★☆☆☆☆
Since many members of EC are users of Swanson, I wanted you to know of some relatively recent developments I have observed regarding them.
For decades I have purchased hundreds of vitamin and supplements from Swanson and had always been happy with them and recommended them frequently to others. I felt they offered good products at reasonable prices with very good service. Unfortunately it is now my opinion that they are no longer "that company" which I trusted to get almost all of my supplements from without even considering other supplement suppliers unless Swanson did not stock what I was looking for!
In recent years, I feel their customer service is down to poor at best. They continue to raise their prices on most of their products at what seems to be faster than what I see from other suppliers. Yes, I am now using other suppliers and Swanson much less than I used to and until they show me otherwise, that is how it will remain! I will no longer recommend them and will continue to purchase more from other suppliers and much less from them. I also notice that where they used to consistently offer the lowest prices on supplements, that is no longer the case and I am seeing other suppliers who are starting to come up with better prices than them or offer products that they don't even carry.
This week, they sent me an email which asked me to review a product that I had recently purchased, eye drops. I bought these eye drops to compare them to many other eye drops I have purchased before. Well I wrote out a review as they had asked and filled in the information they had asked me for regarding the product and what I thought of it. Having purchased many other eye drops before, I felt I had a good basis for comparison. My review was negative because in my opinion, the eye drops were much less desirable than the others I had tried previously and these eye drops had two main drawbacks that I considered to be very significant. Here is a copy of my review as sent to Swanson:
A waste of money
I bought this to compare to many other eye drops I have used previously and though the drops are helpful, they are not as good as others I have tried. What was more of a disappointment was that the package says to discard the bottle 30 days after opening whether it is empty or not! I don't like the dispensing system that requires you to squeeze the dropper neck instead of the bottle, which I found to be inconvenient and seems like an easy way to contaminate the contents as it requires you to put two fingers very close to the outlet tip, leaving germs in an area where they could potentially get into the bottle!
Here is their reply:
Our staff has read your review and values your contribution even though it did not meet all our website guidelines. Thanks for sharing, and we hope to publish next time!
Thanks again,
Swanson Health Products
I feel that I gave an honest review based on my experience, but apparently, because it wasn't positive, they are not going to post it as a review on their website. I get that some companies will try to control reviews in one way or another, but I thought Swanson was above this tactic. They asked me to review the product and then when I gave my review, they say it does not meet their guidelines. How blatant is that? They have never turned down any "good reviews " I have done in the past, but this is at least the third time they have turned down a review I have sent in that was less than glowing. I guess they think a negative review will hurt their sales and that may be true, but if you only want positive reviews, then you might as well just say that when you ask for the review. I consider this to be a form of deceit on their part because they are not letting their consumers see "all of the reviews", both good and bad. To me, that tactic is a major strike against them!
The bottom line for me is that I will no longer recommend them and will use them less and less and hopefully get to a point where I will no longer use them at all! Oh, and I will no longer be giving them any more reviews either! 
In my opinion, Swanson is no longer the company they used to be that I trusted to get almost all of my supplements from!
Art
