Link – Wise Food Storage Turns Over Purchase Records To Government As Part Of Shocking Class-Action Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit against Wise Company, a survival and emergency food storage company, was filed on February 15, 2017 for “unlawful, unfair, and deceptive advertising and business practices.” Last year, the company agreed to settle the suit, and is expected to announce the settlement on its website by the end of business today.

The class action, known as Miller v. Wise Company Inc., U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Case No. 5:17-cv-00616-JAK-PLA, alleges that on its website and packaging, Wise made misrepresentations and omitted material information about how long its Long-Term Food Kits would last and how many people they would feed. Customers who brought the case (the “Plaintiffs”) allege that as a result, “customers were induced to pay more for those products than  they otherwise would have.”

What is fascinating here is the argument that since it is most likely no one has eaten this stuff, they cannot claim to have suffered damages. Kinda like saying its okay that your airbags are defective since you haven’t used them yet.

Any goober with a modicum of Google Fu can tell you that the usual 2000-calorie benchmark was nowhere near being met by these products. Or, really, anyone elses. And the ones that do have the high calorie counts usually get it by loading you up on potatoes or similar fare.

The biggest lesson here is that if you really want to do a long-term food solution you need to design your own package. You can use these guy’s products, sure… but YOU are the one who needs to calculate how much of that product you need…not them.

As for them divulging customer info. Well, its a class-action suit… without the names and addresses they have no idea who (or how many) are involved and where to send the legal paperwork. But, youre smart, right? You use other forms of payment and shipping info, right?

Although the idea that the .gov keeps a list of who ordered ten cases of Hormel seems rather tin foil-ish.

I’ll point out that if you go pay cash at the Mormon Cannery they don’t ask for ID. They may ask for a name but thats pro forma and no one cares to check if its legit.

 

 

 

22 thoughts on “Link – Wise Food Storage Turns Over Purchase Records To Government As Part Of Shocking Class-Action Lawsuit

  1. My question is:
    why would they be keeping such detailed purchase records? Considering the real worry of .gov seizure of food stockpiles under various situations, why would they knowingly put their customers in that position?

    Which brings up the associated question: Are their competitors going to flush their own records, providing they kept any identifying data, to avoid potential blowback from customers?

    • Customer information is immensely valuable to any business. An existing customer is the best potential source for future sales, and the wisest investment of marketing dollars. There’s no way any company is going to voluntarily flush its customer records.

  2. Next up: Augason Farms, Mountain House, Costco, et al. LDS storehouses will be left alone because religion, but everyone else down to Walmart and supermarket chains will be considered as a lawfare target for JD holders; there’s money in them thar customer lists.

    Although the idea that the .gov keeps a list of who ordered ten cases of Hormel seems rather tin foil-ish. The gummint doesn’t have to because the stores did.

    • I was in management at several grocery stores and we never kept lists of special orders (case quanity orders). That being said it was a small rual area and you usually knew them but not always. We have alot of Amish and they’re alot like Mormans in some respects.

    • The brands you mention have substantial calories to live on, so I disagree. Wise was sued because they offer less than 700 calories a day.

  3. Commander:
    I read this piece and I am reminded of one of Oscar Wilde’s comments –
    “The unspeakable chasing the Uneatable”
    Stupidity has it’s own rewards…

  4. “The biggest lesson here is that if you really want to do a long-term food solution you need to design your own package”.

    Well, yeah.

  5. The only Wise products I stock are some containers of their powdered eggs I got on sale. Nothing else appealed to me. As noted above these products were heavy with filler but very little THRILLER… 😀 I primarily stick with quality canned products for LT storage for proteins. Werling is expensive but worth it. Their products are solid pack meat of high quality. Try the Goetta .

    https://www.werlingandsons.com/

    Shipping is included in the price and it’s well packed.

    Regards

    • Being a Cincinnati native, I was raised in goetta as a boy. My wife makes it regularly when the weather turns cooler. We line in the SE U.S. now. Takes her about three hours to make. Looked at the item you mentioned above. A good bit different from our German family recipe. Our recipe includes beef and pork – ratio is 3 pork to 1 beef. The Werling product also is missing onions. The cubed beef, pork and onions are cooked in water on the stovetop while the steelcut oats are in a casserole dish in the oven. Every 15 minutes, some of the broth from the meat and onions is added to the steelcut oats. At the end of 3 hours, the beef, pork and onions are run through a grinder and blended with the oats. Seasoning in the meat and onions is limited to a very small amount of allspice and some salt. The mixture is then put into foil lined loaf pans and then refrigerated to firm up. In the morning we put some goetta slices in a pan to put a slight browning on them and then serve. Outstanding breakfast. Great with scrambled eggs.

      • James,

        My family has New England roots and Scrapple was a common sight on our table but I also got to like Goetta since my son’s godfather is from Ohio and he is always frying it up it for breakfast. Your recipe sounds excellent.

        Regards

  6. The client address list aside…I always marveled at people performing caloric calculations without considering activity. Watching Netflix, the 2k is fine. No heat, walking a perimeter, high tension…you’re going to soak up every calorie. And they better be high quality calories full of fat for your brain to function well.

    • This is true, but then you get into a truckload of variables (sex, age, activity level, overall health, environment, etc.). I think it’s alot easier for people to just go with a basic baseline like 2000 calories. It’s worth noting that MRE’s, which are marketed towards people who are going to be rather active, pack A LOT more calories.

      • And a large proportion of those calories are fat, rather than carbohydrate.

        The real takeaway here is stockpile fats and carbohydrates, and find a way to prepare stockpiled basics rather than pour some hot water in a pouch and pretend that you are done.

  7. I bought half a semi-trailer load of supplies from Walton Feeds (now Rainy Day Foods). It all came in food grade pails, in mylar bags flushed with nitrogen. Over time, the only things that went bad were powdered milk and corn meal.

    I never bought any of the “meal in a plastic pail” items, largely because they didn’t seem like the biggest bang for my buck.

    Don’t know about the lawsuit business. I had a boss once who delighted in saying “you can sue a cheese sandwich”. He ought to have known, he made a point of suing in order to get out of court settlements.

  8. I asked the Mormons about the name/phone # request and they said it was so they could contact me if they found they had a bad batch of something I had bought. They assured me that the form stayed on site and they’d burn it before turning it over to anyone. Good Folks.
    Nonetheless, the advice to always use a fake name and pay cash is dead on.

  9. Companies keep list of their customers because they then can send them updates on coming sales etc, thereby potentially increasing sales & their bottom line. Gummint wants those list because if everything implodes, like it’s going to do eventually, they have lists of who has what to go to for ready supplies. Same as the NICS system for you guns…..

  10. The old line about “on the internet no one knows you’re a dog” comes to mind, but even the stuff you purchase as Random A. Customer with a generic money order winds up on your porch, and despite the use of cash and aliases, even Costco has cameras and a DVR.

  11. This story is why one should have a guy that buys big bulk lots from say, Mt House that then sells items from the lot to all the rest of us.

    Wait…. Hrmmm

  12. This is must watch. Not only does it talk about the lawsuit and paltry 400-ish calories Wise Company calls a amount for “survival” a day, this popular prepper review web site says his Wise food turned black and spoiled! Yuck. Not taking a change and tossing mine now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QVn3gEppjE

    • Because the experience of one person justifies the expense of discarding all that food?

  13. The main point here is not about Wise turning over customers records, the point is that they lied to their customers about how long the food would keep them alive by selling survival food at high prices that had too few calories. And they were even too cheap to package it properly so the crappy food they make rots and turns black with mold within just a few years.

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