Tonight my friend and I went to eat at the Ale House in Hollywood. Along with dinner, we ordered a pitcher of beer. When we got the bill, I noticed that we had been charged for 2 pitchers when we had only ordered (and been served) one pitcher. No big deal, right?
Wrong!
When I pointed out the mistake to the waitress, she immediately became defensive and basically accused me of lying. After a couple minutes of arguing she even said, "I'm not trying to call you a liar or anything, but I just don't know how I could have rang one up by mistake." By about this point I was livid about being accused of lying. I calmly asked her if I could speak to a manager. She then said that she would take the pitcher off, but she just didn't see how she could have made a mistake. I repeated my desire to talk it over with the manager and she mumbled that she was going to take the pitcher off, but she's trying to figure out where the mistake was made.
Several minutes later a manager came up and asked us about it. He immediately agreed to remove the extra pitcher. I have the feeling that he came over to us to try and feel us out more than anything. What should have been a 30 second correction ended up lasting over 35 minutes. After the manager came we waited another 15 minutes for the waitress to come back and I still had to ask her again for our check. She then continued to try and confront me.
You know, I understand that people in the service business probably have people try to swindle them out of paying for drinks all the time. Heck, I was a bartender for a couple of years. But come on. In the end, we were talking about a $5 pitcher of beer. I was never upset about the over-ring of $5, but it was all about being accused of lying and essentially stealing.
When it was all said and done, we ended up paying for exactly what we ordered, we left a $2 tip (which I feel was generous), and we got a 1-800 customer service hotline number which we were encouraged to call (we will be rewarded with a voucher for a free desert for our trouble). They also received an email to their corporate office, and were featured in a couple of blog posts. And I'll never be going back there... not even for my free desert.
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5 comments:
A friend of mine had an incident with the same restaurant in which their waiter doctored the credit card slip to give himself more tip! When confronted, the manager only said, "well, that's not store policy"! Not sorry, not anything. I second your resolve not to ever go there. No wonder the one near me shut down.
And to their corporate offices, I sent them an email and filled out their phone survey. Not a word from them. Cheap beer aside, I think I'm going to have to cross the whole chain off my list and not just the one offending store.
Huh. Well, you read my whole thing with Brookstone.
Plus, you've been there.
Really, it just boils down to no one wanting to be accountable to a bad-customer-experience.
Maybe it's me, but I think in both of our situations if someone just owned the situation, we both wouldn't trash the respective companies to our friends, coworkers, and online.
Exactly. In the end that is what it boils down to. I was just thinking about it this morning. I haven't heard a peep from corporate after sending a direct email and calling their customer service hotline. Now I'm crossing the entire chain off my list rather than the one location.
I started to think about why I cared this much. But it all boiled down to the fact that I wanted someone to admit that as a customer, they treated me poorly. I don't want offers of free food or beer. I just want someone to admit that they were wrong, and let me know that they want me to continue to be a customer.
I got nothing, so I'm moving on.
Do you suppose there is a country or thrash metal song in this?
"Didn't want your dumb beer, biotch?"
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