Ka’Chava and LaserShip, the Worst relationship ever.
Ka’Chava, we were so excited….
If you choose to buy from them, I hope you enjoy it, and it doesn’t become a hassle like it did for us
Welcome campers, fitness lovers, and people who love reviews of products.
Today’s focus is Ka’chava. It is “The Whole-Body meal.”
I also shed some light on the shipping company LaserShip, as they are the reason, we did not receive our product.
So, what is Ka’Chava? “Simply it is a meal replacement. It is Vegan, dairy, and gluten-free, has no soy, preservatives or artificial colors flavors, or sweeteners. It has over seventy plant-based superfoods and nutrients and it is a powder that you make smoothies or really whatever you want out of it. “You can find the link to their website here.
Why is Chris and I talking about this? Well, we have had an annoyingly hard time with them, and we are spilling “the tea.” Chris and I live in our Airstream, as most of you know. We love the lifestyle and the freedom it gives us. However, with that comes limited space for food storage, as well as making our lives easier. Chris works full-time, and some days can not sit to eat lunch, so having a meal replacement shake would give him the availability to have lunch and still be at meetings or whatever he needs to do. Especially with us constantly working out, you need to fuel properly. It also just saves time and would end up saving a decent chunk of change since we would no longer buy food items for lunch.
Let’s get into the details.
We originally ordered the product on; September 15th and it was to be delivered to the UPS store we have a mailbox through. The problem is we have a mailbox on a military base as we are an active-duty family. It was scheduled for delivery on Monday, September 20th. With us living in the Airstream full time, we rent a mailbox from places like the UPS store. We ordered their subscription service which meant our order would automatically ship every thirty days. This style of meal replacement is great for him as he doesn’t get to sit and eat as I do with me working from home. We have also used meal replacements before such as Soylent and other brands, so this was not new to us and we’re confident it would work as it has before. The reason we weren’t going with brands we tried before is nothing bad, just we were excited about this one.
However, our mailing address came to be a problem as the company they shipped through, Lasership, for whatever reason cannot deliver to military bases. I understand the reasoning as they haven’t done anything to get access like say UPS or FedEx. Sadly, come to find out, they only go to the visitor’s center once a week (on Thursday) -note this for later-.
This is how the chat between Chris and LaserShip went online.
The first time, the person said for him to hold while he went and got an answer. Annoyingly, the chat session timed out because it had been five minutes since either of them said anything. In the second chat session, he got told they cannot deliver on base, and that they were going to call him back to “think of something”. Note that the Facility itself is not open for pickup, so our only option was to wait for them to call the following day as it was already past five pm our time. Chris sent the chat screenshots to Ka’Chava in an email and then made his way home.
The following day around 5 pm EST, LaserShip did call him and told him that the only way he could get the package was for their driver to sit in the parking lot of the Visitors center on base from 5 pm for an hour and wait for Chris to go get the package. Read that again. They are going to make their driver sit in a parking lot on base, to deliver a package for an hour. I don’t know about you but that seems like a giant waste of time for everyone involved, especially considering Chris is not able to just get up and go somewhere to meet this person. That is bad business and probably makes your drivers feel like they aren’t important as well, just sitting waiting for a person they do not know. Also, what is the driver going to do once this seemingly random guy walks up to his vehicle and says, “Do you have my package?” There is no way to verify if Chris is Chris unless he asks for Identification (which he did not). Or the possibility that the guy even stays for an hour, he could leave the package on the ground for all he really cares, as the company he works for obviously does not care about them or their time. All around the situation is ridiculous. LaserShip also only delivers to residential areas, so even a post office is out of the question. Also, note that LaserShip has a Yelp score of 1.5 stars and a Better Business Bureau score of 1.75, Go Figure.
Chris never got a reply email from Ka’Chava, so he found a number to call after some digging. Chris sat on hold for 20 minutes, only to be told “They use a third-party distributor and so they have no control over saying who the shipper will be.” Chris canceled our subscription and the agent he was talking to took down all the information he gave them about the situation, however, we strongly doubt anybody will ever see it.
The biggest annoyance of all of this is that we were extremely excited about this product. It would have helped us and made things a lot easier for us. Especially with his work keeping him on his feet, not knowing if he could eat lunch that day or having to wait for dinner. There were a lot of days he just brought back the lunches I made him because he would get to work and just disappear for the day. While we were still going to try it, the decision not to was made for us. Chris waited in the parking lot, the guy in a van showed up and then couldn’t find our package. The guy calls (from his phone) their customer service and Chris gets the answer “Oh, yeah it is here in the facility still it got put in the wrong bin. You can try and get it again next week if you want.” Chris told them to just send it back. So, we don’t even get to try the product we paid for. Once Chris was home, he called Ka’Chava and told them about it and asked for a refund.
We had been reading reviews and from reviews found out they have a hard time giving refunds, or even receiving their own shipments back without charging people, so we were already feeling like it would be a long shot without extra hassle. The lady on the phone had a hint of hesitation in her voice but she gave us the refund telling us that we would be refunded our entire amount. That amount was $359.70. Our subscription was canceled and now we wait a few days for it to show back up in the account. Update- we did receive our entire refund.
I tried finding the BBB’s page for both Ka’Chava and their parent company Tribal Nutrition LLC but had no luck. They deleted Chris's comments off their FB page, as well as some other comments I have seen about their delivery and charging people $18 for sending their products back after they charged the people for a new delivery they had not ordered. I wish we could have at least tried it, but it was becoming a huge hassle for no reason other than an incompetent delivery system. Also, all of their social media accounts are from different countries. I understand social media managers and digital creators have the entire world to choose from for clients, but you should probably have someone from every country you ship to or are in.
If you choose to buy from them, I hope you enjoy it, and it doesn’t become a hassle as it did for us.
We ended up just ordering Soylent again, we have not ever had a problem with them or their delivery. Always on time, no extra charges or anything. We stopped using Soylent a couple of years ago, but not because of any bad reasons. We usually got the original flavor, but this time tried the Chocolate as well. We both love the Chocolate flavor, especially with rice milk and frozen strawberries!
While we do not like bashing companies, we do not lie about our interactions with them either. We always want to be upfront about any companies we are partnered with or review. All our reviews, from tools we use on the Airstream to RV parks we stay at and everything in our daily lives, you can bet we have not sugar-coated anything.
We hope this review can shed some light on the situation. And who knows, when they can control who they ship with, we may give them another shot as we were excited to try them to begin with.
The Whitten’s
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** NOTE: As with all our posts, and anything we post on our blog or social media we will tell you if something is sponsored or given to us, etc. This was not the case for Ka’Chava nor Soylent. We bought these products with our own money. If, and when we start doing any sponsored posts you will know. As always thank you for your understanding and support. **
