Well it is happening again! Purina has their paws in the cookie jar!

Several weeks ago, when I went to my local Sam's Club to pick up my EXCEED dog food (I use both L&R and C&R), I noticed that they no longer had a display area for Purina Dog Chow

I know many people that use Dog Chow, including myself at times for select adults and in the past for young pups with Pano.
I have always been happy to tell anyone that asked about where to buy it, to go to Sam's Club because they had the 55lb bags for around $21.

I asked a worker what happened to the Dog Chow and he really didn't know, but guessed maybe a recall.
I knew this wasn't the case but didn't pursue it any farther since I wasn't buying Dog Chow that day.

Yesterday, I went back for more EXCEED and saw that still, there was no Dog Chow.
There was another worker nearby and I again asked.

He told me that they pulled Dog Chow from their shelves because Purina attempted a huge price increase and they were currently still in negotiations.
All I could think was when the cable company pulls a TV station for a few days and you can't watch your favorite shows because they are in "negotiation" on price!!

The worker also told me that Purina ONE, although still on the shelves currently is on deck for being pulled next due to the same issue.

Although I am very happy to hear that Sam's Club is fighting for their consumers, which speaks volumes of them, I am extremely disappointed in Purina, once again.

I am still a Purina customer, at the moment. I also buy Pro Plan Performance and Pro Plan Sensitive Skin & Stomach at Pet Smart. Both of which I pay $42 for 37.5 lbs!

I switched to EXCEED when Pro Plan brought out the shredded garbage and couldn't happier with the results. EXCEED is equivalent to Euk Perf or PP Performance, but I have found EXCEED to have better results in my own dogs.

To me, this is just another slap in the face from Purina and given that the Purina products that Sam's stocks have increased about $4 over the last year already, I am baffled that Purina is again attempting highway robbery!

I may in time, end up weeding out all that is Purina from my dog food closet.
They are not playing fairly!

"They are not playing fairly! "

They have to be paying for it. Look how many breeders have switched due to the shredded. In this economy, they are lacking any common sense.

That's a good point.
Great business decision to now take it out on the remaining customers! LOL

If you notice, there are an awful lot of changes recently to how Purina is doing things...eliminating the high pro was one I can think of. I just wonder if they are thinking that by raising the costs of the foods people will THINK it is better quality. I think High pro was branded a long time ago as a cheap food and they figured they could do away with it and improve their image. So many are guilty of thinking the quality of food gets better when it is priced higher, I know I always did and spent a bundle on what turned out to be crappy food. Not saying cheap foods are better, good ingredients cost, but there is a difference between paying for high quality protein sources and paying for advertising and a bunch of great SOUNDING ingredients that they use to make you think you are getting something grand when they are in such minuscule amounts as to not mean a darn..think...blueberry and cranberry, those lovely pictures of rosemary and pretty green peas. Please.
I thought I found a happy medium with pro plan chicken and rice...good quality and up until recently a moderate price.
I hope they up the incentives for breeders.
Annie

If you are going to weed out all that is Purina, you will have to weed out Exceed. It is made by Purina.

Not any more!!!

Purina refused to make it anymore and now EXCEED is being made at another mill (same recipe as EXCEED owned the recipe)

Yes, taking it out on the cosumer by raising prices is unjust, I agree. They are making it extremely difficult for some of us to continue feeding it- $7 checks or not.

There have been a lot of supply problems at Sams with dog food lately. Email member services off the sams website . They have been very helpful and informative.

Purina is trying to make the big bucks. They have gotten awful. Puppy food up $10. in less than a year. Not a buck or two. Sam's has Punina as a distributor not the maker of Exceed. They refuse to pay Purina a huge increase and I think to show Purina they are taking one dog food off the shelves at a time. In my store they had gotten rid of three different foods from Purina. Buying alot less of Exceed but trying to keep some for customers. Purina is making it hard on us and are really dumb to give up all the space at Sam's. Think what a loss that is for them. Does someone have a good e-mail address of someone on the inside there to let us tell them how we feel.

