Customers Say Pressed Juices Owes Them Hundreds In Refunds For Juice Cleanses That Never Arrived

Australian health food business Pressed Juices specialises in the kind of juice cleanse that’s all the rage of late. Cleanses go for three to five days, range in price from $198 to $319, and promise to “leave you feeling better than ever”, according to the Pressed Juices website.

Some of the company’s recent customers beg to differ. They allege that some or all of the juice cleanses they ordered from Pressed Juices never arrived, or arrived spoiled, and that the company owes them hundreds in refunds that never materialised. The customers say that when they tried to contact Pressed Juices about their missing orders or refunds, they encountered disconnected phone lines, waited weeks or months for replies to emails, and saw their negative comments and reviews disappear from social media.

This is not the first time we’ve written about allegations concerning Pressed Juices. Back in November, we published a months-long investigation into allegations made by the company’s former employees, who claimed they were owed hundreds, even thousands, in unpaid wages and superannuation.

Since we published that story, we’ve received a number of complaints about the business from disgruntled customers. We’ve spoken to five different customers who allege they experienced serious problems after ordering juice cleanses from Pressed Juices between October and December 2018.

All five customers we spoke to told us that some or all of the juices they ordered were wrong, spoiled, or missing – in some cases, the customers say they never received a single juice from an order worth hundreds of dollars.

Every customer we spoke to described having difficulty getting in touch with Pressed Juices to complain, and needing to call, email and message social media accounts multiple times before receiving a response. While four of the customers say Pressed Juices eventually promised them a refund, only one has actually received that refund.

The others are still waiting. Here’s their story.

Jess’s Story: $236 And Not A Single Juice To Show For It

On December 13 2018, Jess placed an order for a three day juice cleanse, totalling $236, and asked for the first instalment of juices to be delivered to her workplace on the morning of Monday, December 17.

Jess received a confirmation email after her purchase, and all seemed to be well. Monday came, and she kept an eye out for juice deliveries – Pressed Juices says that while it endeavours to deliver early, its juices may arrive anywhere between 7am and 12pm.

By 1pm, no juices had arrived, so Jess decided to get in touch to see what was going on. She called the customer service number listed on the Pressed Juices Delivery & Returns page, and received a message saying it was disconnected. She then called the mobile number listed on the site’s Contact page, which rang out with no answer.

Jess then tried to call both of Pressed Juices’ NSW stores, only to discover that they had the same phone number – the mobile number listed on the Contact page, which went straight to voicemail.

“I thought this was really strange,” Jess told us. “I was super confused with how two stores would have the same mobile number as their contact number.” Unable to get anyone to pick up the phone, she emailed [email protected] and explained the problem.

While she was waiting for a response, she decided to check Pressed Juices’ social media accounts. The Facebook account linked to from its website had been deleted, but its Instagram account was still active. She noticed that a few other people had left comments asking the company to get in touch regarding a missing order, so she left a message of her own.

The next day, she checked Instagram to find that her comment, along with another negative comment above it, had been deleted. There was no response to her email or phone calls, and no juice had arrived.

At this point, Jess started to get really worried about her $236 payment. She googled Pressed Juices some more, and started to find negative reviews of the company, as well as the investigation we published outlining former Pressed Juices employees’ allegations that the business owed them thousands in unpaid wages and superannuation.

Jess left another comment on the Pressed Juices Instagram page, and sent a direct message to the account asking that someone please contact her. She sent another email to [email protected], threatening legal action. Over the next couple of days, she lodged a complaint with NSW Fair Trading, cancelled her debit card, and began the lengthy process of disputing the transaction with her bank.

Since Jess first placed her order on December 13 last year, she has managed to get in touch with someone from Pressed Juices exactly once: on December 18, the Pressed Juices Instagram account responded to her DM with a short message: “Hi Jess, you are receiving a refund. We will send you the receipt today.” According to Jess, neither refund nor receipt ever arrived.

