Categories: Review

HelloFresh Gift Card Disappointment

I didn’t know what to get my in-laws for Christmas and left the present shopping till the last minute. Even if we did magically purchase the most amazing present, we would still need to post it to them, and there was no guarantee the present would not make it for Christmas.

I said to hubby why not give them a voucher or something local that they can use. Something that will not require postage and therefore allow us to get them a gift and not have to post anything.

One suggestion I discussed with Hubby was a possible gift box for HelloFresh (We loved our HelloFresh box and enjoyed the experience and wanted to share it with family). It would allow Hubby’s parents to have meals delivered, make their life easier, and test out the subscription box. There is no incentive to sign up we just wanted to enable Hubby’s parents to put their feet up for a bit, no shopping or thinking about what is for dinner.

Bad customer journey on the HelloFresh website

We decided to go ahead with the gift certificate for a week for our Christmas gift, we thought that this would be a good due to not being able to get a present there in time. I thought it would be easy and tried to do the process on the HelloFresh website.

I navigated to the gift card link all the way down the bottom left on the HelloFresh website. I clicked the amount I wanted to spend, and the number of people and then progressed to the next page. The next page had questions like I was signing up for a subscription box, my address, delivery at home or elsewhere, and more.

Why would HelloFresh be asking me this? I am not making this decision. It is a gift for someone else.

Me annoyed that the gift voucher hasn’t arrived

I would have thought that this would have been the process

You click on the gift card link.
You select the amount you wish to spend, how many people it is for, and then where it should be emailed, along with your message to your friend or family member.
Then the next page should take you to the payment page, you then pay for the gift card, and then you get an email saying that you have paid for a $110 gift card for 2 people for 5 meals, when the email will be delivered and the time, along with the email and name of the person/s that will be receiving this email with the gift card info. With this confirmation email, you should also get a copy in case the recipient for whatever reason never receives their email.

As the page kept on looking like it was going to sign me up instead of just purchasing the gift card, I rang HelloFresh customer service helpline. I was talked through the whole process by a nice lady who understood what I was trying to do. She kept on telling me that it was only for the gift card purchase and that it will not sign me up for a subscription. I really didn’t feel confident but followed her advice and filled out the next pages as she instructed. (She was right but I was holding my breathe thinking I might get an email for something I didn’t sign up to)

As you can see in the image below it says the address and phone number for delivery purposes. I am not the person getting the gift box my inlaws are. It also asks me where I would like my gift box delivered…..geez again I cannot make this decision and this question shouldn’t be on this page at all.

Confirmation email

I was told that I would get a confirmation email with a copy of the email that the giftee would get. I only got that I spent the money on the gift card and that the recipient would get an email on the date I selected. I selected 25th December 2022 for the delivery date and as mentioned above the email has not arrived to the people it should of.

Today is the 26th of December and still, my in-laws have not got the email alerting them to their gift box from HelloFresh.

Tips to improve the customer journey on the HelloFresh website

The whole process to order a gift card is too complicated and confusing from a customer’s perspective. (You might think I have no idea about customer journeys on websites, in fact, I have over 16 years of experience with content and improving sites).

The business (HelloFresh) needs to pretend they are the customer and follow the steps to purchase gift cards and other items. During this process, did everything make sense? Was there clear information and is it easy to find?
Once you have highlighted items to fix to make the process easier and more efficient for the customer these need to be fixed. For example, have a simplified gift card purchase process. Click on the link for gift cards, select the spend amount, who it is going to, and email address, and fill out your message to the recipient.
Then the next page is your payment page. This page should only have info for the person buying the gift only…no info about the delivery address or where the box should be left. This is information that needs to be asked when the recipient enters their details to claim the gift card for their HelloFresh box.
The final step in the process should be sending the person organising the gift a confirmation email. In this email it should have the following items: Congratulations on your purchase of xxx amount for your HelloFresh gift box, a breakdown of what you bought for whom, who it will be delivered to and what email address, what date and time you can expect your family/friend to get their gift card email, and also a copy of this email to send to your recipient if for whatever reason the person doesn’t get the email from HelloFresh (like in my case)
Moving the link from the bottom of the website to the top and making it more obvious to customers (this link needs to be higher up on the page – living on the top of the page real estate rather than where most people don’t look at all) that they can indeed get a gift box as a gift would I believe increase sales and take up for new subscriptions. Also making the buying process easier and less complicated would allow more sales as well.
Having a buying process that has few steps is ideal. Too many things to do, and pages that have questions that are not relevant will mean people don’t buy and do not come back. Having a 3-step process that is simple and quick is what is needed.
Oh and make sure you have your office hours listed on your site – if you say that they are listed there from your recorded message it needs to be on your website.
Also the contact us area isn’t user-friendly to message the HelloFresh team. It needs to be updated to allow customers to send a message about other issues rather than a subscription box or missing ingredient.

