|
|
 |
We are passionate about a better Chocolate Covered Strawberry |
|
|
| | |
Why our Chocolate Strawberries Are So Much Better.
Everything
we do is done to make sure the product tastes better, is fresher and ensures an excellent experience.
Taking shortcuts may lower the price but also lowers product quality. (Cheap is Cheap)
|
It's rough when a small company has to expose the misdeeds of much larger companies, but the larger companies have been misleading the public for so long that someone had to step up and do what they can to inform the public.
| No fake chocolate $19 berries (read below)
No
Valentines Day based surcharges,
No surcharges for gift cards,
No �processing fee� on every order,
No surcharges for Morning Delivery,
No surcharges for Valentine�s Day delivery,
No surcharges for chocolate type selection,
We'll let our competitors do all of the above, that is not how we operate.
|
| CCBerries |
|
Our Competitors |
True Chocolate:
Gourmet Milk, White and Dark Chocolate,
made with cocoa butter.
A premium gift deserves premium
ingredients.
Better ingredients cost more.
|
|
Fake Swizzle Chocolate...Real Milk, White and Dark chocolate is made with cocoa butter, fake chocolate is made with a substance that�s been banned from restaurants in several states. See who is doing it here.
The nationally advertised $19 berry company is involved with most of the problems listed below.
|
Strawberries:
The largest, freshest strawberries
available, with leaves and almost
always long stem, never frozen,
no preservitives.
Premium fruit for a premium gift.
Premium fruit costs more.
|
|
Leafless Strawberries... One group of companies has been shipping strawberries without leaves: not what their website shows at all.
Each opens a new window:
Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 |
Chocolate Selection:
Your selection of rich dark
chocolate, creamy white
chocolate or decadent
milk chocolate.
All you have to do is hit the arrow
to select your favorite chocolate types.
|
|
No Chocolate Selection... A premium gift deserves a certain level of customization.
When a company does not let you select it's a sign they don't value your preferances. |
Decoration:Our custom designs are paper
thin, just a little food coloring.
40+ different themes from birthdays &
romance to holidays.
No funny taste, we can even make berries
with your special message or
corporate logo. |
|
Chunky, Chaulky Cake Decorations... Have you ever tried to bite through one of those?
Hard cake decorations were never gourmet.
|
Fresher:
We dip all of our strawberries
the day they ship for overnight nationwide delivery.
Strawberries and flowers are very perishable, that means they go bad quickly.
Premium gifts deserve a higher level of service.
|
|
Planned Multi Day Delivery... When a company ships for Monday delivery that means they left their location on Saturday (FedEx and UPS are closed on Sundays), rather than getting a package overnight you are getting one that�s several days old.
With cheaper 2 or 3 day service the end product is just not acceptable: your gift reflects your taste, a cheap fake gift or true gourmet.
|
Delivery:
We ship so that most packages
are delivered before noon, this
higher, level of service gets the
packages delivered sooner
with less chance of problems.
Other companies charge a surcharge for this service, but the sooner the package is delivered the less chance something will go wrong. Even on days where there are weather or equipment problems with the carriers: these packages get delivered first.
|
|
Free Shipping... also known as the Easy Saver Scam... using the lure of free shipping to trick you into signing up for a service that bills you about $15 monthly, this and similar actions have spawned several class action lawsuits.
FTC regulations prohibit companies from raising prices and deceiving people into thinking it's free or running "free" specials for more than a short time, but all sorts of companies ignore these regulations with little or no enforcement from the FTC. |
Credit Card Security:
We do not keep a copy of your card,
it's the safest and smartest way
to do business.
All credit card data should remain
safe both for premium gifts and
any other purchase. |
|
The easy saver scam (see free shipping scam above).
Every few months you hear about a company that was hacked and that customer credit card data was lost, since we don't save your credit card data this can never happen.
Some companies have made money selling your credit card /personal information to third parties.
|
Healthy Chocolate Claims:
The scientific studies about the
health
benefits of chocolate deal only with small
amounts of extremely dark
chocolate. That
is not what anybody dips strawberries in,
as all the dipping chocolate also has milk and
sugars in it.
|
|
Vegetable Oil Dip:
We�ve see the posts about the healthy chocolate studies
on the home page of a company that does not use true chocolate. It�s not
illegal because they don�t say their product is healthy: they just write about
the study, extolling the benefits of
chocolate.
Considering that their products is actually made with the same partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that has been banned from restaurants in several states: that is pure marketing spin.
|
Gel Packs:
Gel packs help protect the shipment even during the coldest months because it's always warm somewhere. Every Truck, plane, warehouse or loading dock has warm spots, without the gel packs your shipment could melt.
Gel packs cost more and add to the shipping weight, but a premium gift deserves the extra level of protection.
| | Melted Berries:
Our competitors charge extra for gel packs and then only use them during the summer, this leaves you paying more for the basic level of protection for the shipment and with no protection at all during the rest of the year.
