I will be the first to admit. I love Amazon. I love the bargains, my customer service experience has always been excellent. I love the bargain price of prime & benefits of being a prime member.<br />I had been buying Herseys with almonds in the 6 bar / 4 package sets.  All were bought & filled from Amazon, so it seems like I am compairing "apples to apples" so to speak.<br />My expectations were exceeded. I was receiving them quickly & most important..... FRESH!!!<br />So I thought....  "Hmmmm...  The other Herseys were coming fast & super fresh (expiration dates of 03-2013, a bit over a year away from right now, with tonight being 29 February 2012.)  Maybe I should graduate to the 36 count.  After all, they will last longer."<br />So I did go for the 36 count box. The first time I have ever bought one anywhere.<br />When the box arrived tonight, I opened it & looked at the expiration date. To my horror, it is less than three months away.<br />I know it might sound crazy. They are in date. I understand that. But it makes all the difference in the world in the taste to buy & eat one with the longest time you can find to expiration.  Try it sometime.  Take one bar with a date of expiration  with about five months away, open it and take a look at it.  Usually, in my experience, bars that are five months or less from expiration tend to be easily broken, dry, crumbly, stale tasting,  The almonds are usually not tasty at all.<br />Then get a bar with nine months or more to go before expiration.  Open the wrapper.  Notice the appearance of the bar, not crumbling or dry looking, the chocolate is fresh looking & smells wonderful.  The chocolate melts in your mouth smoothly & the taste is fabulous!  The almonds are fresh & appealing.<br /> I 1000% believe you will honestly taste a difference between the two bars and most likely you will want to finish eating the fresher bar.<br />When I shop for food, the first thing I check is the date of expiration.  I have found things out of date by months & still on shelves for sale.  That is a bit disturbing to me.  It happens more often than I like.<br />This is the first item in food that I have ever bought from Amazon that I was disappointed in.<br />For the $28 + I paid, I want to savor the little candies. These I know I will not enjoy. I am sending it back, unopened.  Tomorrow.<br />Still love my Amazon. I hate to write a bad review, but I thought that if there are any other folks out there like me that like to receive very fresh & tasty chocolate bars, that the batch I received, were not it.<br /><br />********** UPDATE **********  16 March 2012<br /><br />I am a bit late in writing this update. my apologies.<br /> I wanted to say "Thank You" to Amazon & Mohammed K. in customer service for promptly contacting me & going out of their way, in my opinion, to make things right!<br />I really appreciate all you have done for me & once again, this is another example of great reasoning for me to continue to give my business & quite a bit of my monthly budget in both discretionary & essential spending dollars to your company.<br />I will continue to do business with Amazon.<br />Thanks Amazon for being a business I am proud to spend my money with & for making me feel like my business & my complete satisfaction matters to your company!