Amazon, pork bellies

[thistlechaser]

It's very very rare to have your customer service experience exceed even your hopes. I have a growing number of issues with Amazon, but their customer service is not one of them.

I bought a new cooling pad/fan setup for my laptop through them, same one as my previous now-dying one. By happy chance, there was a $10 rebate on it... but only on the version with "fustration-free" packaging, not traditional packaging. Odd, but I like fustration-free packaging better anyway, so that was fine. I suspected that might become a problem when it came to the rebate, and it turned out I was right.

The rebate required the UPC code from the packaging. Fustration-free packaging = no packaging.

Last thing before bed last night, I emailed Amazon asking them if they could send me a replacement code. I suspected they wouldn't/couldn't do that and I'd have to ask firmly for a $10 refund on the price instead.

This morning I woke up to an email saying they issued me a $10 refund and apologized for the trouble. I know $10 is nothing to Amazon, but a lot of companies would dig in their heels and at least make me jump through hoops/demand the refund. It was a nice surprise that they just gave it to me.

--

Pork bellies, on the other hand, are NOT a nice surprise. I was in Trader Joe the other day, looking for food I could make during the week. Wandering the meat section, I saw a box of pork belly. The only thing I knew about it previously was that it's something they talk about on those morning farm reports in the midwest -- I was kind of surprised that it was not only a real thing, but that I was encountering it here in California.

The box made it look just like loin of pork -- mostly white (cooked) pork meat with just a tiny layer of golden fat at the top. Precooked, all you needed to do was "brown and eat". Seemed perfect, so I bought it.

When I got it home, I opened the box. Any appetite I had vanished. It was covered in a thick layer of... goo. I have no idea what it was. The more detailed version of the instructions said you had to wash that goo off. Whatever the hell it was, it stuck to my hands like nothing else. Greasy, slimy, seriously gross.

The meat under the goo looked no better. I know pictures on boxes lie, but this was like putting a picture of a roasted turkey on it when the box really contains a rock. The meat was more than 90% fat. Not just fat, it had a really gross texture? to look at. Just so disgusting.

However, it had been semi-expensive (what at Trader Joe's isn't?) so I figured I should at least try it. I cut off the least fatty part I could find (still more than 50% fat) and fried it up.

Fat is flavor, and bacon is wonderful, so how in the world did this stuff have no flavor? Gross, gross, gross. I threw most of it out, but what little I ate made me feel sick for the rest of the day.

So the lesson for today: Unless you're trading in them, avoid pork bellies.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Amazon's customer service has always been amazing in my experience, too. They've replaced damaged items with a minimum of fuss, offered credit without having to be asked when an order had to be canceled because something they claimed was in stock and had shipped actually wasn't and hadn't, and when we got items by accident (they sent us 4 UPS's instead of the single one we ordered), just told us to keep them. I know they have some pretty unsavory practices, and that they can afford to be so magnanimous because they're raking in money, but from a customer standpoint, it is very nice.

Pork bellies -- yeah, it's basically fried lard. Which can be tasty, actually! but not just to eat by itself, and not if you weren't expecting the fat (the texture does take getting used to; my point of reference was Ukrainian salo, which is hard, and so the weird squishiness was a turn-off at first).

It would appear I like pork belly only if it's accompanied by something savory. If you see The Chairman Truck around (they do steamed buns), they have a pretty good pork belly bun.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Pork belly == bacon, essentially. There's a bit more complexity than that, but for your purposes, yes you tried to cook a huge lump of bacon after trimming the fat. Normally to cook pork belly, you wash it, dry it, and cook it however you cook bacon (not microwave). The resulting meat should be crisp on the outside, flavorful, and fatty as all hell.

I'm not a big fan of pork belly, for that reason. Lately it is kind of a hipster food thing, don't really understand why.

[loup_noir]

Amazon's customer service has always -- Always -- been amazing. I've been a happy customer since the late 90's, back when they publicized a phone number for questions.

Never had pork belly. I don't eat much pork to begin with, and somehow the idea of pork belly is just not appetizing. Maybe it's also because of all the financial references i.e. investing in pork bellies.

[postingwhore.livejournal.com]

As someone who works for a company that sells on Amazon...yeah, they favour customers a lot.

huh, I've never heard of pork bellies when referring to financial stuff. What are the expressions?

I had pork belly at a restaurant in the UK, and it was really good. It's still a pretty common food there. idk, maybe it's worth trying it in another country if you get the chance.

[tersa.livejournal.com]

A cut of pork that comes from the belly of a pig.

^^^ This.

All pork belly is the primal that bacon comes from. As someone else said, bacon is cured, so, yeah, pork belly is not going to taste anything like bacon without some additional treatment. :) It's also not really going to taste like much because, well, pork usually doesn't taste like much. I think, deriving from the photo, the idea is that the flavor is going to come from browning the outer layer and fat contrasted with the mild meat.

But, like bacon, it is going to be very fatty. I'm not quite sure, without having a close-up look at it, how that photo could match to the contents of the box.

I got my hands on a small chunk of it a few months ago at Whole Foods and made an Asian-inspired jook out of it. Like bacon, it is very fatty, so you kind of have to know what to do with it.

As a point of interest: the colloquialism living high on the hog came from the fact that the lower parts of the pig--including the belly (pork belly)--was considered to be cheap/less desirable. It's also why you'll see so much bacon, salt pork, and/or pork belly in Southern soul food--it was the cheap cuts that poor people, especially African-Americans, could afford.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

Amazon in Germany has excellent customer service too, I have to say. I've always been happy with it on the rare occasion there was a problem.

Ugh, sorry you had such a bad experience with meat. I've never tried pork belly, and now I'll know not to.

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

Pork belly is really popular in Korea, but I never cared much for it. Koreans usually grill it, so some of the fat is drained out. But it is still very fatty, and all the flavor comes from the dipping sauce served alongside. My sister makes a wicked kimchee stew with pork belly slices, but that stuff would probably kill you. :P

It is basically unseasoned bacon, and the best part of the bacon is the seasoning!

[bacchuslives.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've met a pork product I didn't like, but I think you've described it...

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Ooh, go to a Chinese BBQ shop--not a restaurant, but one of those little deli storefronts with whole cooked ducks and a side of roasted pig hanging from the hooks and trays of pig intestine and other intimidating stuff and ask for a pound of the roast pig. They'll cut a pound piece off the pig, hack it up into pieces, and give it to you in a box with a tub of sweet sauce, and then you get to try what proper crispy-skin-on-the-meat roast pig tastes like: white, juicy, rich, and with the most astonishing crispy pork fat clinging to each piece. Way easier than cooking it yourself.

[spike7451.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a win with Amazon but sorry the pork was far from a win.