTY DOLLARS for a damn tea kettle??? Does it boil water any better than a $10 one? Yeesh, the CRAP people waste money on.
@kabuk1:
This is exactly what my above post about the cost would have sounded like if I was 25 years younger & still actively recruiting people to hate me!
@kabuk1: That's just plain rude, kabuk1.
There are plenty of people who would spend $60 on a teakettle, most would consider the $10 one a CRAP one.
I'm just a hack for the American worker, but in this case it is very justified. Have you any experience with Revere's vintage copper clad bottom cookware? I cook everyday with some of their pieces more than 50 years old. Great stuff. But don't bother buying any of their new stuff made in China & Indonesia (a few of the Korea pieces are OK): pure crap (poor quality control & the metal/copper cladding is so thin as to be just for looks).
@mamalicious:
I actually had to laugh, but then again my son tells me I'm an asshole (nobody else tells me that, maybe though it's because everyone else refuses to speak to me?).
@LafinJack: "USA quality" meant something a few decades ago.
He had me at RevereWare. They made GREAT stuff, if you can find vintage pieces. It's not made to the same quality anymore, but I have two 70s RevereWare pots that are the best things to ever happen to my kitchen.
I bought a $10 tea kettle once. It rusted within 6 months (despite dumping water out after use) and the chintzy plastic handle got wobbly, which is obviously no good for something supporting boiling water.
A better quality $60 kettle would pay for itself in 3 years.
@lockdog: 3-7 times a day - man, that's a lotta babies!! :)
When she was alive, my mom swore by her copper-bottomed kettle that had been HER mother's originally. Water for tea, thrice a day every day.
@jamiesue: Because of my irrational bias towards kittehs, puppies, hamsters and the occasional child (in that order) I had a blind spot in my Cute-o-Meter for fuzzy bunnies with quivering noses, floppy feet and enormous chocolate-brown eyes.
Until now.
I'm man enough to admit it: me luuuvs the bunny.
(cough)
(in deeper voice, self-consciously hitching my belt and spitting): That is all.
As I've written before, when companies rip you off on their products (in this case, what looks like a 4-5x markup, which you gladly pay even thought they probably give about a $1 to Livestrong), they can afford great customer service. In the end, you generally pay for the customer service you get.
@wvFrugan: I have one of those Revere Ware teakettles that I bought at a yard sale for a couple of bucks. It's got to be 30 years old. No leaks, and the whistle works fine. If I put in the effort, it cleans up like new. $60 for a thing to boil water in? I have better uses for money.
@Kogenta: Yes, but there are more people at the Post office reading your mail than people on the internet reading your email.
@mizike: If the kettle actually whistles, at least for a while, it must be worth $60. Someone was just complaining about a $1700 coffeemaker recently. $60 is cheap.
Most folks who shop Bed, Bath, Beyond do not look at price tags.
@kabuk1: Most consumer products are available in many different price ranges. Especially things like housewares and clothing. And everyone has their own price tolerance, tastes, priorities, and interests. Sixty dollars for a tea kettle is hardly outrageous compared to a lot of other things out there in the big wide world, and a quick check confirms that $60 isn't even really at the high end for tea kettle pricing. If someone uses their tea kettle regularly and leaves it sitting on their stove most or all of the time, they may well be willing to pay a premium for one that they find aesthetically pleasing.
Now I have a question: Who gets that worked up and moralistic about someone else spending $60 on a tea kettle?
Anyone who drinks a lot of tea and who would use a kettle multiple times per day might be better off buying a decent electric one. They're not as cute as the twee little stovetop whistling ones, but will usually boil your water a lot faster. Kettles seem to be perceived as some kind of luxury item over here (I'm English and my electric jug kettle gets oohed and aahed over as if it were something much more exotic than a simple device for boiling water!), and are way overpriced as a result. Then again, tea is evidently considered some high-end fancy-schmancy luxury over here, too - I'm still agape with disbelief after reading the post about the "boutique" tea shop a couple of weeks ago ( [consumerist.com] )...
Uhh, yeah, I'm rambling. I'd better go and make myself another cup of tea and wake up. But before I do - kudos to Chantal Cookware for the no-questions-asked replacement. I'd never heard of the company until today, but if this story is representative of how they usually deal with customer problems, I'll have to see what else (aside from expensive whistling "tea" kettles) they make.
@Winteridge2: There's a teapot that is made in conjunction with HORNER that has an actual harmonica in the whistle valve. When I saw it a couple years ago, it was 80 or 90 bucks.
@wvFrugan: I grew up with Revereware. I like it reasonably well, for its price point, but better stuff has always been available without bankrupting yourself. Even the old stuff was too light and didn't heat with reliable evenness--boiling water is one of the tasks that is least problematic for it. (I'm not pushing any particular alternative brand, as quality tends to vary from piece to piece anyway.)
But I'm another backer of the electric kettle anyway.
@kabuk1: These look like they are steel rather than cheap aluminum that probably leaches into your hot water. Also there is something to be said for aesthetics.
Awesome! But letting the customer know is awesome in case, you know, they head out to buy a new one and miss the UPS guy.