Gel packs add to the weight of the shipment which increases shipping costs. Since the"shipping costs" are lower they get more sales.. even if the product is not as fresh or melted when it arrives.
|
Fresher Flowers:
All of our flowers are shipped direct to you from the import center, we do not fill orders with local florists and our flowers have not been subjected to a multi-day truck trip in order to get them to regional warehouses.
Flowers that have not been subject to multi-day truck trips are fresher but shipping is a little more because they then fly directly to you.
| | Truck trips and outsourced floral:
One competitor claimed that thier flowers were fresher than the local florists that they were using to fill the orders.
The same company above fills some orders with flowers that have been subject to multi-day truck trips to regional warehouses. While the total cost of delivery is less the flowers have not gotten any fresher sitting in the back of a truck. | Surcharges:
We never charge surcharges for Holiday deliveries or gift cards.
We do charge a surcharge when you place an order by phone: this is because it takes up someones time & that person could be making berries or doing something else.
| | Low initial prices and a ton of surcharges:
We�ve seen competitors charge surcharges for gift card notes, Holiday delivery, and even for placing an order online or selecting your favorite chocolate type.
All those surcharges are just extra profit.
|
True Gourmet:
Making the product with better ingredients, better protection in shipment and a better level of shipment all cost more. Cutting corners at every step of the process is not the type product we would like to sell, it would not be gourmet or something we would give our families.
| | Religious Discrimination:
The Muslim owner of a
heavily advertised gift company (cut fruit & chocolate) actually prohibits his Christian store
owners from taking off Sunday while he allows the Muslim Store owners to
have Fridays off: blatant religious discrimination. |
|
|
Our competitors? Sadly the opposite of what you would expect. |
|
Did you know that most chocolate strawberry makers don�t use real milk, white and dark chocolate anymore?
or they never did... and they are up to much more... We are passionate about producing the best quality product possible, at a fair price, without compromising your privacy to do so.
We have the higher standards that only a smaller privately owned company can maintain. Those higher standards result in a much better product.
As price goes down so does quality:
- First the gourmet chocolate is replaced by fake chocolate,
- Then the premium fruit is replaced by tier 2 fruit,
- Ethics come into play and they start fake free shipping offers like the "Easy Saver" scam and more..)
- Then the fruit is reduced to tier 3 fruit (no leaves, no stems),
Higher standards mean true chocolate and premium strawberries and a whole lot more.
What should we leave out? If you compare only on price you are missing the bigger picture.
Quick Links to areas with more detail:
|
Better Product:
* True Gourmet Chocolate,
* Premium Strawberries,
* Gel Packs,
* Overnight Shipping,
* Fresher Flowers & Roses,
* Food Safety
|
Better Ethics:
* Personal Privacy,
* Credit Card Security,
* Religious Freedom |
Check a Reputation:
* How to,
* Web Site Resources
* Rip Off Report,
* Pissed Consumer,
* Google Search |
How Can You Help?:
* Tell The World,
* Who is Doing What?
* Research Details,
* Summary | Better Product:
True Gourmet Chocolate:
We use rich decadent true gourmet Milk, White and Dark chocolate, our cheaper competitors are not using real chocolate: they are using a partially hydrogenated vegetable oil dip, the same unhealthy substance that�s been banned from restaurants in several states, it can�t legally be called Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate or White Chocolate.
We've even seen companies use the term 'chocolate' when their product is not even allowed to be called 'chocolate flavored'.
If you don't see Cocoa Butter in an online ingredients list: it is not Milk, Dark or White chocolate and they are trying to fool you. If you only see one type of chocolate listed: what else is in that box?
Premium Strawberries:
Fresh, never frozen, large premium strawberries, nearly always long-stem, it's pretty simple: a premium fruit for a premium gift. We've found actual pictures of what our main competitor has shipped and it looks nothing like their web site or TV commercials: berries without leaves or stems. We don't use the tiny grocery store berries or discounted freeze damaged fruit that needs it's leaves removed. We only use fresh premium fruit. (links to detailed pictures of the competitors actual product are below).
Gel packs:
Gel packs keep the product chilled during transit; they help prevent melting even during the winter when a package could be near a heater vent on a plane or truck. Leaving them out, as our competitors do, saves on shipping weight and shipping cost but it also gives zero protection from unexpected heat and can result in ruined shipments and disappointed recipients. We want no one to be disapointed so we take the extra steps needed to protect the product all year round, this allows everyone to be happier and results in a fresher product.
Overnight Shipping:
Even with gel packs strawberries have a very limited shelf life, and gel packs generally only last a day, you would not want a strawberry that has been sitting in the back of a truck for a few days. Overnight shipping costs more but it assures the strawberries arrive in the best possible condition which results in happier recipients.
Fresher Flowers:
Did you know that most flowers are imported into the country and then are trucked to regional warehouses? Those days in a truck take their toll. Our flowers fly around the country straight from the import center. One competitor said their flowers were fresher than local florists when in fact they were filling orders with those same local florists. If you choose to go with a local florist, make sure it really is a local florist, as there are many companies that pretend to be local only to take a big cut of the order and then pass it to a real local florist. To be clear: we are not a local florist and we do not fulfill orders using them, all of our orders are filled from a single location, boxed and shipped overnight for what we feel is a more consistent and fresher product.
