Your Sigg Water Bottles May Contain BPA
Sigg CEO offers a free exchange program for new bottles without BPA-containing lining until October 31,2009.
I was hugely disappointed to hear last month that Sigg Water Bottles produced before August 2008 were made with a liner that includes bad, bad, bad BPA. Many people, including me, bought Sigg bottles to replace other BPA/nasty chemical leaching bottles in our possession.
Sigg’s CEO issued a statement on the company’s website that, until October 31, 2009, the company will replace all pre-August 2008 bottles with new BPA-free ones. I urge you to take advantage of this offer. Below is the CEO’s statement.
Dear SIGG Customer,
(STAMFORD CT) – Last month, I wrote a letter to try and provide you with as much factual and historical information as I could in regards to the evolution of the SIGG bottle liner. I also suggested that people could email me if they had any questions and comments.
After reading and responding to hundreds of emails and viewing nearly as many blog & Twitter posts, I realize that my first letter may have missed the mark. What I should have said simply and loudly to all of our loyal SIGG fans is: I am sorry that we did not make our communications on the original SIGG liner more clear from the very beginning.
I have learned much over the past 2 weeks. I learned that many of you purchased SIGG bottles - not just because they were free from leaching and safe - but because you believed that SIGGs contained no BPA. I learned that, although SIGG never marketed the former liner as “BPA Free” we should have done a better job of both clearly communicating about our liner as well as policing others who may have misunderstood the SIGG message.
For over 100 years, SIGG has earned a reputation for quality products and service – and we do not take that for granted. From the day we made our announcement last month, we made a commitment consistent with SIGG values that we would offer anyone who is concerned about BPA an opportunity to swap their old SIGGs for new SIGGs with the new EcoCare liner. Today, I am announcing that this voluntary Exchange Program will be in place until October 31, 2009 to ensure that our customers have ample time to send their former liner bottles back to us should they choose to do so.
Once again, I truly apologize for the lack of clarity in our previous communications. All of us at SIGG hope that we will have an opportunity to regain your confidence and trust.
Sincerely,
Steve Wasik
CEO, SIGG Switzerland
I commend Steve Wasik and the Sigg brand for doing the right thing and serving their customers as a company should.
Why do you commend Steve Wasik and SIGG? Let me understand this…. For the longest time SIGG has perpetuated the belief that their bottles are BPA free. While they may not have explicitly stated this in their communications or published literature, they certainly benefited financially from the whole BPA bottle scare. Yet they knew that their bottles did contain BPA. So let’s break it down into what looks like really occurred.
1. SIGG bottles are perceived as BPA free. SIGG says nothing to dispute this and benefits from the whole BPA scare by increased bottle sales.
2. SIGG keeps quiet in order to get rid of all existing “bad” bottles. It’s interesting to note that SIGG only releases the “new” bottles after getting rid of all the old bottles… and by getting rid of I mean selling all the “bad” bottles. They didn’t destroy the old bottles and just replace them with new inventory… they purposely waited for the “bad” bottles to sell through stock. If they were really sincere about replacing the old bottles they wouldn’t have waited so long. Bottom line is that SIGG didn’t want to take the financial hit on the bad bottles.
3. They release the new bottles after the old bottles are sold out and come out with a “voluntary” exchange program. Realistically, how many people will partake in this exchange program? 3%? 5%? The cost of running the exchange program is without a doubt substantially lower than the financial hit of “pulling” all the older “bottles”.
4. SIGG does a public mea culpa just like a disgraced politician or televangelist — they probably had this public apology all scripted out well in advance as per the directions of the public image consultant they hired.
5. The exchange program is short lived. As a percentage how many people who own the bottles actually know about the recall? I bit it’s really small. If they were sincere about exchanging the bottles run it at least a year. You have to pay for shipping … because it’s an “voluntary exchange” not a recall. And they have the gall to pride themselves on the exchange while citing that none of the other bottles companies that were pulled from the shelves for BPA did an exchange. But wait a minute… Those companies were pulled from the shelves while SIGG bottles weren’t, and those companies didn’t benefit from the sales of their bottles like SIGG did after the BPA scare.
6. On their website this exchange program is listed as “Swiss Quality Statement” Huh? What the hell does that mean. So if you go on their website looking for bottle exchange or recall … as most people probably would, there is no mention of it on the main page. You have to look at “Swiss Quality Statement” to get a clue at what is going on.
7. In the final statement of this quality statement SIGG writes “It’s the Swiss way.” No SIGG. It’s the scammy way to do things.
Yeah Sigg. I will exchange my bottles. All 6 of them. But I sure as hell will *NEVER* buy one of your products again and while I won’t purposely setup a http://www.sigglikestoscampeople.com website, I will tell people what I think of your company any time the opportunity arises.
This whole situation is unreal. Shame on Sigg.
We tossed out Sigg’s and bought botl. They are stainless steel bottles. No concerns there. The had great designs, colors, shapes and sizes to choose from.
Check em out http://www.my-botl.com
Go Stainless or go home!
Kam, thanks for your comment. You make a powerful case against Sigg and, honestly, I probably won’t buy from them again. I do think it is positive that their CEO did finally come out with the truth and offer an exchange program (you can also bring them to dealers so no shipping costs). I know of many companies that would have done nothing and continued lying.
[...] posted by Allison Wolff on Eco Child’s Play Oct 1, [...]
Shame on Sigg,and how come this CEO come with the truth about the bottle having BPA what about if I’m pregnat or become in the next months ,when i thought I was saving money and been “green” and this guy just offer a exchange program (not refund)what I am going to do now and of course I’m going to call my lawyer because my health as same as other are in danger just because this CEO Sigg are a bunch of liers,cheaters and killers.
Quite frankly, the “I’m never buying from SIGG again!” arguments are a bit of an overreaction. The current liner is BPA-free. Zero. Zip. Nada. Soo… why are you not buying from them again?
They SHOULD be commended. They did their part to fix a mistake. That’s enough for me, and i’m gladly ordering more bottles from them.
Also, can we quit with the scolding-pet talk? “bad, bad, bad BPA!” “Shame on Sigg!” Please. It’s a company, not a pet that made a mess on the carpet.