Junkee put multiple, detailed requests for comment for Pressed Juices, but received no response.

Not An Isolated Incident: Lots Of Customers Say Their Juices Never Arrived

Jess isn’t alone. We’ve spoken to four other recent customers of Pressed Juices who allege they experienced similar difficulty contacting the business after something went wrong with their orders. Based on comments on Pressed Juices’ social media accounts, we’re aware of at least 14 customers in total who have made similar complaints since November 2018, though we have not been able to verify all of these complaints.

Of the five customers we interviewed for this story, four alleged that some or all of the juices they ordered never arrived (the one customer who received all her juices picked them up in store, rather than opting for home delivery, though she noted that staff had no record of her order when she went to collect it, and had to assemble it from juices already in-store). Three of the five reported that some or all of the juices they received appeared to have gone off – in two cases, the customers say they got sick soon after drinking them.

All five customers told us they found it incredibly difficult to get in touch with Pressed Juices to discuss problems with their orders. Nonetheless, four of the five eventually made contact and were promised a refund. Only one customer has actually received a refund, noting that they received it only after informing Pressed Juices that they would be sharing their experience on social media.

It’s not uncommon for customers to turn to social media to share their complaints about Pressed Juices. In a series of tweets, one customer described having an experience very similar to Jess’s, saying that her juice cleanse still hadn’t arrived several days after it was scheduled to. The customer described calling and emailing the company multiple times without hearing back, and shared screenshots of her frustrated messages to the Pressed Juices Instagram account, where she finally received a response.

Even When Juices Did Arrive, Things Didn’t Always Go Smoothly

Not receiving juices isn’t the only way things have gone wrong for Pressed Juices customers. Emy, who has ordered several cleanses from Pressed Juices in the past, says she believes her most recent cleanse made her “incredibly sick”. “I got so sick, I was vomiting, I was in bed – their juices were so off,” she told us.

Emy had delivery issues too – on her two most recent cleanses, the first day’s juices arrived, but no delivery turned up on day two or three. The juices that did arrive came via Uber, which Emy thought was weird. They were also wrong, containing juices and ingredients she’s certain she didn’t order.

Like Jess, Emy tried calling, emailing, using the website’s online form, Instagram messaging and more, but struggled to make contact. Eventually, she received her money back, but she told us that “even then it took two weeks for them to sort out a refund, and I had to contact them every day for that two weeks”.

Another customer, who we’ll call Mary (she asked to remain anonymous so as to avoid hurting her chances of receiving a refund), also got sick after starting her juice cleanse. At the time, she assumed the problem was with her, not the juices.

“I started to feel really sick in the stomach, really really sick,” she said. “I was on the phone to a friend and I had to get off the phone, I was really sick. I ran to the bathroom, I was basically sick everywhere, and I thought to myself, how am I going to finish this? I wasn’t blaming them or anything like that, I just thought it obviously wasn’t agreeing with my stomach at all.”

Most of the customers who mentioned feeling sick after the juices told Junkee that they weren’t sure at the time whether the problem was with the juices, or with them. Another customer, Sarah, said that by the second day of her cleanse a few of her juices seemed to have gone off. “You could taste almost a furry texture in your mouth,” is how she described it, though she wasn’t sure whether that was her fault for not refrigerating the juices quickly enough. She had intended to be home when the juices arrived to refrigerate them immediately, but she says they arrived late – around 2pm, when she was at work, instead of in the morning when she was expecting them.

It’s difficult to confirm that the juices were the cause of these customers’ problems. However, it’s worth noting that the customers’ concerns that they were receiving off or expired juices line up with what former Pressed Juices staff told us when we interviewed them for our previous story. Two different former Pressed Juices employees described customers regularly coming in to complain that their juices were off or out of date. “Throughout the time I worked there it wasn’t uncommon for people to bring them back and say ‘this is really sour, it’s gone off’”, one of the workers told us. “I worked there nearly a year, and it happened probably a few times a week.” She added that it was quite easy to tell when juices had gone off, because the bottles visibly swelled.

