Woman buys expensive vitamin from a pharmacy. After opening it, she found dried pasta!

Has this ever happened to you?

A woman in Toronto, Canada purchased a $50 bottle of Greens + from Canada's biggest pharmacy chain, Shoppers Drug Mart. Greens + is a line of nutritional supplements that contains a blend of nutrients in a powder form.

When this woman went home, her daughter opened the bottle and to her surprise, found dried penne pasta. They both thought it was an absolute joke and returned to the pharmacy the very next day for a refund or exchange.

The woman preferred an exchange and the manager of the store accepted, under the condition that the bottle must be opened in front of her. When the woman opened the other bottle, it was also filled with pasta. A third, and a fourth bottle was also opened and also found to contain dried pasta.

At this point, the manager was flabbergasted.

A statement from the Greens + company , said the vitamin bottles were tampered with after leaving their warehouse.

“We are aware of a few isolated incidents at Shoppers Drug Mart stores in the GTA where our product has been replaced with dry pasta and returned for store refunds,” the company said.

“We have confirmed that the substitution is happening after the product has been packed, sealed and shipped from our facilities, and believe a local consumer is doing this for free product. We have no evidence that would suggest there is any risk to product safety or public health. We are working closely with Shoppers to find the culprit.”

An official statement from Shoppers Drug Mart stated that “We are aware of a few isolated incidents where vitamins have been replaced with pasta in a specific product line at certain Shoppers Drug Mart stores within the Greater Toronto Area."

"We believe this is very isolated, with only a few reported incidences, and as a result we don’t believe there is cause to remove the product from shelf at this time".

Thoughts

Usually in the case of returns, the store staff just does a quick check to make sure that the seal is intact. If a person has access to a commercial grade machine that can actually reseal the product to closely mimic how it should look, then it will go undetected. That's likely what happened in this case. Fortunately for returns, most stores would require a name and or phone number to log the transaction. However, I am unaware of any store policy that would require photo identification verification prior to accepting a return.

This is a very interesting situation and we will have to monitor and see how it turns out!