The Case of the Missing Donuts

Thanks to my college roommate Melissa for saving the day because I seriously had nothing to write about today and she made a suggestion in the comments on my last post that I write about my delayed Fed Exed donuts. Melissa knew about this from following me on twitter and I guess her curiosity got the best of her and she wondered what ever became of my missing donuts. Well, here’s the story…

A long, long while ago, one of the blogs I frequently read had a giveaway and a discount code for low-fat gourmet donuts from Holey Donuts. Needless to say, I didn’t win, but I did peruse the Holey Donut site and found the pictures of their low-fat donuts to make my mouth water. I never placed an order because I found the prices to be outrageous but I signed up for the emails from the company to see what kind of specials they were having, etc.

For months and months I would occasionally stop by the Holey Donuts site and think about ordering, but my stinginess with my pocketbook always prevented me from taking the splurge… until earlier this month.

As I mentioned, I had signed up to receive the company emails to be alerted about promotions and sales, etc. and the first week of January, Holey Donuts offered each box of their low-fat gourmet donuts for only $5.99 a box, and $7.99 a box for their cinnamon rolls. I had a little extra cash that I was willing to part with in order to see if the donuts were actually as good as they looked in the photos and placed an order for three boxes of the Sampler Favorites B. I chose this particular assortment because the donuts that had been calling out to me the most were the chocolate chip and the vanilla frosted and this particular assortment had one of each. Since I had never had any of the donuts before I wanted to get an assortment so as to see which donuts I liked the best in case there was a chance that I couldn’t live without the donuts and placed another order in the future.

So, on January 5, I placed my order and anxiously sat by waiting for them to ship. For states in the east and south, the donuts can be shipped FedEx Ground because they will still arrive within two days and for states in the west, the donuts have to be shipped via FedEx 2-Day. The donuts are handmade in New York and then frozen, packed in dry ice and then shipped. According to the Holey Donuts site, they must arrive in the two-day time frame so as to still be fresh. My donuts were scheduled for a January 10 shipment date and scheduled to arrive at my home on January 12. This would have been great except for the fact that Snow Storm 2011 hit on January 10 and on January 12, FedEx still wasn’t out delivering – at least not in my neighborhood.

So, January 12 came and went with no Fed Ex delivery; as did January 13. Fed Ex had changed the delivery date on the tracking page to January 13 and on that day the tracking page read that my donuts were “out for delivery” but about 5:15 p.m. or so the status changed to a delivery date of January 14. On January 14, the donuts were once again “out for delivery” and finally around 5:30 p.m. or so the FedEx guy stopped by my house.

I asked him if FedEx had happened to keep the delivery in the freezer since the box clearly stated “Perishable Item Please Keep Frozen.” The answer was just as I suspected “no, it’s just been on the truck or in the warehouse.” Great!

So, I brought the donuts inside and opened them up only to find them completely thawed. I took one out to eat right away and put the others in the freezer because the instructions said that even if they were thawed to go ahead and put them in the freezer. In the meantime, I had contacted Holey Donuts and asked them about my shipment. Would the donuts be okay? Would they be ruined? Etc., etc. Only to receive no response until I finally had to call them on Friday, the 14th, before I received the shipment and spoke with a person who said they should be okay. She was wrong.

Since this story is already way longer than you probably bargained for when clicking over here today, I’ll try to shorten it up a bit. Basically, the donuts were extremely dry and did not live up to my expectations. The overall taste wasn’t bad and as I suspected, the chocolate chip and vanilla frosted were the best and the most edible because the icing made the dryness of the donut bearable. The first assortment I opened, I tried all of the donuts. The powdered sugar was terrible – so dry that even soaking it in milk wouldn't have helped. I think I could have broken a window with it as well it was so dry and hard. The original glazed didn’t hold a candle to Krispy Kreme – not that I expected it would, but I thought it might at least have some taste to it. Wrong. The caramel crumb and sugar and spice were good as far as the top of the donut, but again the bulk of the donut was dry and basically inedible. As for the other two assortments, I thawed them out over the last week or so per the instructions (in the box with the lid closed) and they were just as bad. I basically ate only the chocolate chip and vanilla frosted and threw the others away without even a bite.

I received some sparse communication from the company saying that the donuts were supposed to be soft and moist; but I am here to tell you they were not. I kept thinking the company might at least offer to reimburse me the money I spent or offer to send a new box of donuts so as to at least attempt to keep me as a customer, but to no avail. Needless to say, I will never again order donuts from Holey Donuts. They have a lot of rave reviews on their site, but I am beginning to think they are all made up because I had a dreadful experience with them and found their donuts to be less than desirable and their communication was just as bad. Oh well, we live and learn I guess. I just wish it hadn’t cost me $30.