Big hand to Bigham's!

I mentioned way back at the end of October that I’d been disappointed to find that Bigham’s Gourmet Chicken and Red Wine pies also contained the some stealth tomatoes. This WAS mentioned on the packet but not on the list of ingredients on Bigham’s website or Ocado, where I’d ordered it from. As they had a feedback section on their site, I’d thought I’d mention it. I don’t normally go out of my way to complain but a feedback button seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
And shortly after this, I was delighted to receive an email asking for my details so their could send me a compensatory voucher. I didn’t actually receive anything from them this time, but it wasn’t as if I was emotionally damaged by the experience, I was just recommending that they adjusted their ingredients on their website so tomato dodgers like me can order their pies safely.
And Bigham’s do have many products that I really do like, especially the Gourmet Beef and Peppercorn pie and the miniature Beef Wellingtons which were used to great effect several times over the festive season. And the oven proof ceramic dishes that come with the pies were most useful when D and I made the fabulous potato soufflés on New Year’s eve.
I'd totally forgotten about the whole thing and then after the Christmas holiday I received another email saying that they’d unfortunately had some technical difficulties and lost my address details. I must admit I was really impressed that they’d continue to follow this up, I seems so rare that companies care about little things like this.
I duly replied and today I received such a lovely letter from their founder himself, Charlie Bigham (picture above) and I am really quite astounded! It’s not a “Dear Miss x, please accept our apologies for ’insert random product here’ and we’ll try to do better blah… blah… blah…” letter but a personal letter commiserating with my tomato related stress and sympathising with my struggle with extracting some of their canapés out of their baking tray and including some vouchers. And these vouchers aren’t some money off coupon to buy more Bigham’s pies, which I am more than happy to do anyway, but proper John Lewis vouchers that I can turn into anything my little sparkly heart desires.

What really lovely people down at Bigham’s!
And they make exceedingly good pies though personally I'm staying away from the tomato based one!