Recently, Dagbladet revealed several cases of errors in Freia products, including the detection of foreign objects and incorrect labeling of chocolate.
Then, Espen Holt, 53, called Dagbladet – to tell us about his experience with Freya two years ago.
– I find it disturbing that there are so many stories on this subject. It surprises me, he tells Dagbladet.
Shock shock: – Oh my God!
Holt bought a Monolitt chocolate in May 2021, and quickly noticed something wasn’t right. When he ate a piece of the old classic, he is said to have discovered a piece of paper pressed into chocolate.
– To me it sounded like a note with what I assume was a batch number with the time 14:56. I’ve never witnessed anything like it. He says it was a very special experience.
Moving on: Espen Holt wasn’t happy with Freya’s customer service. Photo: private
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– Ban in the bucket
That same day, Holt emails Freya, with pictures of the chocolates and the note.
– I was met by customer service which I thought was a piece of cake. It was very shocking. I received a generic standard response, as well as a message to send the product and UFO. Then I gave up.
Holt lives in Majorstowa and says he can take a bus to Freya’s factory in Rodeløkka and have the chocolate delivered in a few minutes.
Race after that: – Unacceptable
On the same day, he sent another email asking if the product could be physically delivered.
After 16 days, he received a reply that it didn’t work.
– They wrote that it was not possible to deliver the product, that I had to send it by mail. I thought this was hopeless. The response time was also long, and when I was asked to send the chocolates, I thought: “I don’t bother with this.”
The time: 14:56 written in the note that Holt should have discovered the chocolate. Photo: private
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– He has no words
Holt also reacts to Freya not getting the better of what he believes is an apparent production error. He claims that Freya did not follow up on the routine failure.
– It surprised me a lot that I wasn’t taken seriously. Because this note was baked in chocolate. If I were engaged in production, the alarm would have sounded long ago.
The 53-year-old was surprised the manufacturer didn’t do more to find out how the error could have occurred.
– I sent pictures of the chocolate and the batch number, then to my surprise they didn’t proceed to investigate what happened. It’s so awful that I’m at a loss for words.
continued:
– Now that was just cardboard, and I’m not allergic to it. But it can be dangerous if I have a nut allergy and, for example, I find a peanut in the chocolate. It’s a real crisis.
I had to go out for this
Producer: – Incredibly sad
Mondelēz, owner of Freia, says she can’t comment on specific cases and clients, especially cases that date back a long time. In line with the regulations, all personal data is deleted after 180 days.
– It is very sad that he considered our service poor. We will of course take this feedback with us to improve it in the future,” says Jonas Petersson at Mondelēz to Dagbladet.
Peterson also says that it’s hard to catch all errors in production:
– In our factory, thousands of kilograms of chocolate are produced every hour, around the clock, 365 days a year. Despite the fact that we have strict control systems, which often catch all imaginable anomalies, it is still not possible to rule out the occurrence of accidental errors, he says, and concludes:
– When something like this happens, we always investigate what happened and take action.
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