What’s more, five former Pressed Juices workers from a range of stores have described seeing bottles of juice stamped with multiple different use-by dates. One worker, Helena, was concerned about how this appeared to customers, and messaged the Pressed Juices managers’ group chat in March 2018 to raise the problem.

“Some bottles have up to three different use by stickers on them, and many bottles with two – all with different dates,” she wrote. “There really needs to be just the one date otherwise customers are going to get the wrong idea.” Another member of the group chat responded to explain that this is because bottles were pre-stamped before being filled, and sometimes got used on different days without the original stamp being removed.

Still, the workers were concerned, and provided Junkee with a number of photos of the multiple date stamps on juice bottles. In one photo, a bottle appears to have been originally stamped 23/03, with this date then covered by 24/03, and again by 28/03. In another, a stamp reading 24/03 has been peeled back to reveal a stamp reading 21/03. In another, a stamp reading 29/03 partially obscures a stamp reading 23/03. A different worker provided similar photos showing use-by date stickers peeled back to reveal additional stickers underneath, though the underlying dates are not always legible.

Two former employees mentioned to us that management had at times directed them to change expiry dates on juice bottles, usually explaining this by saying the wrong date had been put on the juice in the first place. Another former employee, who worked at Pressed Juices’ now-defunct Adelaide store, mentioned that while originally juice was sent from Melbourne to Adelaide by plane, cost cuts led to it being shipped by bus, which was often delayed.

“Being sent overnight also meant that quite often we had juice go off during the bus trip over,” the worker told us. “It was often a nightmare getting HQ to process refunds and they would often make it so hard, but customers were getting expired juice.” The worker told us that they personally witnessed multiple staff at their store getting sick and vomiting after consuming juices at work.

On its website, Pressed Juices says that it will exchange spoilt or rancid juices if these are purchased in store, but not if they are purchased online. “If the product is purchased via online and the product is spoilt, Pressed Juices takes no responsibility in refunding the spoilt product,” the site reads. “The customer accepts the responsibility when purchasing the product that the Pressed Juices products are fragile and must be refrigerated after the product has been delivered. Therefore, if product is spoilt, Pressed Juices will not provide a refund or replacement product of delivered goods.”

This information about spoiled juices appears on the Delivery section of the site’s About page, but does not appear during the checkout process used to buy juices online, which only includes a link to the company’s Terms and Conditions. These Terms and Conditions currently refer to the wrong company name for the business (“Pressed Juices Retail Pty Ltd”, which is currently under external administration), and regarding problems with products they simply state that “we strongly encourage our customers to do proper research before consuming raw or undercooked food and Juices. By choosing delivery of goods, your [sic] waive all liability from Pressed Juices.”

Pressed Juices Has Been Deleting Customer Complaints On Social Media

Pressed Juices deleted its official Facebook page several months ago. Around November 2018, however, a new Facebook page for the company appeared at a different URL, and customers began to leave reviews for the business there.

These reviews were not flattering. When I visited the page on Friday January 11, I found at least 10 people reporting late or missing deliveries, late or missing refunds, and difficulty getting in touch with the company to address these issues.

“So disappointed with this company and their communication,” one customer wrote on December 18. She described her experience ordering a cleanse only for it to arrive late with juices missing. “I managed to get onto someone called Michael, who apologised and said he would refund the juices and give me a days [sic] free cleanse. I then never heard from pressed juices [sic] again. I have emailed several times, called, left messages and nothing. Very bad company, clearly are not concerned about keep customers happy. Do not recommend!”

“Hey guys your [sic] so hard to reach,” another customer wrote on November 14, describing her experience contacting the company after placing an order for a $198 cleanse on July 5. Despite multiple attempts to contact Pressed Juices, some of them successful, she reported that she still had not been able to successfully order and receive a single juice.

