November 2023 by Dina Epshteyn
The products are normally good, but when a major issue arose, their customer support was appallingly terrible, and that has made me scared to ever purchase from them again.Here's what happened:I've been ordering their Valocordin product for many years, have spent hundreds of dollars on it, over and over again. The last time I placed an order, it was for 10 bottles at once, as I often do. When the order arrived, I found that one of the bottles had some sort of weird green mold growing inside the pipette and the liquid in the bottle was opaque rather than translucent like it normally was. It also smelled and tasted bad and different from the way it normally tastes (again, we've used well over a hundred bottles of this stuff, so we know what it's supposed to look/smell/taste like).So I wrote to them with photos, explained the situation, and asked them how they would make it right. They told me it's fine, it's not mold, it's just a natural settling of the product, and the bottle just needs to be shaken better, and to enjoy my product.I assured them that shaking the bottle doesn't help the situation, that it smells weird, tastes terrible, looks wrong, not at all like it usually does. I explained that we've been using the product for a decade and we can tell that this bottle is off. I provided the batch number from the bottle and asked them to please not tell people to consume unsafe products that could make them ill, that it's a safety issue. And I asked again for them to please confirm how they would make this situation right.They said to return the purchased product for a full refund, that upon receiving the product they would test it for mold and send me a report. I thanked them and asked that they please provide a return label so that I could ship the product to them. They said that I needed to pay for shipping and that they would reimburse the shipping cost after they receive the product.I wrote back to let them know that I didn't feel comfortable paying more money to ship the product back to them with no guarantee that I would get anything back from them. Shipping the product back without a prepaid label would take time that I unfortunately don't have, and they did nothing to make me trust that after they received the bad product they would do anything other than say that it never happened, without issuing a refund.I told them that I would be leaving a review letting others know about this customer support experience, and I never received a response.I was bummed but at least it was just one $10 bottle. It stung but I decided to let it go. I kept using the remaining bottles from the shipment and there were 5 bottles that were just fine. I thought all was well. Until we opened up the last 4 bottles from that shipment, and they were all bad too! That made a total of 5 unusable bottles that were green and moldy! Half of the order--$50 worth of product!This was suddenly a very different situation and I wrote them an email detailing the new information and providing photos and video of all 5 bad bottles and the product inside. That was 3 weeks ago and I have not received any response from them. It was on the same thread as our previous correspondence, so they should've received it.Please be aware that if you buy anything from Salem Botanicals and there are any issues, this is how they handle them. I would only buy from them if you don't mind being disregarded when issues arise and having no guarantee of product quality. I was really shocked and heartbroken. Such a waste of time and money and just a huge disappointment at being treated like I don't matter at all as a customer or a human being.