Food Safety:
We don�t use cut fruit like cantaloupe: there is too much chance of cross contamination and with various e-coli and listeria outbreaks we feel that it is an unsafe process as one bad piece of fruit could contaminate everything cut that day. We also don't use damaged fruit that needs to have it's leaves removed to hide that fact.
Do you think we should leave out, true chocolate, premium strawberries, gel packs, overnight shipping fresher flowers, or food safety?
Better Ethics:
Personal Privacy:
We don�t sell your information (or give it away), but a large number of national competitors are making a lot money doing just that with free shipping scams, magazine giveaways and other �deals� that result in your personal information being sold to a third party. One group even retroactively changed it's agreement with it's privately owned stores forcing them to share customer data allowing them to do whatever they want with it.
Credit Card Security:
We do not keep a copy of your credit card information, other companies have been involved with the "easy saver scam" (and other similar activities) and their customers have been billed monthly, totaling hundreds of dollars. Extensive details below.
Religious Freedom:
One national gift company actually has a policy where Muslims store owners are allowed to close on Fridays but Christians are not allowed to close on Sundays. (It�s a policy set by a Muslim CEO and put in place after the stores had signed their franchise agreements, 170 stores are suing the parent company over this and many other after the fact policy changes..). These types of policies are not the American way and are a threat to our fundamental way of life. We don't care what your religious affiliation is: everybody gets treated the same.
Do you think we should leave out personal privacy, credit card security or religious freedom?
Checking a Company�s Reputation:
How To Check:
Checking the source behind many online companies can get rough because they operate under many different names, but since they want the extra credit with the search engines (for ranking), they list some of their other names at the top or bottoms of their screens (normally their home pages). If you find other company names there: check those names as well.
Nothing is more discguraging to us than when we see an online review of a competitor who has wronged a customer and then see that the customer announces they are going to order from a different name for the same mega corporation instead. The people behind those companies must be laughing all the way to the bank.
When you are searching the web to research a company�s reputation you need to be careful as not all reviews are totally truthful, better indicator is the number of negative reports.
As an example of an incorrect negative report on a competitor: a customer knew a delivery was coming from a local store but left this house anyway , the competitors product was not packaged to leave at the front door and the customer blamed the competitor for a late delivery. Look at the total number of complaints and read a few of them with a grain of salt, as we've seen reviews that blame the company when the company was given the incorrect address or there was a blizzard that closed the roads and airports.
Resources
www.ripoffreport.com , put the company name or web site in the search box and hit �search�,
www.pissedconsumer.com put the company name or web site in the search box and hit �search�,
www.google.com Type in the company name followed by �fraud� in the google search field. You have to be careful judging the results.. for example this web page will come up for a search of �CCBerries� and �Fraud�, because both words appear on the page, you'll also see other pages from us that list more detail on what some of the other companies are doing. This type of search brings up a lot more non-relevant (junk) pages but reading some of the results can give you an idea of other resources.
The most egregious actions listed above are also the companies that run the most TV and radio commercials. Every year dozens of radio talk show hosts take money from these companies without doing a background check and lead their listeners down the garden path. One group of companies was even part of the same company that owned DirecTV & QVC. But that�s just one group.. there are many others, operating under many names.
What you can do to help?
Tell The World:
All we want to do is sell chocolate covered strawberries and some flowers, our competitors have repeatedly lied about their product, and taken part in so many disreputable practices that is has gone way past marketing spin.
1) Share this page, if you use Facebook or Twitter we have added the buttons to help get the word out. We need your help to share this information with the general public, it�s only that way can we get around whoever is protecting them. (the buttons to share are at the top of this page)
2) The more time you spend looking at our site and the more pages you look at tells Google our site matters, even if you can't afford to purchase something the higher ranking with Google that results from extensive browsing of our site will help us survive.
3) When you hear a radio talk show host talk about an online gift company: check out the company: if they are known for the "easy saver scam", selling your credit card data, fake chocolate or religious discrimination let the host know: email them, post it on facebook , use the twitter feed or whatever other social media tools you can. Unless people speak up those companies will continue to behave badly.
4) If a TV station or radio station runs an ad for a deceptive company: let them know, most have no idea who they are running commercials for.
5) Tell your friends (we understand not everybody uses Facebook & Twitter), word of mouth has worked for centuries.
Who is doing what?
We've provided some of the resources we use for researching the companies above, of course other research came from actually looking at their ingredients list and the FDA definitions of what really is Milk, White or Dark Chocolate.
This page is a condensed version of over 5 years of research, we�ve posted some of the detail on our site blog at blog.ccberries.com, other information is on our sites pages, some of them are listed below:
Research Details:
Summary:
So yes: our product is more expensive, we�re using higher quality ingredients, we don�t take ethical shortcuts, we�re not selling your personal information ~ our competitors make serious money off of all of those . We are just a small company with higher standards with a passion for a better quality product.
(and if possible: could you buy something.. we have to pay the mortgage)
|
|
|
|
|
|
