Way to run a business guys...(language)

[RobotPlanet]

I live in a college town. Because of this, many places around here offer delivery. My fiance and I have been working really hard to get all of our work done before the end of the semester, and due to a sucky situation his mother gave him money for us to get some delivery food so that we don't have to spend time cooking. Tonight we were browsing on a food-delivery website and decided to try something different from the usual delivery fare, i.e. pizza or Jimmy John's.

So we choose a place called Wings Xtreme. He gets a sandwich and some wings (hungry guy), and I got a chicken fingers basket with fries. I have decided that I will never EVER use this place again, for the following reasons:

1. We placed our order around 5:30, 6:00. Food shows up at 7:00. (on a side-note this is probably because a lot of places try to do delivery to appeal to the college crowd, but don't necessarily have the man-power to do so, so one schmuck gets stuck on delivery and everyone's food takes longer because he has to do ALL the deliveries)
2. Upon receipt food is cold. Like not even slightly warm cold. Most likely because it was just tied up in some plastic bag and not in any kind of insulated holder.
3. After heating up said food (thus defeating the whole time-saving idea of delivery), I realize they fucked up my order. I asked for garlic sauce on the chicken and waffle fries; I received buffalo sauce and seasoned fries.
4. We are poor college students. We do not have a lot of money. Even with the money his mom gave us, we do not have a lot of money. The food was $25 after tip (over 15%), so after realizing I had the wrong order I decided to call the place and try to get a refund (as I realize if they just replace it it'll take another hour and still be cold and we don't have a car to get to the store two miles away).
5. Upon looking up the number and attempting to contact the store, I become extremely pissed off. Why you ask? Because this sorry excuse for business apparently DOES NOT ANSWER ITS PHONE! Their number just rings until I am automatically disconnected. So I go online, apparently it's a chain. Cool, corporate number(s) posted. Not cool, the number(s) go to a voicemail and a disconnected number recording. AWESOME. So here I am, with $7-8 worth of food that I can't eat (I absolutely HATE buffalo sauce), no way to contact the company (which doesn't even acknowledge the store I ordered from existed on its website), and a strong feeling that this place isn't going to last long in this town. Assholes.

[marasbaras]

That totally blows.

This might be odd ... because I write software for a living and do quite a bit of web-based development ... but, I don't like to order over the web. Won't do it.

I want to talk to a human.

Must be because I'm old.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't have any interest in talking to people to order stuff unless I have questions or special needs.

I find that if I'm the one in control, there is much less likelihood of a mistake being made.

^-.-^

[marasbaras]

You, Andara, clearly haven't seen some of the code used to handle your order and pass it along to the correct store. If you had, you wouldn't use the phrase "in control".

What smiley should I use for "really, regrettably sad, but true"?

[Boochan]

How irritating.
Sadly this particular suburb seems to be just out of area for almost every single food delivery type (with the exception of Pizza, which up until about 3mths ago only ONE pizza store did delivery here), which is really, really irritating. I've had chinese here delivered once, but the place was awful. Most places seem to be struggling to get any delivery drivers, since many used to have it when I first moved here, but not many do now.

Regardless, that service is pitiful. Sounds like a rather pathetic operation too if their corporate phone numbers don't work properly.

[Shangri-laschild]

If you can, I'd try to go in the next day and talk to someone about it. At least that way maybe you can get your money back for it since money is tight.

[bainsidhe]

Actually, I'd be a littler worried about the safety of the food. I'm sure it's paranoia, but anyplace so difficult to reach when they offer DELIVERY makes me wonder if they're not just cutting corners with staffing. Hmm, okay, so maybe not paranoia so much as wanting to find a reason to validate your irritation

[RobotPlanet]

Okay, update time. I called again at 10 pm last night just for shits and giggles, and lo and behold they answered their phone! Amazing! I don't know what their deal was, but the guy I dealt with was really nice so I held back all my sarcasm and suck. He said corporate had come in that weekend (the whole delivery food business's busiest of the year--think "Breaking Away") and moved all of the unlabeled sauce bottles around in their labeled caddies. So the guy said he had to spend a half hour going around tasting the sauces to put them in their right places. Once again corporate dicks it up for everyone I guess. But anyway he was really nice and when I said I'd rather have a refund than have him send new food out (it was 10 pm and I'd already gotten some other food and the whole food-sits-in-warm-car-for-an-hour-possibly-growing-who-knows-what thing had really grossed me out) he refunded me the WHOLE charge . I had meant I'd have liked a refund for the food that was wrong ($7-8 worth), so I was really pleasantly surprised that he gave us the whole $21.20 back. So, moral of the story, employee was cool, corporate are idiots no matter where you go, and I still think any business that doesn't answer their phone at 7 pm on a Sunday is not going to last long in this town.

