TEAVANA DO NOT BUY TEAPOTS AT TEAVANA, THE MATERIAL IN THE INTERIOR ,ENAMEL FALLS OFF Burlington Massachusetts

I had the same experience with my teapot from Teavana at the Burlington MA store.  The paint around the opening started flaking off after about 1 month of use.  I tried to return it.  The employee refused, told me it was my fault, and refused to give me her manager's contact information or her name.  The same attitude can be seen toward the other customer's complaint.  The employee is attacking the consumer and blaming them for a defect in their product.

I did not use a sponge or soap to clean the tea pot. I preheat it before use and simply rinse it with water after it has cooled down.

I've actually never heard of this happening with any of our cast iron pots, except when the pot wasn't taken care of properly. So if you were a customer at my store, these are the questions I would ask you first...

1. Did you use a cloth or sponge with a rough or scratchy surface? Enamel is easily scratched; this is why we recommend our Bamboo Tool Kits. Scratchy cleaning is the most common cause of a damaged cast iron pot.

2. Did you preheat your pot before using it? This means filling the pot about a third full with hot water, swishing it around for 30 seconds, then pouring it out before continuing with making your pot of tea. Adding hot water to a cold pot, or vice versa, will damage the pot/enamel.

3. Did you try using your pot on a stovetop? This is a big no-no for cast iron pots with enamel lining, as this will cause direct damage to the enamel.

4. Did you try using your pot in a dishwasher or microwave? Microwaves are bad for obvious reasons (the pots are made out of iron, after all). Dishwashers will damage the enamel, and your pot will absorb anything it comes into contact with - soap and food remnants, which do not mix well with tea.

Next, I do not recommend going to China Town and buying a cheap cast iron pot, because those will not have an enamel lining. Thus, you will be exposed to wayyy too much iron, and will very likely contract iron poisoning. This was not a problem back when people relied on the iron from their teapots to meet basic nutrition needs - but today is an entirely different story. Plus, direct contact with the iron will give your tea a metalic flavor, which is just unpleasant.

Our cast iron pots are all hand-made in the oldest ironry in Japan. It takes an entire month for one cast iron pot to be made, with only 17 artists working on it during that entire time. There is no warranty because the same family that owns the ironry have been hand-crafting cast iron pots for 400 years - these guys know what they're doing, and your pot really should not break so long as it is taken care of correctly.

I'm confused by the contradicting statements that 1. your pot had a warranty that you were bamboozled out of and 2. Teavana pots have no warranty. *IF your pot had a warranty (which I doubt it did; I'm not aware of any warranties on anything except our water heaters), and you were promised a new pot or exchange, I would not be surprised if the style of pot was out of stock and they were waiting for another one to be available. As described above, it takes one month to make one pot, and there are only 17 people in that ironry, and every single step is done by hand. They are working their tails off to meet Teavana customers' high demands for their products.. but even at an ideal pace, they can still only make about 28-30 pots a month, tops. If a style is out of stock and there isn't one already started, it will take at least a month to get one started, then another month for it to be made, then additional time for shipping and sorting (from Japan, to the main warehouse in Georgia, to the store).

As for the customer service, it's definitely an overstatement to say that every single Teavana associate will be discourteous and inefficient. Of course, like every business, we do have associates who are less than perfect - but please do not generalize an entire company of people based on the one or two associates you spoke with. I'm sorry you had a rude associate, and I can assure you that it's not an attitude the company condones.