THE term ‘Ice with a Slice’ came with an extra twist for a south Shropshire man who just wanted something cube-like to chill his drink.
Charles Yeo, of Ludlow, bought a bag of ice at the Ludlow Somerfields store earlier this month.
Inside the 2kg bag of Calypso Natural Mineral Water Ice Cubes he found a very large, sharp, hunk of metal that would definitely not melt in the mouth.
Charles is a keen amateur photographer so he sent a picture of the bag and its triangular heavy metal content – its longest side measures 30 cm, or one foot – to Calypso’s head office in Wrexham. He was not at all happy with the reply.
The firm’s quality control manager James Hodkinson wrote: “ Using the photographs and date codes we have conducted an investigation as far as we are able. . . We have a very limited range of food-suitable metals in our factory and we are unable to match the piece of metal in the photograph to any thing that we have.”
“Once the bag has been sealed it passes through a metal detector. The detector has been verified hourly during the production run in question and proven to be working correctly. It would not be possible for this piece of metal to pass the metal detector.”
“A complaint of this nature is an unheard-of occurrence. We cannot explain how the piece of metal came to be in the bag but can confirm that it does not match with any metal on site.”
It was these last sentences that made Charles see red.
“Basically, they are calling me a liar,” he said, “Calypso centres its advertising on selling lots of its products to children and I thought I was doing the right thing bringing this to their attention.
“I didn’t expect much – perhaps a thank you and few bags of free ice. I am furious about this so I decided to go public and bring the story to the Journal.”
“This piece of metal is pretty sharp and it is dangerous. My photos were very clear – I didn’t want to send the metal object because I had an idea they might just accidentally ‘lose’ it.”
“This should serve as a warning for all parents too – be careful what you buy for your children!”
The Journal contacted Somerfield and spokesman Gideon Fireman said: “As soon as store staff were made aware of the situation, a thorough check was carried out on the ice cube bags, which were all found to be sealed and intact.
“The matter was referred to our customer services team and we are carrying out a full investigation and will be speaking to the supplier. Once that is completed, we will be contacting the customer directly.”
