I want to give a shout-out to William's and Five Star, for their professionalism in handling what could have been a bad situation.
Yesterday I received a small order from William's, which included a 32 oz. bottle of StarSan, among a few other things. The package arrived with evidence of a leak. The bottle had been wrapped in a plastic bag, and the bag was thoroughly wet on the inside. The measuring chamber of the bottle was half full. The plastic bag obviously didn't contain the leak and there was a large, black splotch on the bottom of the carton, where leaked StarSan had burned into it. The splotch was partially visible on the outside of the carton. It appeared that about 1 oz. had leaked out. None of the other items were touched by the StarSan, as they were packed higher up in the carton.
I cleaned up the mess and examined the bottle. StarSan now features "child-resistant" caps, similar to those on pill bottles. The inner protective seal over the measuring chamber had a leak, and the cap, which was loose, did not contain it.
I'm going to assume that the ground transport over high elevations on its trip from CA to MN created a pressure differential which forced out some liquid.
I emailed William's customer service yesterday afternoon and let them know. I insisted that everything is good with me--no one was hurt and there was no damage. I just wanted to give them a heads-up so that hopefully no one else would encounter the same problem.
This morning, they wrote back, apologizing for the problem, even though it was probably not their fault. They noted that they had forwarded the info to Five Star. But I was impressed that William's responded quickly.
Later today, I received a nice email from Five Star's customer service, apologizing as well, and thanking me for bringing the issue to their attention. They are shipping another bottle of StarSan to me, even though I didn't lose enough to really matter. I'm going to have a lifetime supply of the stuff, now.
Both companies did the right thing, and responded quickly. This sort of customer service is what separates excellent companies from mediocre ones.