Nestlé Waters North America, the company that produces Florida's Zephyrhills water, is not accepting any new orders until it can begin processing existing orders.
Consumers trying to order Zephryhills water online, it won't work. The site pops up a message saying, "We are unable to process new orders in your area at this time. Please check back with us soon. We apologize for the inconvenience."
"I'm a huge fan of their product, I love it," said Dan Skweres, who is a long-time Zephyrhills customers. "I'm perplexed as to why I can't purchase what I'm looking for."
Skweres said in mid-September he began trying to get five-gallon jugs sent to his home, cutting down on his plastic bottle use.
"I would rather be on the five-gallon versions. I'd be able to conserve a lot more and not be wasting so much of this," he said.
But for a month he hasn't been able to get his hands on anything but the small bottles from a wholesale store.
The same message from the website is what you'll hear when you call the companies plant in Pasco County. We got in touch with the Nestlé Waters North America press office confirming Hurricane Irma is pushing the ordering process back.
In a statement the company writes:
"We know how important healthy hydration is to our customers, and we sincerely regret the water delivery delays that some customers are experiencing. As we move past Hurricane Irma and some internal operations challenges, our first priority is to catch up on existing orders with our current customers. We continue to work closely with our local production team, and we anticipate being caught up in the coming weeks."
On the Zephyrhills Facebook page some customers are complaining they ordered water before Hurricane Irma in preparation, but didn't get a call or notice it wasn't going to make it in time or until the storm passed.
Zephyrhills didn't address that in its statement but said online it was trying to send out notifications to impacted customers as best it could. Skweres wants to know exactly what's going on internally.
"If they can't take the order, they can't take the order. I would rather have more information but the whole thing, it seems like something is wrong and they are not addressing or willing to talk about it," Skweres said.
