Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
There is a burger place I have been visiting for many years, which was once a small chain, but got swallowed up by a huge corporation. It still operates autonomously, despite that. I feel that the autonomous operation is NOT a positive, as their small home office is very bad at managing a mid-sized chain, and they have enacted what I believe to be terrible policies.
It all started when they disabled your ability to call each individual store. In the past, it was easy to rectify if they messed something up on your takeout order.
You'd simply call the store, they'd get your info, and they'd give you the equivalent credit for next order. This worked very well. I didn't call up and do this frequently -- only when things were wrong to the point of being inedible, and I never asked for anything beyond that.
However, once they disabled the ability to call the individual store, you were routed to a central number which could only take orders. That number could NOT arrange credit or perform any customer service duties.
This might sound like a COVID-era change, but it wasn't. It occurred around 2018. However, for awhile at least this particular store was good about remaking my items on the next visit, and I usually still had the receipt and pictures of the incorrect food. Right before COVID, they got more difficult about it, and said that every food remake request -- even one as small as remaking a bad order of fries -- had to be done through the corporate web feedback form (lol). That is, if you were still in the store, they could remake something incorrect, but if you came back even 1 day later, they couldn't remake it, even with pictures and a receipt. I found this absurd and stopped going.
Then, of course, COVID happened, and I wasn't going out to fast food for about 16 months. Right after that, I had found another burger place I liked, and didn't come BACK for awhile. In that stretch of time, they were bought out by a huge company, and I wondered if maybe these idiotic policies had changed.
I started going BACK around 2023, and was pleased to see that things had gotten a lot better. The order accuracy improved, the ingredients were of better quality (in the late 2010s, there also started becoming a quality issue, where the lettuce and tomatoes were often bad/soggy), and while you still couldn't call them, they would remake wrong food on the next visit if you showed reasonable evidence of your purchase. Great! I chalked it up to the new corporate overlords cracking the whip and making things better.
Nope!
In 2025 everything started going downhill again. Exact same problems as in the late 2010s were occurring, and once again they were refusing to allow any food remakes unless you bring it back same day, which is not practical for takeout orders when you get all the way home and don't live particularly close by.
I called their corporate number which turns out to just be that same small office managing them all along. Two fairly rude reps there barked their policy at me, acted as if this is all totally normal, and the second one hung up on me. Obviously I'm not going back, so there's no action to take now.
So why is this a JEW Make the Call?
I'm going to outline their "incorrect order" policy below. I want you guys to vote on (and comment on) whether you think it's reasonable or unreasonable. I would say about 40% of their business is takeout, and 60% is dine-in, for reference.
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Incorrect order policy:
1) You cannot call the individual store. The phone number forwards to an order-taking center that cannot provide customer servcice.
2) If an order is incorrect, you must return to that same store on the SAME DAY to get things corrected. If you return even the next day, they cannot remake the food, even if you provide pictures and a receipt of the problem.
3) If you cannot return same day, you have to submit "feedback" on their website to get anything corrected.
4) An "investigation" is done (their words, not mine) regarding each item of feedback received. They may or may not give you a refund or remake, depending upon whether they believe you, and also based upon the number of complaints you've submitted in the past.
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To me this is absolutely absurd policy. Who wants to use a fucking web form to have "investigations" done at a burger place which gave you a batch of bad fries or accidentally put sauce on your hamburger?
They aren't even promising you'll get insta-credit by submitting this form. Each requires an "investigation" where they take several days to get back to you, and figure out whether you really deserve your food remade. LOL!
Do you think this policy is:
1) Completely reasonable
2) Somewhat reasonable
3) Dumb
4) Extremely dumb and borderline scammy
Vote above!
(Again, I'm not going back again, so no need to give advice about what to do going forward.)
It's not In-N-Out, btw. I'm still happy with them. They're just not a full replacement because they have a very limited menu, whereas this burger place serves a variety of items.
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