Have you ever made a retail or service complaint? I have but only a handful of times. Like when I ripped open a bag of chips in primary school and nearly lost my shit because I didn’t get my Tazo. I wrote the company a letter (with an actual stamp on it. I also had a pet dinosaur.) and a few weeks later they sent me TEN TAZOS!!! It was like my birthday but better. My brother was so jealous and hatched this amazing plan that he’d write them a dishonest version of my letter and then he’d get TEN TAZOS TOO!!! Mama Smaggle denied him the stamp and envelope. She wasn’t having none of that shit and thus my inner code of ethics started to form. Smaggles can complain about stuff but only if it’s true. Word.
So, last week Mr Smags and I ordered our favourite home delivery. They’re usually super speedy and bring delicious magical food so we like to give them our money. An hour after ordering our food, it still hadn’t arrived and Mr Smags had started gnawing on the couch cushions so I called and was like ‘What up fools? Where’s my crispy spring rolls and tiny bottle of awesome sauce?‘. I was told to wait a bit longer. So I waited another 30 mins. Then I called back and had this conversation.
Me – ‘Hi! I ordered home delivery an hour and a half ago and it hasn’t been delivered.Order 34.’
Guy – ‘Order 34? YOUR PHONE IS DISCONNECTED! THE DELIVERY GUY CALLED AND CALLED AND YOU DIDN’T ANSWER! HE HAD TO COME BACK HERE!’
Me – ‘What phone number do you have?’
Guy on the Phone – *recites incorrect phone number*
Me – ‘And what address do you have?’
Guy On The Phone – *recites correct address*
Me – ‘Is there any particular reason why the delivery guy didn’t just ring my doorbell? That’s generally the accepted way to let people know that they’re outside your house. Particularly if they’re delivering food.’
Guy On The Phone – ‘I’ll send him back now.’
The food arrived a full two hours late, soggy and cold. All the pleasure of eating my supposed-to-be-fluffy-pork-bun in front of my coeliac boyfriend was tainted because I couldn’t quite believe that someone had stood outside my apartment building, inches from the intercom, with my address in their hands and didn’t ring my fucking doorbell. Also that it took them 2 hours and 2 phone calls to figure out what went wrong.
So I wrote them a firm email. I used grown up words like ‘unacceptable’ ‘disappointed’ ‘loyal customer’ and ‘douche canoe’. They apologised profusely and send me a gift voucher for a future takeaway. Very good business practice indeed.
Tell me… have you made a complaint about the service you’ve received? Did anything happen?
22 Comments
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Gooo Smaggle! Totally awesome that you stood up for yourself, and *totally* awesome on the restaurant’s behalf that they acknowledged (and attempted to make up for) their crappy service.
I once attempted to complain at a sub-standard-beyond-BELIEF Vietnamese eatery; the service was absolutely atrocious, and the food completely different to what my friends and I had ordered. The waitress/front-of-house called me ”rude”, told me to ”never come back” and three of us had food poisoning hours later. Yay!
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Yeah and they really are an awesome restaurant. We eat there ALL the time and will now continue to do so.
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I had a bad experience at a cafe that we are regulars at! We ordered breaky + coffees.
My (lactose intolerant bf) ordered a soy flat white and was given a full cream milk cap (wtf).
Then my meal was shocking. My 2 poached eggs were SO hard and gross. The smashed avocado was not fresh it was that packet stuff from Woolies I’m sure of it!! It was glugy and fake!
My bfs wrap was slightly better but the sauce inside was scolding, he had to put his finger in ice after it dripped down.
We complained, they said sorry. My bf still paid (grrrr) I wanted to refuse.-
Oh I have had quite a few bad breakfasts. One in particular where the lady asked if we enjoyed our meal (she didn’t speak English very well) and we told her quite plainly and in detail how horrible it was and she just nodded and beamed like we had given her a giant compliment. Awkward.
