4 Frequent Customer Complaints About Folgers Coffee

There are few American coffee brands with a history as long and storied as Folgers. It got its start all the way back in the 1950s, and it's been a staple in many households ever since. If you're a coffee drinker yourself — and you don't limit yourself to more gourmet coffee brands — then there's a good chance that you've had your fair share of Folgers in your life, whether you kept it stocked in your own pantry or you unknowingly enjoyed it at a diner, in a waiting room, or in a hotel lobby.

But just because Folgers has been around forever doesn't mean it's necessarily the best coffee out there. In fact, that's quite evident if you take a look at what customers are saying about it online. There are more than a few complaints about the company and its coffee, and they're complaints that you may have made yourself. From flavor to price, coffee drinkers seem to want more from Folgers than what it currently offers.

Let's take a closer look at what customers are saying about this iconic American coffee. It may just make you hesitate before you buy any more of the stuff. And even if you're a Folgers loyalist, you'll at least be all up to date on the latest coffee gossip.

Since Folgers has been around for such a long time, there are plenty of people who grew up with the brand and drank it for most of their lives. For these people, when something changes about the coffee, they're going to notice it. It turns out that a lot of people have picked up on the fact that there seems to be something different about Folgers coffee these days — notably, that its quality has declined.

One customer who said that they've been drinking Folgers for over 20 years wrote on Reddit that they noticed a gradual change to the coffee. First, they said, it started tasting like roasted peanuts. After a while, they started having trouble even brewing it. They'd even gone so far as to get a French press, thinking making the change would help, but they were still unsuccessful. Another Redditor posted a photo of two different Folgers containers. One advertised 100% Colombian coffee, and the other just said "Colombian," with no 100% to be found, insinuating that the company is now sourcing from elsewhere.

Some wrote that the flavor has gotten worse over time as well. One said that the coffee now tastes bitter or burnt. However, they wrote that in the past, they hadn't experienced that unpleasant flavor. Just be warned: If you haven't had Folgers in a while and decide to try some out, it might not taste how you remember it.

Coffee has two basic jobs. The first one is simple: You drink coffee to help you feel alert, awake, and hopefully ready to tackle your day. That burst of energy is what attracts so many people to the beverage in the first place. The other job is to taste good. While Folgers may still deliver on its first task, it drops the ball when it comes to the second, according to many customers. One of the most common complaints lodged against the brand is just that the coffee has a bad flavor.

Some have claimed that Folgers often tastes burnt. One Reddit user said that however they brew it, it somehow always tastes burnt. To make matters worse, they said, "if you put any kind of cream or sugar in it, it just tastes like sugary burnt water" – which doesn't sound very appetizing. A different Reddit user in a separate thread echoed the fact that Folgers can taste burnt. 

Another common complaint? The brand's coffee tastes stale. A customer who tried to make the coffee with a lot of care wrote that it still ended up tasting stale (although they did figure out a method to render Folgers drinkable eventually). And yet another said that even after trying different types of Folgers coffees, they found that they all tasted stale. If you're looking for the most delicious coffee out there, you may want to look past what Folgers has to offer.

If you've been grocery shopping in the last several years, then you probably know all about shrinkflation (which has been happening for longer than you think). The idea is that food package sizes shrink while companies still continue to charge the same amount as they did for the bigger package. There have been tons of groceries hit by shrinkflation, and there's a good chance you've noticed it in your own cart. And since coffee is already a generally expensive product, it hits your morning cup extra hard. This is why customers have complained about the shrinkflation happening to Folgers' products.

One customer took to the r/shrinkflation subreddit specifically to call out Folgers. They alleged that there was less coffee in a container than there used to be. On another post in the same subreddit, another customer noticed that their normal Folgers coffee tasted weaker, meaning that you have to use more of it. And yet another post displayed the new and old cans of it side by side, and the user highlighted that its price had actually increased even though the weight decreased. Sure, cutting size and weakening the product on purpose might be clever ways for companies to cut costs in the short term, but in the long run, customers may feel like they're being ripped off and stop using the product or buying the brand altogether. 

Real coffee lovers don't want a cup of joe that tastes like tea. Rather, they're looking for a bold, strong flavor that actually packs a punch. If you're looking for a decently strong cup of coffee, though, you might want to skip Folgers. Per some of the brand's customers, the coffee often comes out tasting weak and watery. "Folgers is not cutting it. All of a sudden it tastes so weak & watery," said one customer on Facebook, who asked for alternative brand recommendations. Another customer said, "I'm used to Folgers being like diner coffee, which is thin, weak, and dishwatery."

Yet another poster on Reddit highlighted Folgers' shrinkflation problem again, showing two canisters that contained different amounts of coffee and said that "Folgers likes weak coffee." After all, both canisters said that they made 400 cups of coffee, even though one contains less coffee than the other. If you do choose to make Folgers coffee, you might want to use more than the instructions recommends(or just use this trick to fix weak coffee).