Earlier this month I was enjoying a few cinnamon Altoids, when I ended up eating one that was obviously not cinnamon, and very much not ‘curiously strong’. It was, in fact, a curiously weak wintergreen.

Just because I could, I went to altoids.com, found their comment form, and ‘commented’ on this experience:

This probably isn’t a quality issue, but I found a fairly weak almost wintergreen tasting altoid in my cinnamon altoids today. It was very odd.

I didn’t expect to hear anything back. I mean, what the hell are they going to do?

Turns out, this is what they’re gonna do:

Thank you for visiting http://www.altoids.com/.

I’m sorry for your experience with Curiously Strong ALTOIDS. The problem you described sounds like there was a possible mechanical failure at our facility. I am sending you reimbursement via first class mail, which you should receive within 7-10 business days.

We value the quality of the products that leave our facility. We give careful attention to each step of our manufacturing process. Samples from each production run are evaluated before we ship them, in an effort to prevent any unsatisfactory products from entering distribution.

Mistakes can sometimes occur on our production lines. We try to prevent this by stationing inspectors at various points along the production lines, and their duties include watching for malfunctions. Also, our quality control staff makes regular rounds throughout the production area during the day in order to ensure that production equipment is functioning properly.

I hope this information is helpful and again, I apologize for this experience.

Kim McMiller
Associate Director, Consumer Relations

And the other day, I actually got a sort of refund cheque for $1.99 from them in the mail.

That’s just fucking amazing. A company sent me two bucks because ONE little altoid was all wrongly-flavoured. That’s just a level of customer service I’m unaccustomed to.