There were more reviews like these – emphasis on were, because at some point between Friday January 11 and Wednesday January 16, the Facebook page was deleted. Facebook confirmed that it did not remove the page, and said that it was unpublished voluntarily by one of the Page Administrators. It’s not clear whether the Page Administrators in this case were representatives of Pressed Juices, given that the company did not appear to be posting from or using the page.

Pressed Juices has, however, been deleting negative comments on its Instagram page, which remains active. Multiple customers we spoke to for this story described leaving comments on Instagram asking for someone to contact them about their missing order or late refund, which were later deleted. Some customers who left complaints about Pressed Juices on the Instagram page reported that they were blocked from following or messaging the account shortly afterwards.

Here’s a screenshot of a post on the Pressed Juices Instagram account taken on January 10, which shows comments from two users asking the company to respond to their messages.

Here’s a screenshot of that same Instagram post taken on January 15, which shows that the negative comments have disappeared. We spoke to the owners of both Instagram accounts, who said that they had not personally deleted the comments.

This was not an isolated deletion. Here’s another screenshot of the comments on Pressed Juices’ Instagram, taken on February 4. It shows a comment describing a customer’s experience trying to pick up an order, only to find that the Pressed Juices store she nominated to collect it from had permanently closed. By February 8, the comment was gone. The customer in question confirmed that she did not delete it herself.

Where To Now?

For most of the customers we spoke to, the outcome of their experience communicating with Pressed Juices was depressingly similar. All five customers we interviewed described difficulty contacting Pressed Juices, but four of the five were eventually promised refunds. For three of the four, no refund has yet materialised.

When Mary called customer service to cancel the rest of her cleanse after getting sick, she was promised a refund for the remaining two days. When she hadn’t received it after a few days, she followed up in-store, where the shop assistant called Leo Pegoli, who was listed as a Director of Pressed Juices Retail Pty Ltd, which is currently in external administration. The shop assistant ended up giving Mary Pegoli’s personal phone number, and told her to contact him if the refund was not in her account by that evening. The phone number Mary was given matches the phone number for Leo Pegoli that employees provided to us when we previously reported on Pressed Juices.

The refund didn’t arrive, so Mary says she called the number and spoke to Pegoli, who said the refund was currently with the company’s accountant and would be processed soon. After that, according to Mary, “I didn’t hear anything”. “I’ve tried to call him, but he doesn’t answer my number on his personal phone or the customer service line anymore. He didn’t reply to my emails that I sent via the customer service page on the website. I sent him a text about it and he didn’t reply to me at all. That’s the last it’s been, and that’s probably been a good month ago.”

Mary still hasn’t received her refund. She’s contacted Consumer Affairs to complain, and is considering disputing the payment through her bank. As a last resort, she was considering just turning up at Pressed Juices and refusing to leave the store until someone responded to her refund request.

“I know that sounds insane, but no one’s getting their money from this person,” she said. “I was just going to stand in there and say you can refund me.”

For another customer, Georgia, the situation is similar. After several attempts, her mum was able to make contact with Pressed Juices, which apologised and promised a refund for the cleanse she never received.

“That was the first and last time that we actually got in contact with Pressed Juices,” Georgia told us. “We just never heard back, and that was like, November.”

“I’m $216 out of pocket, and being a uni student that’s a lot of money still. I couldn’t really afford to just throw away that much.”

Like most of the customers we spoke to, though, Georgia isn’t really sure what to do next. She’s tried to contact the company so many times, and on so many different platforms, without success.

“If there’s any way I could get in contact with them and for them to actually pick up, I think I’ll probably push forward and get my refund,” she told us. Whether she’ll be able to get through to Pressed Juices, though, is unclear. Pressed Juices did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story, but we’ll update it if we hear back from them.

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Sam Langford is a staff writer at Junkee. You can follow them on Twitter at @_slangers.