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‘Douche canoe’ for the win! Nice work Ms Smaggle 🙂
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Douche canoe is my new favourite. I’m just looking for an oppurtunity to use ‘arse wipe’ and I’ll be super happy.
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I just recently sent my first email. My menu said the fish in the fish sandwich was haddock. it was in fact marlin, my menu hadn’t been swapped for the updated one. and the marlin was overcooked and chewy and gross and i immediately lost my appetite. and then the waitress told me it was supposed to be like that. Um, what? your establishment purposely sells overcooked rubber fish? don’t think so. i sent it back and wasn’t charged but i still was not impressed. i actually got two replies… the first was a super lame apology and invite to return soon. second was more detailed, and wanted the servers name but my goal was not to get anyone in trouble so i didn’t reply. no soup for me!!
* actually i just realized i email starbucks all the time. any slight thing wrong with my drink or service- they always send free coupons! but like you, i only email if its really happened. i expect perfection for that price!
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Ewwww. It’s supposed to be like that? I’d have told them to bite me!
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So to quote you … They’re usually super speedy and bring delicious magical food … and the one time they mess up you’re all huffy? Why not give them the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge they had a bad day?
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I think that food that takes 2 hours to arrive and is soggy and cold when it does is unnacceptable, no matter how awesome they’ve been in the past. I’m a freelancer which means that if I don’t do good work, all the time, I don’t get paid. I don’t expect service to be flawless all the time but there was a series of avoidable stuff ups that lead to my bad experience.
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Doorbells are there to be rung – I would have loved to have seen your angry face though, I’m sure you deliver it with real emotion.
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I know right? I was like ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ he tried to call and I didn’t answer so he went away. He’s a delivery guy. Ringing my doorbell is a really important part of that job.
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Oh, I complain all the time. In fact, I give feedback all the time – both good and bad. It’s really important to me.
I think the last thing I complained about was Glenferrie station, where it’s really difficult to get off the platform during peak hour, and once you’re off the platform and down the ramp, there’s only one bank of MYKI scanners servicing three platforms that you can exit through. I emailed Metro and told them it wasn’t good enough and that someone was going to be crushed one day on the platform. There used to be two banks of Metcard machines. Metro don’t send giveaways though!
Regarding service, I am more reluctant to complain, but I certainly will if something really isn’t right. I try and just mention it quietly and be explicit about how I would like it fixed – heated up, re-made, removed from the bill.
I’ll never forget going to see the second Matrix movie, and during the big explanation scene at the end, the movie went all wibbly on the screen, and the sound crashed. My friend and I bolted out of there at the end, before the credits and complained to the box office staff. We were told that if we’d waited at the cinema for a minute, the manager would have been there with free Gold Class passes! Embarrassment! I did point out to them that free tickets were great, but I’d now have to set aside another two and half hours of my life to see the whole movie again, when I really just wanted to see the last ten minutes. I think I ended up using the ticket on something else, and just reading about the movie on the internet.
My most successful complaint was to the local council – they replaced a missing street sign within two days, and also fixed a broken footpath within a week – and even knocked on my door to make sure they had the right broken bit. Excellent result.
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Wow! More power to you girlfriend! YOu go!
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Yes. I walked up to the counter at a fancy Asian restaurant, holding a dish containing green beans.
“Um, excuse me but these are REALLY chewy beans.”
Unable to hold back laughter, the three staff behind the bar told me they were Edamame beans and only the insides should be eaten. (But of course, you probably know this Smags.)
SO EMBARRASSED.
*bow*
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Bwa hah ahahhhha! My favourite! And I can *hear* the tone you would have used. It would have been the same as ‘Well you DO speak English, because you JUST said reception!’.
xxx
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I always feel like if I try to complain some people *ahem* might judge me and think I’m being a bitch. But I also don’t really know what the right way to do it is either!
My partner and I had our 5th anniversary (which is kind of big when you’re in your early 20s and your friends are still having one night stands) a few months ago and decided we would go to a very swank restaurant that was a complete splurge. We’d been wanting to go for so long and it was all just very exciting to finally go there, and of course it was a VERY special occasion!
