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This web page details our opinions of and experiences with:

www.chocolatechocolate.com
Bad Candy that made us sick!
The company says "we were warned".

Back on 11-03-08 we wanted a simple box of chocolates.
Should be easy......right?
You go online, search around, find a suitable selection, place the order, it arrives a few days later, you chomp them down, gain a few pounds, regret it, then exercise extra hard for three weeks. That's how it's supposed to go. But far too often these days -- in fact, we could almost say USUALLY  -- we find ourselves SCREWED by online retailers in one or several incredibly creative ways. We're fairly smart. But unscrupulous online retailers are often smart-ER, and we're finding that more and more vexing.

We're getting turned off by Online Retailers, and here's a classic example of WHY:

On the aforementioned date we ordered about $20 worth of chocolates from chocolatechocolate.com. Here are the product and ordering pages. We chose sugarless because we'd like to cut some sugar out of our diets when it's convenient to do so:

 

From this page onward you just enter your credit card info and address, like any other shopping cart and checkout system.

A few days later the stuff arrived.

We sat and chomped down a few -- I had nine pieces; another person ate six.

It was "ok". It wasn't as good as "real" chocolate, but we didn't expect it to be. We're willing to tolerate a bit less flavor for an extended lifespan with less sugar, so all with the world was good. --Until two hours later, when we both became violently ill--

We hadn't shared any common foods for at least 48 hours prior, so our illnesses couldn't be blamed on anything BUT the chocolate we'd just shared. This wasn't your run of the mill queasiness. This was a gastrointestinal catastrophe of significant proportions. Projectile EVERYTHING. In the next ten hours, each of us spent 80% of it in the bathroom, with debilitating stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, that other thing, headaches, you name it. It was nearly as miserable as living can be while conscious. It felt "odd", too, not like a typical case of bacteriological food poisoning, but more like a chemical toxicity. We could feel and taste and smell the chocolate churning and broiling in our guts. There was absolutely no question what was causing the distress. But we'd never heard of "bad chocolate", so it was perplexing to say the least.

When we'd finally recovered enough to type, we fired off a nasty-gram to the offending retailer, the ChocolateChocolate Chocolate company, telling them pretty damned politely what we thought of their food-product. A day later they wrote back explaining that they put some objectionable ingredient in their candies which can make "some people" sick, and offered a "substitution for another product" for free. In our experience, "some people" means 100% of people. We asked if they were insane. We didn't receive a reply.

This wasn't the sickest we've ever been. For instance, I once had an allergic reaction to a shot and went into anaphylaxis and had to be revived three times with epinephrine. That was worse. And a week in ICU with pneumonia was worse. Other than that, I can't really think of anything worse. We were SICK. Dog sick.

The company (ChocolateChocolate) claims they warn people about this strange ingredient. We can find NO such warning either on their website, their product pages, their checkout pages, the shipping carton the order came in, or the candy box itself.

We suggest that this ingredient could pose a threat to one's very life in cases of the infirm, elderly, the sick-already. Can you imagine your chagrin when you bring a nice box of chocolatechocolates to your friend who's weakened by chemotherapy.....and four hours later you've KILLED him!

We're coming down as hard as we can on this outfit. We see this as unprofessionalism and irresponsibility in the frigging extreme. The site and product pages should be PLASTERED with big, red, bold warnings, as should the product box itself. The customer should be REQUIRED to check a box during checkout acknowledging the fact that this candy may well put him ON THE GODDAMNED FLOOR for ten or fourteen hours. Even now, 28 hours after consumption, we're weak, and queasy, and PISSED OFF.

Of course if the company PROPERLY warned folks about this crap, folks probably would never BUY this crap, so we can understand the logic behind not making the dangers of this CRAP well known. Still, there's common sense, and there's common human decency, and there's THE LAW, and there's such a thing as civil court where people like this sometimes find themselves, explaining to a judge and/or jury exactly WHY they didn't take proper or meaningful steps to save their victims from a night of pure hell. If we can manage to get this outfit into that situation, we'll post the transcripts RIGHT HERE. It ought to be damned entertaining.

Our advice?

Avoid these folks like the plague. Never in our wildest dreams, or in the wildest dreams of ANY responsible business person, would a product with this much bad potential be allowed to go out to the public without a signed, witnessed and notarized Goddamned affidavit from the customer acknowledging the risk. Anything less is utterly irresponsible, and very possibly illegal.

Note the tiny line on the middle graphic above, which advises the buyer to check with their doctor before adding "it" to their diet. "IT" WHAT!? Chocolate? We didn't notice that line before we bought and consumed this garbage, but even if we had, we wouldn't have given it a second thought, as it refers to no specific item or ingredient. We therefore would have assumed the company was warning its buyers about eating CHOCOLATE -- a valid concern, since a few folks out of every hundred thousand are allergic to chocolate. But we aren't, and so wouldn't have cared.

If the people who run this company are so staggeringly stupid as to not be capable of mustering the simple cerebral horsepower to make SURE their products don't harm people, then they shouldn't oughta be in business in the first place. This is stupidity on a stupendous scale, and Internet victims everywhere are disgusted with it

Complaints are being prepared for dissemination to:

The Better Business Bureau
The Washington Attorney General
Health Department
Yahoo Stores
Our Attorney for possible litigation

Note that the company would not initially refund; they offered only after we threatened more significant consequences. We've filed a chargeback to make SURE we get a refund. If our attorney feels we can win it, we'll file for compensation for our time and suffering.