I knew something must be up! It's the same thing at Wal-mart. Their dog food and cat food shelves are almost empty at our local wal-mart. I buy the regular old Purina for some of our older dogs, and use Purina Cat chow. I couldn't get either one yesterday. They said something about supplies were low.

We decided to give Precise a try, any one have experience with this food? I am looking forward to seeing how my guys do on it, I am tired of dealing with Purina.

Purina sponsors a lot of shows. Go to the shows and complain in person. I intend to.

Somehow, when I heard they were bought by Nestle' it wasn't a good idea.

What about that multi-million event center they just built? Are we expected to pay for that for them, with the raise in price of their food? Most of us will never see it.

I have fed Purina products for ages and just discontinued, not to mention the change in formulas. They are pricing us out of business . I has to be hurting them.

Costco pulled Dog Chow about 2 months ago for the same thing.

oops! I meant consumer. Darned spell check!!

Maybe we should ALL email them at the Pro Club and voice out opinion and ask them if they are going out of business.

BTW, They have also changed their puppy packets. The 2 free coupons I received were for the puppy lamband rice formula, not the chicken, also. I just received the packets last month and expiration date on the $3.00 coupon, for the new owner is 4/30/09, not 12/31/09.

Purina can't be right and all the stores wrong. They had a following, they're losing it fast and making things worse by increasing prices.

Next belly up business could be Purina done on their own, trying to screw the consumer and stores. Sad.

Is that true about the puppy lamb and rice coupons? They are telling you what to recommend to your puppy people?
I always recommend Chicken and rice, and to be honest, the ONLY reason I bother with the puppy packs at all is the coupon the family gets. Otherwise its a bunch of tripe.
Just ads for their products.
I have been annoyed for a while but wanted to wait to see what would happen. I liked turning in my points and such but the math is what it is and that has to be the bottom line if I am looking at comparable foods.
Anyone else gotten a new puppy pack recently?
I always thought the 5$ coupon was lame. 3$ is silly.
Annie

Ok...one more question for those of you with the puppy packs.
I figured, ok, I plan on a litter this year if I am lucky, so I will order now in case they are making any changes and see whats up. I tried ordering 10 puppy packs and it says I have reached my annual limit?????
Ummmm what? First, I had not had a litter this year, I had ONE last year and ordered 10 packets, and the last time was two years ago and I didn't even use Purina then.
So is this another cost cutting measure?
Annie

This has all been what is expected of professional managers coming into a market they know little about and changing the company to run efficiently and make a profit. A BIG change from the Purina I've dealt with for the past 20 years. On top of it all I waited for the C&R Adult to come back. In our area it's not available from PetSmart or Petco, but it is available from local distributors at $59.00/bag! So long Purina.

You just have to call them and re-do the questionnaire. When they ask you how many puppies do you breed per year, say the max number possible. Maybe you said 8 and then they won't send you 10. Re-doing the questionnaire on-line won't work.
I haven't have any problems.
1-877-PRO-CLUB
(1-877-PRO-2582)
Weekdays, 7am to 5pm Central Standard Time

My last puppy packages did have a $5.00 coupon for Chicken. The info in the puppy kit has been cut back. A small, small booklet on puppy care. That is wild about them saying you had reached your limit. I might just call for the heck of it and see. I have had my litter this year. That is silly, they are just shooting themselves in the foot. Yeha!

I ordered puppy packs when my puppies were 1 week old. 4 weeks later I called to find out when they were going to get here. She told me they were on their way. Well my puppies are now 8 1/2 wks and all gone but 2 and still no puppy packets.
I called last Monday and asked about them. She told me I should have gotten them. I said no so resend them I wanted the packets even though my puppies had begun going home. She said she would put it thru to "upper management" and they will have to call me so the first 10 I ordered didn't count against my limit for the year. Okay, send the packets. Well, Upper management will call me within 1 or 2 days. Okay I gave her my house number and my cell number. That was Monday and here it is Friday and no phone call.
I feed Diamond to everyone except my seniors and puppies. I can go to the Diamond puppy and I will tell them that too, along w/ what they can do w/ their packets. For as little as my seniors eat, as long as they don't mess w/the formula I will not switch them.

