Y’all have completely convinced me to never try butcher box.
PMG if you shop at one place a lot you will have issues one time or another. Nothing in this world is perfect.
I don't think I've ever had bad meat from Costco, be it beef, lamb, pork, chicken, or fish. But with the exception of the first couple of whole beeves we bought, which were grass-fed and finished Murray Greys, there have been inconsistencies with any bulk order of grass-fed beef we've purchased, including from ButcherBox. I do wish it wasn't so cost prohibitive to ship down the Murray Grey beef, as we really loved the rancher and her way of doing things. Each time, all of our meat was from one beef, and back then the operation was so small that she would load the packaged meat into a chest freezer and drive it down to use herself (700 miles) without charging extra, since selling a whole beef wasn't that common for her in 2008-2010 before grass-fed took off with the masses. But the business can't absorb those costs anymore.
I'm not sure I would recommend ButcherBox to anyone anymore. Or at least I would be upfront about the issues I've had. Yes, they will fix things, but it's a hassle. And the cod was purchased back in December so I don't know if they will refund me. We've gagged most of it down, but the last time (in March) my DH finally said it's just too bad to eat.
I will also say this: I think ButcherBox counts on consumers not knowing prices and wanting convenience more than anything else. Each item in a custom 6 item box costs $28.17. You can include a 3.5# chicken in your box, which is listed as organic and "free range", a term that has no legal meaning. We can be sure it doesn't mean these chickens were pastured raised, as there are no large scale operations raising chickens that way. An organic chicken from Sprouts is $3.49 per pound, so the same chicken would be $12.22 (and it would be an air chilled chicken which means the weight isn't inflated by a brine solution). But most people don't realize what they are getting or how much it would cost elsewhere. Another item choice is 2# of ground beef, which is $12.99 at Sprouts for 2# 85/15 ground beef. With the increase in ButcherBox prices, even the grass-fed, grass finished steaks cost more than at Sprouts. BB NY steaks come in at $22.54 per pound, and are grass-fed and finished NY steaks are $17.99 per pound at Sprouts.
I use Sprouts as an example because even if you use Instacart for convenience, they charge in-store prices, and you don't need to tip on a pickup order (you do need to tip if you do Instacart delivery because those are gig workers). I know some of us turned to BB during the pandemic as a source of high quality meat. But I think they grew too fast and can't source the quality as consistently anymore.
