UWS-Neighbor N.

Comming from the communities that Fresh direct has chosen to harm by choosing to create their "truck depots" on our public streets, directly in front of our businesses and homes preventing us to peacefully live and sleep, PLEASE DO NOT ORDER FROM FRESH DIRECT! I BEG you! Please for the sake of our work and lives. Please stop using fresh direct! They ruin the neighborhoods that your order is being delivered from!

Fresh Direct houses 17 "truck Depots" around Manhattan. Each of these Depots as they like to call them is a spot where 24 foot commercial trucks sit constantly blocking city parking, businesses, and restaurants for 18+ hours each day, 7 days a week. Now, common sense would tell you that we should work this out ourselves and that we could simply "live elsewhere" but in reality if you understand Manhattan... you know full well this isn't as easy as it may seem. There are hundreds of calls into fresh direct each day complaining about the noise and disruption these depots cause to our daily lives yet we are each told the same thing over and over again... that "the city has told them to do this since Bloomberg set this up".

Communities around the city have been working on getting fresh direct to stop conducting their business in our public streets instead of their own warehouses for over 10 years and yet instead they have ignored the communities cries to stop and have instead increased the number of depots around Manhattan. The crew from these depots slam the plastic tubs around, scream and yell at each other at all hours of the day and night, smoke directly in front of our windows, and now with covid, have no concern for health and Safty as they are very rarely seen wearing masks! When we attempt to ask these crew to please stop disrupting our lives we are met with phrases like "this is where I work, I can yell as loud as I like", or " F***K you" or, "S*** my D**K". Just to name a few of the things we are told and yelled at.

With covid many of us work from home and have to schedule our work around Fresh Direct's business model as we cannot be on work calls with the amount of noise, yelling, language, and music they blast for hours on end. One evening I personally had had enough after 3 hours of screaming at each other constantly without a break and when I stoped working to go outside to speak to them to ask them to stop yelling, they told me "we weren't yelling. We just have to get our points across to each other & we talk loud" I had my window's closed on the second floor and then proceeded to repeat their conversations back to them word for word... they finally conceded 10 min later and agreed to be more quiet... it lasted about an hour before I had to remind them yet again... This is only an example of one situation and not the worst. And only one of the many that have been told to me from depots around the city.

Dozens upon dozens of us on my block have called in and spoken to the Manhattan supervisor with no resolution. We are simply given excuses why it must be this way and how amazing of a company they are and how much work they do and how they are an essential business so they what they are doing is ok. I should add that they don't pay parking in metered lanes, park their trucks in active lanes of traffic causing the fire trucks nearby to often have to wait for them to move their trucks in an emergency. They block turn lanes, bike lanes, and businesses and restaurants who are equally trying to make a living as well but are having to now contend with fresh direct's horribly planned business model even though they claim they don't block restaurants... they do. All day, several days a week.

What we are asking as a community is to stop ordering from fresh direct and instead call them to tell them you won't order until they change their business strategy to better support the communities they serve without these truck depots. It isn't right that they get to be above the law and park in active traffic on public streets with trucks coming and going every 2 hours for over 18 hours each day seven days a week. (they will claim only 2 trucks a day come by but that is a total lie. There are 2 trucks that sit here double parked each for 8 hours, and then ON TOP of that there are trucks that come and "triple" park for 30min to an hour and unload more tubs and yell at the crew) Also, although the engines aren't idling, their refrigerator units are and they are actually louder than most any other trucks that come by!

We have asked for change for years, only to be told by fresh direct they can't for some excuse or another and currently their excuse is covid and how there isn't enough parking... but they have been doing this for over 10 years now... covid isn't the reason... their poor planning and obsession over the bottom dollar instead of community and wellbeing of others outside of themselves is the reason.

If they really cared about the communities they serve they would have taken to heart these years and years of 100's of calls a day telling them that their depots are causing major disturbances in our daily lives.

Please, for the sake of our livelihoods, please call fresh direct and tell them you won't order any longer from them until they improve their treatment of the communities that their truck depots are in while they have free use of public land as their business locations instead of paying high prices in rent like the rest of us do. Keep this in mind next time you realize that fresh direct prices are as high as your local grocery store, and order from them instead as they are the real New Yorkers and the ones who care about the community. NOT a company that just takes advantage of loopholes and the police looking the other way while they conduct their business illegally on public streets causing others to not be able to run their businesses.
Please make sure to have the customer service representative pass your complaint to the CEO as the Manhattan supervisor isn't addressing these issues any longer and doesn't feel this is an issue.