When we last left our hero, he had cancelled Poland Springs water through September. Today, according to their records, I’m getting a water delivery today. I guess their really cool on line ordering and modification interface doesn’t record when you cancel a delivery. What’s even more infuriating is that if you cancel more than three months, they’ll charge you any way. Maybe they figure they’re doing me a favor by bringing me water. The plants are parched? No it’s been friggin raining every day this month. The cat needs water? Nope, he drinks fresh spring water due to our abundant supply. Today we’ll be up to 45 gallons after today’s 15 gallon delivery.

To make matters make me want to punch myself in the face a little more, I bought a home water testing kit. Ten bucks at Home Depot and it tests for something like eight or nine areas of water awesomness. The results? Tune in next week when we look at the shocking video ……

Seriously …. Poland Springs and my tap water are identical. Identlically safe and tasty at least. Whether there’s a fly terd in mine I have no idea, but it is just as safe as their tap water.

Yes, I could cancel, but that’ll cost me $100, what I’m trying to understand is how a one year contract (and they tack on your cancelled to deliveries to the end of the contract) that I signed up for in 2007 is now, according to them, not ending until 2009.

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And the Poland Springs water debacle continuous. Here’s a piece of an e-mail that I got back:

Further, our records indicate that we delivered
3 bottles at no charge on 07/16/08 for the
replacement delivery of June.

If you have any further questions regarding the
Pure Savings Plan, please
call our Customer Service Center.
A Customer Service Representative is
available at 800-950-9396,
Monday - Friday, 8 am - 9 pm EST and
Saturday, 8 am - 4 pm EST.

We appreciate you for choosing Poland Spring
as your water serviceprovider.

Sincerely,

E-Service Support Representative
Poland Spring Water
www.polandspring.com/service

Fantastic! Except this makes no sense. There’s really no need for me to go into a rant here, as I did it in an e-mail back to them:

In response to the numerous confusing e-mails, phone calls and uninformative website,

You said in your last e-mail: “Further, our records indicate that we delivered 3 bottles at no charge on 07/16/08 for the replacement delivery of June.”

But you did charge me. You charged me! $28.93 in May, which you said you’d credit me.
As your e-mail from 06/06/08 states: “Thank you for using polandspring.com. We apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please note, a credit in the amount of $28.98 will be applied to your account.”

I had canceled deliveries from May until September. The charge in May was your error when you charged me and didn’t deliver any water. Now you’re claiming that we somehow received “free” water, which isn’t the case. You simply delivered water that I paid for and didn’t want.

In addition, I’m seeing a current balance of $26.98 that I supposedly owe you. For what? Our next delivery should be in September.

My wife has also spent too much time on the phone with your “service” department and was informed that canceling a delivery doesn’t actually cancel the delivery, but in fact defers the delivery to a later time. A later time that you charge for before delivering the product. And if we defer (we’ll call it that) delivery for more than three months (because we have enough water to irrigate Arizona) you charge us regardless of whether you deliver water or not.

The oil surcharge is another matter that needs to be addressed on a different forum, but sufficed to say, that informing customers that they’ll be chipping in to help pay for gas to deliver water is a bit much. Your rate has now gone up to $3.00 per customer, per delivery, which if you plan your deliveries carefully could actually be profitable.

I’m sure this e-mail has been less than clear and may even be a bit confusing … welcome to my world.

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Aside from the fact that I’m a complete jackass for having bottled water delivered to my house and that the actual price of that water is more than what I would willingly pay for gas (approximately $2.00/gallon) I’m beginning to question the accounting practices of Poland Springs. Now owned by Nestle and was sued for fraud in 2003.

I have three 5-gallon jugs of water delivered every month. More than enough for two people and a cat. Yes, we have such an abundance of water that the cat drinks “spring water”. It’s on quotes because I question whether it is in fact spring water. You can check out this post for more on that.

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