Royal Canin also has went up about $10 per bag for the Pro Formula.

Try the Exclusive line of foods from PMI. From what I understand the food is made by an off-shoot of Purina. I use their Performance food and have great results with my dogs. Their breeders program is buy 6, get one free. It doesn't need to be the same variety. I pay $35 for 35 pounds. http://www.pminutrition.com/main.html NFI

I heard that Walmart/Sams is very unhappy with all the purina changes. Bag size changes and price increases. For almost over a month now Walmart has not had Beneful on their shelves and has no plans to put it there.
I wonder if they are taking it further by not putting any purina products on their shelves at Walmart and Sams???

I am thinking about changing to the Diamond Naturals chicken and rice, has anyone done this and what has the outcome been? My whole kennel was on the purina chicken and rice before the dog food switch and now I can't get the old in my area, and really I am so sick of Purina that I don't even want to go back because of all the problems they have caused. I've got a couple on the purina performance and am thinking of trying a few on the Diamond natural chicken and rice to see if it will work for my dogs. Concerned about coats and good weight with the switch to Diamond

use to feed PP Chicken and Rice, then when it switched to the shredded I was mixing with PP Performance.
But I have to travel an hour to find the Performance so I started mixing the Diamond Natural CR with the Performance and two weeks ago was over completely to the Diamond Natural....my aged boy has very loose stools so he will have to go back to PP. I am waiting to see if the rest of the groups weights and coats change. I hope not!

I use Diamond Naturals/Kirkland (basically the same product) - chicken and rice for most of my dogs. I'm trying my stud dogs on a mixture of the regular chicken/rice and the Naturals Extreme Athlete, that is like 32% protein/25% fat. All seem to be doing well - poops are great - don't feed too much or you'll get loose stools. Coats look great too. I'm happy so far with it - have been using it exclusively for 6 months or so, since Purina messed with their formula.

I'm feeding Diamond Naturals also and have had excellent results w/it. No problems at all and the transition went well too. I was a LONG TIME exclusive feeder of ProPlan until they messed w/the chix and rice formula, increased the price and the pound per bag went down. The only down side is that Diamond doesn't have a breeder program but they will send sample size bags to send home with new puppy families. I'll be trialing the Diamond puppy formula in a couple of weeks with a new litter. Customer service is good and they will send out some samples if you'd like to try it-they have many different formulas.

I had emailed Diamond about a breeder's program and they basically said that they preferred to keep the price down instead of raising it a bit to be able to do a breeder's program. I have no problem with that logic.

I can order the Extreme Athlete at a local feed store for about $30 for a 40-lb. bag. The regular Chicken/rice is $25, also for a 40-lb. bag, and the Taste of the Wild I feed one girl is $37 for a 30-lb bag (grain-free food, also made by Diamond). So compared to ProPlan, the Diamond Naturals foods are much more cost-effective for me.

I just bought the last 6 bags of Purina One at Sams, nothing else was in stock. They did not have any of the Purina Dog Chow either. Honestly I'm wondering what Purina is thinking. In the last year they went up $11.00 a bag and obviously they feel that is not enough. They need to get in the real world. At our plant even thinking of raising our prices would be the kiss of death in this economy.
I am wondering what to do now??
I got 4 bags of Exceed to try out on a few of ours, if it does not work that great I guess I'll let my Sams card expire and switch over to a non-Purins product. Right now we are at a loss.

I switched my adult crew to Diamond Nat Chick/Rice and we have been on it for a while now. No changes in coat or condition. IMO it is better quality than the proplan and depending on where you get it, it can be $11-$15 less a bag for a 40 lb bag.

Pretty much the same prices here too, Patty. I'm with Gregg too...what is Purina thinking??

I jsut went to the Exclusive site and everything was looking pretty good until I got to the Corn Gluten Meal.

Why do companies have to take a good product and then add corn?