Hannah tells Consumerist received an unexpected present over the holidays: a brown plastic shard inside the Godiva chocolate she was eating. She contacted Godiva, and after the company checked out the incident, she received a box in the mail that contained four times as much chocolate as she had originally purchased. It’s paying it forward, but with more calories. Lots and lots of calories.

During the holidays, I was eating a Godiva chocolate from a nine-piece box set when I bit into something hard and sharp. I continued to chew it thinking that it was a hardened or chewy part of the chocolate but it turned out to be a small, brown piece of plastic. It came as a complete surprise to me as I didn’t expect this to come from a Godiva chocolate given their reputation for high quality. I rarely bother with calling customer service but I thought I should alert them to this as it was a significant breach in food safety and quality control.

I emailed Godiva’s customer service and received an apology and offer for a free replacement. After a few more email exchanges where I provided them with more details including the SKU and LOT numbers, they sent me a prepaid FedEx packet to mail them back the box in. As I was flattening the box to put it in the envelope, I noticed that the plastic piece came from the tray that held the chocolates, as there was a piece missing from it. I have no idea how a piece of the tray would make its way into the chocolate but I sent everything back to them last week.

To my surprise I received a 36-piece box set from them today. I was surprised by their generosity and quality of customer care as I had a nine-piece box set to begin with. Hopefully they get to the bottom of this issue but I definitely want to say thank you to the Heather and Marianne at Godiva who helped me with their timely and kind responses.

Let’s hope that Godiva figures out how it impaled chocolate with its own box, and soon.

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