Anyway, our mains were given to another table. Now this was a Japanese place and the people our food was given to were complete and utter bogans who couldn’t tell tempura from nigiri. We gave it the benefit of the doubt and thought – maybe they just ordered the same mains. Well they sat there picking at the food with their chopsticks and holding it up going “awww what’s this aye did we order this ‘un? awww I dunno”. We sat there for half an hour watching this….and then called over the waitress and inquired about our mains. She went away and came back and told us that there had been a mistake – AND THEN SHE WENT OVER TO THIS OTHER TABLE AND PICKED UP THE PLATES THAT HAD BEEN TOUCHED BY THOSE BOGANS AND BROUGHT THEM OVER TO US. THE SECOND HAND FOOD.
Keep in mind – this place was not cheap! I could not believe it when she tried to offer us that food after it had sat at that table for half an hour and been TOUCHED. I have never been so offended in my life. And then when I said that no, I WILL NOT EAT SECOND HAND FOOD, she was perplexed…and was all like “Oh I guess we can make it again”. And no, fuck no. You can’t just offer me second hand food and begrudgingly ask me to wait for it to be made again. So we paid for our entres and Sake (though really we should have just walked out) and left.
This was at 7.30 on a Saturday night and everywhere was of course booked out. HAPPY FUCKING ANNIVERSARY. I wish I had the balls to complain, but I was so angry at the time that I felt that if I started to complain it would have ended with us spending the night in a jail cell, I was that incensed.So I came home and wrote a very detailed review on UrbanSpoon in hope of saving someone else from such a horrible experience.
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That’s BULLSHIT!!! Second hand food??? Yuck! We had a similar experience when we went to teppanyaki and we waited for an hour and a half for the chef to come and cook for us. When we complained we got told ‘That’s the nature of teppanyaki – it’s a leisurely dining experience.’ A leisurely dining experience is FINE as long as we’re dining… and not sitting an empty room waiting for a chef for an hour and half!!!!
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That is awful! It remind me of the time that i ordered a latte in a coffee shop and as the barista made it, she spilled a little of the foam on the rim of the cup AND THEN WIPED IT OFF WITH HER FINGER AND THEN LICKED IT OFF!!! IN FRONT OF ME! Thank god i was watching, but when I said ‘are you seriously going to now serve me that coffee? she didn’t understand the problem. I walked out.
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I’ve been lucky (or else I’m really easily pleased) and have never had to complain about service. However, as a former waitress at what ‘looked’ like a nice restaurant from the outside, there were times when orders would get put on the wrong table, or we’d accidentally give food to the wrong table – then it would get taken back to the kitchen. Nine times out of ten it would be left on the hot plate for a few minutes and then taken back out to the correct table. Gross? Absoloutely. At the bottom of the hierarchy in a restaurant though, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if she’d been previously told off by the kitchen for “wasting” food by having the chefs re-cook an order. :/
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As a hospitality industry professional, I can tell you that we are happy when we receive feedback (we prefer the positive stuff over the negative … but we take both on board) and are more than happy to refund a customer or send a gift voucher if the standard of the food is the issue with there dining experience.
HOWEVER….. when the issue is with the level of service is the problem, I do have a problem with the expectation that I will give them something for free. Feedback on bad service is very much appreciated, it often highlights missed training (or just terrible staff that need to go!), but …. I get bad service in dress shops, shoe shops, grocery shops etc …. and you know what …. they do not give me free stuff!!!! so why is it expected that the hospitality industry should??
Just food for thought (no pun intended!) … Sarah x x
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Service is part of what you pay for in a restaurant. It’s included in the cost of the dining experience and therefore people tend to expect it to be of an acceptable standard. Those who think they deserve a freebie because their coffee took a few minutes longer than normal to be delivered are unreasonable in my opinion. But if you’ve waited hours for food that arrives cold and soggy then I think it’s perfectly acceptable to complain and the restaurant should compensate you if they expect you to return.
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