WL responded and is shipping another out tomorrow, specifically dated 7/26 as the use by. The rep said they would personally check the code before it gets packed. Good folks over there at WL! And they haven't said anything about returning the original!
Good to hear. I've always appreciated their solid product line and customer support. I wrote a few months ago about my experience with a Yeastman order that got really mishandled, not by them but by UPS. The order included 8 different yeast Pure Pitches, 2 orders of Clarity Ferm and a couple other items to be shipped to my daughter's house in St. Petersburg, FL. Two of the yeasts were new, limited availability, and 4 were Vault releases that are nearly impossible to ever get.
In the past, my orders would arrive coast to coast from San Diego to Maryland with Guaranteed 2nd. Day Air delivery always in two days. And now with their facility in Asheville, NC, they can even ship by ground transport to get it to me in two days. So when UPS tracking showed they'd had it in Asheville for two days before it even left their facility (UPS's, not White Labs), I got concerned. Instead of flying it to Tampa, it went to Valdosta, Ga., before winding up in a warehouse in Jacksonville for two days, before being surface trucked to Tampa (4 hours in a hot truck) where it sat for another day before traveling across the bay to Clearwater (another day) before ending up in St. Pete to sit overnight before being put on a truck for delivery the next day.
On the eighth day (I'd paid around $30 for 2nd Day Air) it arrived on my daughter's porch in the early afternoon, with no notification alert ever being generated, where it sat for several hours in 90F afternoon heat and sun until it finally got discovered by my grandkids when they came home from school. It's difficult to convey my angst (trying to be civil here, but I could use more declarative language). I not sure which was hotter: me, or the contents of the package. The yeast was all warm, the chiller inserts were long since not even cool.
One phone call to White Labs was all it took for them to ship an entire replacement order Next Day Express, even after I told them that the items other than the yeast were probably alright being warm. I guess after the friendly lady saw the tracking history and the way my $200 order had been made into a goat rodeo (blame on UPS), they sent a replacement, no strings attached. Actually it was two orders, since part of it had to ship from San Diego and the rest from Asheville. I had both by the next day in the late afternoon.
On the one hand, I get it. Things get messed up sometimes. In fairness, this occurred less than two months after hurricanes devastated Asheville and stretched the manufacturing and shipping infrastructure to its limits. So why not send the entire order from San Diego to Tampa overnight, then take two days to deliver it the 12 miles from the sorting center near TPA to my daughter's place in St. Pete?
Since then I've successfully propagated several of the 'damaged yeasts', though at the time there was no way to validate the viability of any of the heat stressed ones. The ones that I haven't been able to use in a timely manner were frozen and now await in suspended animation to ferment some day in the future. All in all, even though I wasn't happy with the situation at the time, White Labs made me whole even though the root cause was not directly their responsibility. I got $400 of goods for $200. In return, White Labs got my customer loyalty.
![Craft A Brew - Safale S-04 Dry Yeast - Fermentis - English Ale Dry Yeast - For English and American Ales and Hard Apple Ciders - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [1 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41fVGNh6JfL._SL500_.jpg)
