Someone recently asked me why we do not put little gifts, such as sweets, in our parcels. A customer in the USA or Canada might enjoy an unusual sweet from Estonia. The answer is simple, we tried it. It caused us a lot of problems.
At the start, we bought small chocolate bars weighing 20 grams, with pictures of Tallinn on the wrappers, and put one in every mailing tube. I thought it was a nice gesture. But shipping is rough. Parcels get thrown, shaken and turned upside down. The chocolate broke into crumbs, which got onto the adhesive layer of the decal. The decal was ruined and could no longer be applied.
We tried taping the chocolate in place and wrapping it in paper so it would not move around. Then summer arrived. Temperatures in some US states reached 35 degrees Celsius. Inside the closed tube, the chocolate melted, leaked out of its wrapper and covered the rolled decal in a greasy stain. More returns and unhappy customers followed.
I decided to replace the chocolate with hard sweets. We bought ordinary Estonian sweets. Their wrappers were simply twisted at both ends. During the journey, the wrappers came undone, the sweets fell out and broke into pieces, and another decal went in the bin.
Eventually, we found what seemed like the perfect option, sweets with a fizzy filling. They came in completely sealed wrappers, nothing spilled out and things went well. One customer even left a delighted review, saying they liked the sweet so much that they found it on Amazon and ordered a whole bag. Then two incidents put an end to the sweet gifts.
First, an angry mother wrote to us. While she was opening the tube, a sweet fell onto the floor and she did not notice. Her small child did. The child put it in their mouth and almost choked. Thankfully, the sweet was removed in time and everyone was okay, but it was frightening.
The second incident involved an allergic reaction. A customer received an order that apparently included a sweet containing citrus. The parents gave it to their child without checking, and the child had a reaction. That also ended without serious consequences, but it was still upsetting.
We realised that sending food was too much of a risk. You never know who will open the parcel or what allergies they may have. Now we include small free stickers with orders instead of sweets, in the shape of stars, circles and hearts. This avoids the risks we had with food and gives customers something useful, as they can practise with a small piece before applying the main large wall decal. That is our story of how good intentions led to damaged products and dangerous situations.