[blas]

I had a problem with the local Toppers last summer/fall. They would never answer their phone. Ever. I tried to call to order pizza I don't know how many times and it would just ring and ring and ring.

[Andara Bledin]

You, Andara, clearly haven't seen some of the code used to handle your order and pass it along to the correct store. If you had, you wouldn't use the phrase "in control".

Well, let's see. Of the roughly 100 online food orders I've made over the past several years (including several >$100.00 transactions for my work), I have a 100% accuracy record for the food being what it was supposed to be when it was supposed to be.

Of the roughly 50 orders I've placed by phone (which usually takes about 2-3 times as long), I've had at least 2 with problems.

So, yeah, with online ordering, I'd say I'm more in control.

^-.-^

[Javarod]

Actually the ignoring the phone thing doesn't surprise me, I worked at a Papa John's that when it went franchise couldn't afford enough staff. When it got too busy, they just had to stop answering the phone, after all, what were they going to do, say they weren't taking orders any more? All that'd get is a lot of yelling and screaming, which would merely delay the back log they were trying to get on top of. Not a good way to run a business, but something you can't help sometimes.

As to bad service, that sounds like the Dominos over here, I haven't ordered from them since the end of January. Basically the nearest unit burned down, so they shifted us to one about 3 miles away. It took nearly an hour and a half for them to deliver an order, to which they blamed on being short drivers. Of course this is shortly after they got that online pizza tracker thing, and according to it, my order was made and ready to go fifteen minutes after ordering, so what'd they do, leave it sitting around until they remembered to deliver it? Worse still, filled out the online complaint form and got... <insert the sound of crickets chirping> Gee, glad to know they value their customers.

[Kogarashi]

There's actually a really popular pizzeria here in town (3rd after two other related ones) that often has bouts where you just can't get anyone to answer the phone, because they're all busy making pizzas. The place is seriously swamped come 4pm, both by walk-ins and by orders, and I don't think they do delivery. We've always ordered for pick-up, because then we don't have to wait in an insane line. So I've learned to just keep calling every two minutes until I get through the line.

[Kyree]

Well, let's see. Of the roughly 100 online food orders I've made over the past several years (including several >$100.00 transactions for my work), I have a 100% accuracy record for the food being what it was supposed to be when it was supposed to be.

Of the roughly 50 orders I've placed by phone (which usually takes about 2-3 times as long), I've had at least 2 with problems.

So, yeah, with online ordering, I'd say I'm more in control.

^-.-^

Every time I order online, something messes up. They send me the wrong thing, or send it to the wrong store. And no, it wasn't user error, because it wasn't just me ordering.

[marasbaras]

Of the roughly 100 online food Of the roughly 50 orders I've placed by phone (which usually takes about 2-3 times as long), I've had at least 2 with problems. So, yeah, with online ordering, I'd say I'm more in control.

Our experiences are nearly polar opposites. If you have such good luck with on-line ordering ... stick with it!

[Evil Queen]

Every time I order online, something messes up. They send me the wrong thing, or send it to the wrong store. And no, it wasn't user error, because it wasn't just me ordering.

Kyree, aren't you the one that would order your pizza cut into squares or was that someone else?

I never used the online option.I generally just call the 1-800 number and they route me to "David". All the time.

I used to go to this Mom and Pop place in TN for pizza. They would load it with so many toppings for such a good price that I wondered how the heck they stayed in Business. Then I wondered how they were in business because it was a little hole in the wall joint that was easily hidden and not very popular. My neighbor suggested it one day and we would order from them every chance we got.

Ah, the good old days.