Gastronenteritis caused by a Marks and Spencer pasta meal, how do I complain please?

LouiseTopp

Myself and my mother bought a pasta, chicken, bacon and sweetcorn meal on Sunday 12th October. The following morning I had a bad case of the trots (diarrhea) so I rang up my dad as my mum can't hear on a mobile due to deafness, turns out she had the same problem too.

Earlier that afternoon we had eaten at Weatherspoons, but we had all eaten different meals, so It couldn't have been that. So we have put it down to this M and S meal. :mad:

My mum told me not to say anything, but I don't view it that way. If you don't do anything, they will make others ill.

So I took the packaging and the receipt back to customer services at m and S and told the lady manager what happened. She started making excuses saying it could have been Weatherspoons with dirty hands etc. But I got cross as I have a friend who works there, and they always have good hygiene.

Can you advise me what to do please?

How do I know that she simply didn't bin the packaging in the bin after I left? I left my details but was told I probably get no feed back. Even now (Tuesday) I still have diarrhea and have to keep rushing to the nearest loo every five minutes.

Can you advise me please? Thanks.

Exile_geordie

Just because you had something different whilst at Wetherspoons please dont rule it out. It could be down to a dirty kitchen and implements that gave you the 5hits.

Maybe your friend wasnt in that day and the chef wiped a knife up his bum - you just dont know.

Take something to stop having the trots.

But what are you looking for from M&S? Compo? Or acknowledgement that they have looked into their meal and found either something wrong with it or not?

ess0two

Impossible to prove who's to blame.

ThumbRemote

She's right - it could have been Wetherspoons hygiene. It could also have been an airborne bug, or a bug that one of you picked up earlier and passed to the other. And it could have been the M&S meal.

Realistically there's nothing you can do. There's no way of proving it one way or another now.

Just_a_Girl_2

It could be something not even related to what you ate, for example, just an airborne virus that is going around.

To confirm food poisoning, you need to send a sample to the GP and if it's confirmed, then they will notify public health. But even if it was food poisoning, there is no way of proving who is to blame.

LouiseTopp

Realistically there's nothing you can do.

I can try anyway, they have the empty package so they could take something from that. It could have been weatherspoons cutlery, but I know the cook and I know she's very fussy about hygiene.

But what are you looking for from M&S? Compo?

All the comp and gold in the world in't going to stop me rushing off to the toilet. I just want to let them know what happened.

societys_child

She started making excuses saying it could have been Weatherspoons with dirty hands etc.

She wasn't making excuses and without any proof you're making quite serious allegations.

I just want to let them know what happened.

What you think might have happened.

Edit: it could be something from a week or more earlier.

Years ago, my wife was ill, her GP sent off some samples, a couple of days later the public health were knocking on the door - it was E coli/ campylobacter.
They weren't interested what/ where she'd eaten during the past week but what she'd had the week before.
Eventually they pinned it down to . . . something that happened over 10 days earlier, she'd simply put a peg in her mouth whilst hanging out the washing. The pegs were left outside, in a basket, on the patio.
Magpies occasionally pulled some of the pegs out out of the basket and threw them about.

*Also just been informed there's a bug, that surfaces about this time every year, doing the rounds at the moment, causing sickness and diarrhoea.

Bantex_2

I doubt it was gastroenteritis.

pinkshoes

It would be IMPOSSIBLE to know where you picked the bug up from, so there is no way you should go making such accusations!

It can also take days for symptoms to appear.

You could have picked it up from a toilet flusher, door handle etc... I am sure there are many people that don't wash their hands properly after going to the toilet, then touch the door...

Blaming an M&S meal makes you look a little daft.

Pollycat

You say in your thread that you had "a bad case of the trots (diarrhea)" (sic) but your thread title says you had/have gastroenteritis.

How do you know that you actually have gastroenteritis?
Having diarrhoea doesn't automatically mean you have gastroenteritis.

From NHS website:

Diarrhoea is passing looser or more frequent stools than is normal for you.

It affects most people from time to time and is usually nothing to worry about.

What causes diarrhoea?

There are many different causes of diarrhoea, but a bowel infection (gastroenteritis) is a common cause in both adults and children.

Gastroenteritis can be caused by:

• a virus, such as norovirus or rotavirus
• bacteria, which is often found in contaminated food
• a parasite

I agree with other posters who say it's impossible to narrow down where this came from.

fairy_lights

It could just have easily been the Wetherspoons meal that caused your symptoms, but it sounds like you are ruling that out purely because you've got a friend who works there. Just because they tell you the kitchen is clean doesn't mean it always is or that the food couldn't be off or undercooked.
Seeing as M&S ready meals are mass produced, if there had been something in it to make you ill, the thousands of other people who ate the same thing would also have got sick, but I haven't heard of any other related cases?