James Wellbeloved Reviews 5.267

We are very concerned that our new bag of lamb and rice kibble is darker than previously. Have you changed the recipe? We need to ensure we don't change our dog's diet to include anything that could be a trigger for epilepsy. We had to stop using your wet food pouches for that very reason as the lamb and rice one now has chicken to which our dog is allergic. Why would you make changes to things we rely on for the health and safety of our animals. We have used your dog food for many years.

My elderly cat will only eat dry kibble but last year he needed six teeth extracting. The James Wellbeloved Adult Fish was excellent for him, perfect because the kibble was very small & easy for him to eat despite the dental extractions.
I’m now very upset as James Wellbeloved have changed the kibble size on this product to a larger one that my poor cat is really struggling with. I’ve spoken to the customer service team about my disappointment & told my complaint will be logged. I urge other customers to call them too to complain if they are also unhappy with the product changes. I’m now desperately phoning & emailing any shops to see if I can obtain some bags of the “old” product.

We fed our lovely chocolate labrador on James Wellbeloved, he thrived on it and lived a full and healthy life for nearly 16 years. That's why we used the same (but grain free) for our black lab who's now 8 years old. Then the recipe and kibble size changed, he's gone from 3-4 healthy poos a day to 6-7 soft poos. It doesn't agree with him, we'll be changing to another brand. What a shame they had to change a tried and tested trusted product!

New recipe is terrible! I’ve been buying James Wellbeloved cat dry food for years, but sadly they’ve recently changed both the recipe and the shape of the kibble. The new formula is terrible - why compromise on quality to cut costs when it means losing loyal customers? My cat won’t touch it now, and I won’t be buying it again.

They have changed the recipe of the kibble. My dog has a fish only diet. There was no warning. We now have a 15kg bag that the dog cannot eat as it has really upset her stomach. She is windy, being sick, eating grass and has unpleasant poos. Quickly trying to move to a different brand, but should been advised of such a major change.

After 7 years of happily feeding our dog with your Turkey and rice product, since you have bizarrely changed from easy to handle, easy to reseal and importantly, recyclable paper sacks to slippery, unsealable plastic ones we will be turning to another supplier. I expect many will follow suit. Your justification that you are using 34% less packaging when at the same time you are moving from paper to plastic makes no sense.

Some days later .... See below the standard cut and paste reply which makes virtually no reference to the points I raised and even repeats the nonsensical point about using less packaging on larger bags

With move to new website, everything is in a state. No longer take Debit card, only Credit Card. Took payment from me, but no email to confirm what is being sent, order looks like it contains 1 x box of cat food, not the 4 I usually get (but still charged for 4). Email inbox for customer service just sends a bounce back and phone lines closed. Going to take business elsewhere now.

My PayPal account has been charged over £89 for two bags of dog food that I have still not received after several weeks. Wellbeloved recently changed their website, and seem to have screwed up their subscription service whilst doing so. I have messaged them twice through their website about this, and still received no reply.

For such a large company (James Wellbeloved is a brand owned by Mars Group), I find this astonishing. I am left feeling scammed out of £89.78, especially in the absence of a response from them.

We have now run out of their dog food, so have moved on to another brand. But I still want my money back for the products I never received!
Update: I have now heard back from the company to say they are “reviewing my case”. Not quite sure what needs reviewing, as it is clear that the products have not been supplied! Still no refund….

I've been feeding my dog the senior lamb and rice dry dog food for a few months along with the Turkey and rice wet dog food. Ive specifically chosen this brand and those flavours because they are supposedly hypoallergenic and do not contain chicken which my vet has told me to avoid. I've just discovered that the dry dog food contains poultry fat, namely chicken so I don't understand how they market this food as being hypoallergenic, it should state clearly on the front of the packaging that the food contains chicken fat so that those of us who are trying to avoid chicken know what we are buying. I contacted customer service and got a very poor response. Needless to say, I will no longer be feeding this to my dog and I'm warning others to check the labels because this company is not honest.

Just bought a new bag of Adult Light dog food from Pets at Home and thought the bag felt lighter than previous bags, but it was the new plastic bag. When i got home I re-filled the dog food container to find it fell way short of previous bags, so not only is it 3Kg less food, new bag is 12Kg, previous was 15Kg, it was also more expensive - any one else noticed this?

James Wellbeloved make very good pet food. I have had a subscription for over 2 years for my dogs main food (around £130 every 12 weeks) & she is both happy & healthy.
Recently they introduced a new website, which is a disaster. I wanted to postpone my next delivery by 2 weeks, which was easy to do before. I was only given the choice to pause for 12 weeks or cancel. I phoned the helpline, where a very pleasant lady told me that she was unable to help. Not wanting to run short, I left the sub as it was, which made today the order day. One of the items has been charged to my card, the other two have not & are showing incorrect pricing in “my account”. I want my whole order to arrive on the same day, as it always has.
The website shows a popup “we know there are some issues with our new website” I keep getting emails urging me to update my payment details even though I have done this. For 2 weeks I got a daily email in German.
Their parent company is Mars, known globally as one of the best managed companies. How on earth have they not sorted this?

DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT ANYMORE!!!! So I’ve used this for years and my dog has always thrived on the grain free version and the subscription service was fab. However, recent company changes have resulted in messing up subscriptions and when they’ve finally sent the order I find that the 10kg packaging has changed from being a resealable bag, the kibble is less than half the size (small triangles) and the fats have all changed to poultry across the entire range. You now speak with people in Albania if you need to contact them and the whole company just appears to be scamming the customers. They don’t tell you about the changes to the food prior to you opening it and finding out and they then won’t allow you to return or refund your money. Absolutely gutted that I now need to find another brand to feed my dog.

Endless trouble getting my subscription back on the new website and now I am told that my (very late) bag of dog food has been delivered when it hasn't
No help from either the electronic 'bot' or the human chat line. Was told I would be emailed back with information about my delivery, but nothing.
Excellent dog food and up until the new website good service, sadly no longer.

18th April
Still had no reply to various emails & telephone calls. In desperation I contacted HMRC to see if they could give me the correct VAT number for this British registered company. Although they were helpful they were unable to help apart from telling me…”THE COMPANY IS LEGALLY BOUND TO PROVIDE, IF REQUESTED, AN INVOICE FOR THE GOODS SHOWING ALL RELEVANT INFORMATION OF THE TRANSACTION.” I laughed & said that’s all well & good but they’re not interested in providing anything in the way of invoices. Apparently their “new system” cannot cope with anything so technical & complicated. But I’m not giving up!!!

Since they’ve changed the website…why???…customer service is simply non existent. The product is excellent, can’t fault it or the delivery service but a simple request for an invoice showing the VAT paid on the 3 x 15k bags we buy regularly “isn’t possible”. Not only that but because the calls are answered in some foreign country (although it’s a London 0204 incoming call if they ring you) they are unable to supply me with their registered UK VAT number. Very strange. The agent dealing with my call was professional, spoke perfect English but wasn’t able to give me basic details about my purchases. Also my ‘reward’ points seem to have depleted…I’ve only ever used them once, £20 was the maximum's I could use at one time! There’s lots of missing ’rewards’, very odd!! Very unsatisfactory & hopefully this nonsense will get sorted out quickly. It’s all very unprofessional. I’m not looking forward to another 22 minute phone call & getting nowhere.

Saturday 12th April.

After another 3 calls, still unable to get a straight answer from customer services. Having been promised the VAT number registered to James Wellbeloved on two separate occasions, I’ve still not received an answer. The telephonists haven’t a clue. They are unable to answer a very simple question. What is the point of having a helpline when there’s absolutely NO help. None whatsoever. You mention ‘subscriptions’ in the reply below. I never mentioned a subscription. I want nothing more than an invoice. I can look back to 2016 in my emails & find invoices but now it’s impossible to obtain one. Unbelievable. You ask for my contact details. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to post my private email address of a public forum???? Guess what…I’m not 🤬 But I did send an email last week to Crown Pet Foods, owners of James Wellbeloved under the Mars umbrella of companies but….surprise, surprise I’ve had no rely.

Recipie 'changes', switching to a cheaper bag design that doesn't reseal and using Hermes for delivery, all screams of a company looking to maximise a profit margin without caring what suffers.

This was a quality healthy dog food, I'll be looking at other options.

My dog (10 years old) has eaten the same James Wellbeloved grain free turkey dog food all his life (boring but keeps his tummy happy). I have a subscription which charges me monthly for delivery of his food. They changed the website 2 weeks ago, and I got an email saying I needed to update my payment details. So I went online and did it. But noted it said my latest order (due end of March) had failed due to the payment info not being updated. So I placed a manual order (at a price of £10 more than my subscription price, but we’d nearly run out of food so I needed it). Next day the order arrived but so did another order confirmation for the “failed” subscription order, which had been charged to my account in addition to the manual order I placed. I contact customer services who were unable to cancel the duplicate order. So now I have 2 huge bags of dog food. Not an issue I guess as my dog will eat it? WRONG because upon opening the new bag I discovered they have changed the product and it’s a different shape and smell to the original, and I’m not sure it’s going to be ok for my dog’s sensitive tummy! I’ve now got £100 of dog food that I may not be able to use because they’ve changed the formula without telling anyone! There is nothing to indicate this on the packet.

Always sad when what was once a good product goes in to decline. Just had my latest delivery of James Wellbeloved Adult Turkey 15kg bag and was shocked to discover that it is plastic! It used to come in a 100% recyclable & biodegradable paper sack. At a time when so many responsible companies are phasing out the use of plastic packaging this is an awful retrograde decision that must bring into question the quality of the product as well - not least from contamination by micro-plastics. Have to find another more ethical dog food supplier.
Addition and warning - They have also changed the formulation using poorer quality ingredients. Most seriously the fat content has increased by 0.5%. We have a dog with pancreatitis and discussed her feed with James Wellbeloved when searching for suitable suppliers. Their nutritionist was really helpful and advised how much we could use, and how - we have measures based on that advice. Increasing the fat content without stating 'New Formulae' has endangered our dog's health.

RE: James Wellbeloved response they state that they have improved their packaging by reducing the plastic. Utter nonsense, they have replaced paper sacks with plastic - that is not a reduction that is an increase. They have not answered the significant issue about the new formulation, which is not stated on their new plastic sacks, nor have they considered the risk of microplastics contaminating the food, which is inevitable as kibble has rough edges that will scrape the plastic.
Final update 30/4/25 James Wellbeloved asked for my contact details in order to discuss my concerns, which I provided. Over a week has passed and they have not bothered to contact me.

Quick reliable service.