There is not a lot of info about meal box gifts. All the major players in the market seem to not have it available. Personally, this is a gap in the market…… Make it easy for people to spend their money and try your product. Easy really!

I am very upset and disappointed with this gift card experience. I organised and paid for it all on the 19th of December, and was told on the phone and on the website that the people receiving the gift will get the email when I nominated it to be sent. Nothing has arrived so far. I have spent $110 and no gift has been sent!

I rang the customer service line of HelloFresh on Christmas Day to see if they had recorded information about when they will be available so that I can sort this out. The recorded message said that they were closed (fine it is Christmas) and then told me that I can check out their hours of operation on their website. Then the call dropped instantly. Nice….. Geez. Not even an updated recorded holiday message saying:

“Happy Holidays from HelloFresh, we are closed from 23rd Dec and reopen on xxx day in Jan 2023. If you have any urgent enquires please call this number xxxxx”

I went back to the HelloFresh website to see if they had details of their opening hours for the holidays and there is no such information anywhere on their site. Zilch! Nada…. Nothing!!!!!

I have no idea when I can contact them about the missing gift card email and to top it off my inlaws think we haven’t given them anything now. Insert a very unhappy customer and affiliate partner of HelloFresh.

My recent posts about HelloFresh

I do really love what HelloFresh offers. We have had some great meals with them. However, as a lover of their product and service and also a person that has reviewed them as well, I am disappointed by the customer journey for their gift card purchase, how it looked like I was going to then subscribe to a meal box and not gift if to the people I really want to give it to, and then the BIG ANNOYING PART, the email for the gift card never got sent to my inlaws. Yep, we have checked many times and they have received nothing. Zip… Zilch! Nothing of nothing has arrived.

I hope that this post will help HelloFresh understand how to fix their website, what are the pain points for the customer and fix my issue with the gift box for my inlaws for Christmas.

As said I am not anti-HelloFresh, I love the products and what they do, I just think that some of the services have fallen flat and as a devotee and affiliate to their program I am rather upset about it all.

NOTE: I Finally made contact with HelloFresh via Facebook messenger (HelloFresh was quick to respond via messenger and to sort out this issue) and they are looking into why the gift box email never arrived. I do hope they can fix it today for my in-laws. I have been told that the email was indeed sent on December 24th, but we know for certain that there was nothing in their inbox from HelloFresh. The team at HelloFresh have sent the email again and if not received I will contact them again to let them know.

No email arrived…I messaged again and was told that I needed to send my email confirmation via messenger.

I explained I cannot do this and needed an email address. No email address was given. I then was asked if I filled out the form with the person’s email, and I said I did. I asked for it to be sent to my own email address, but still, no email showed up. I then asked for the email to be sent to my Hubby, no can do that as the person who organised it can only get the email. I then get asked if I have an account and more weird questions. I explain that I can send the email confirmation but they should already know that I have paid from their end.

I then get told that I have been sent a discount (Also the email for this discount was not labelled in a different way, it is for a subscription box only, so to actually make use of the discount I need to set up a subscription with HelloFresh) to send my in-laws that will be in place of my gift box that I have arranged. The discount was for $130 off a subscription and not a one-off gift box. I explained that I didn’t want this and that this is not what I ordered at all. I told the person on messenger that I wanted a gift box for my family and would appreciate the code so that we can access what we paid for.

I then get asked about how I ordered the gift box. Did I use the website? What email did I use? And more info I had already told them.

This still didn’t explain why I still wasn’t getting the email.

In the end, I was then told that I filled in the form wrong with my email, not the email that should get the gift code for the meal box (If this is the case, I should have gotten the email). I explained that their form online for purchase is confusing, I rang their help desk and was walked through the whole process and was told that I did it correctly. Also kept on saying that the confirmation email didn’t give any info other than the fact that I paid for it and that the people I nominated for the gift box will get an email for the date I selected.

As you might imagine I wasn’t happy and wanted to talk to someone that could just give me the code so that we can access what was paid for. I finally received the code in a text message via Facebook and have created my own email to the in-laws to allow them to finally get their Christmas gift.

I am pleased that I finally got the code that I needed to send to my in-laws for their Christmas present but rather annoyed and frustrated at the whole experience. This purchase experience was anything but easy or fun. It was rather painful and annoying, to say the least.

I have given this feedback to HelloFresh and I hope that this helps others and also the customer journey on the HelloFresh website.

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Suzanne Robinson