|
My Letter to Papa John's Pizza | |
|
To whom it may concern, Are you curious why it takes two and a half hours to deliver a luke warm pizza less than three miles away from one of your locations? I am. The evident bungling that had to have been part of the ingredients of these pies is astounding and yet not quite traceable in any form of logic that I am familiar with. The following is the saga... Today, May 11th, 1999 at about 6:15PM my son came to me and wanted to know what was for dinner and if we could get pizza. Not having had the opportunity to really think about dinner and it being close to dinner time already I accepted his suggestion and told him to order the pizza after making sure that everyone would be happy with what would be ordered. A few minutes later my son came back and told me what the pies would cost, since I did not have acceptable denominations in possession I sent my son up to the corner store to get suitable change for my larger bills. Eventually an hour passes and I ask my son how long he was told it would take for the pizza's to be delivered. He stated that he was told 30 minutes - in other words, half an hour earlier than it was at that time. I instructed my son to call back and find out what the delay was after making sure that he had given the prerequisite instruction about how to find our house since the address for the house is not on the same street that the driveway is on which has even confused the local police in years past. Shortly thereafter he came back to announce that the order was not in the computer so it was somehow lost but that he had re-ordered the pizza and was again told that it would be delivered in 30 minutes. I reacted by dutifully setting my "food anticipation clock" to 8 PM, not without some level of disgust I might add. Ever notice how a clock moves slower when you are waiting for an anticipated event such as the pizza delivery person delivering a pizza? Ever notice how, in decency you allow a certain amount of time beyond the promised "P"-time ('P' for pizza) before becoming truly agitated? Well that time came for me 45 minutes after the last call, at 8:15 to be more precise and this time I got on the phone and desired to talk with the manager to find out just what was so difficult about delivering these pies to my house. You would think that when faced with a polite, but obviously upset customer who is sternly requesting to have discourse with the manager or whomever was in charge that the order taker would dutifully put the manager on the phone, right? Nope, not in this case, in this case I get to hear the order taker relay, rather loudly I might add, my questions and statements to some voice I could hear in the background replying to those questions and comments. While I found this rather unprofessional, I still got the answer that I was looking for - that being that the pizza was on its way as we spoke. Good I am thinking because I am getting a headache from not having eaten and being slightly perturbed by this time. I hang up the phone and mentally calculate that even if a train were to impede the delivery (as we are on the other side of a set of tracks), there is no way that it could take longer than ten minutes to get from there to my house. 15 minutes later I am on the phone again and inform the order taker (same person again) that he and I were about to become very familiar with each other if I am not eating pizza in a very short period of time. He responds, "Mr. Perry, you still have not got your pizza?" - like gee, that would be akin to thump-wumping into a gas station and have the attendant come out and say, "...is that a flat tire?" Anyway, after being put on hold for a bit I get the delivery person on the other end - which means of course, that since the pizza is not here, it must not be on its way either if he is on the phone there talking to me. The delivery person tells me that he attempted to deliver the pizza and could not find the address and then attempted to call for better directions only to find that the number that he had was no good either. After some detail checking we discover that while they had the address correct, and even the appropriate note that the driveway was on a different street than the address was - but they had it in Wheaton instead of the town next to it that I live in. They also had a five in the phone number where a six should have been. I then inquired into what was the suggested recourse and was told that the pizzas were still hot despite my skepticism to the contrary and that he would be en route directly with the pizzas. What I felt like doing was telling him to cram the pizzas up his... but instead realized that even though I had no desire to do business with this store any longer, that it was still likely the fastest route to getting some food in my children's and my mouth so I accepted the apologies and the promise that the pizza was on its way with haste. The pizza did arrive within ten minutes. However, it was barely luke warm and the cheese had by then resealed itself into one blob and had become very distastefully chewy as a result of its reduced temperature. I should mention that my son is very quick to split hairs over details and when he tells me that he is sure that he provided the correct information I believe him. I should also point out that the exchange that the phone number provided to the order taker is one of the oldest exchange in the area and is well known to belong to the town I live in and not Wheaton. Likewise, I have the order stub that was attached to the boxes and it very clearly states the issue concerning the driveway being on a different street than the address and also names both of those streets. While Wheaton does in fact have streets in its town by both names, they both run east-west and never meet. Also there were four phones calls made by my son and I in total and it was not until the very last one that anyone bothered to verify the information that was entered in their computer and in an earlier call I asked if there were any questions concerning my address or phone number and they said that there was not. Not to mention the time that posting this page had taken this SNAFU cost me a pretty good headache from lack of food, and a wasted evening as the things I planned to do are undone because I kept believing that a pizza was about to be delivered any moment and I could do my tasks after we had eaten. My children were eating their dinner at a time that they are normally going to bed and this whole thing is quite unacceptable. Sir, the ball is in your court - how you respond will have a factor on how I will view your company in the future and you can probably imagine where your company stands in my mind at this point. Good day... Mike - - - - POST MORTEM - - - - The day following e-mailing the link to this page to Papa John's corporate headquarters I was contacted by a regional manager who made an appointment to come to my house and discuss this matter with me. He arrived, apologized for the inconvenience I suffered, and offered me four coupons, each good for a large pizza. Well, not exceptional, but adequate I suppose - was really hoping for a million dollars, but oh well... Anyway, the first two coupons eventually got used within a month, they claimed delivery in 45 minutes and arrived an hour later (you betcha I was watching the time too!). The next two took some doing though - the first time we called to order pizza, we were told that they had no one to deliver it - but only got told that AFTER taking the time to order the pizzas. The next attempt faired no better as the best time estimate they could give us was one to three hours and would not be nailed down any more than that. The next attempt we were told that they could not even give us an ETA for delivery, "have no idea at all how long it might take..." Finally did use the coupons, had my kids use them one day when I was not going to be home for dinner so I have no accurate way of knowing precisely how that transaction took place. I will say however, that given my experiences with Papa John's Pizza, they will never again get an order from this household - perhaps you get better service if you have ordered from them before and have some history to go on, but on my money, I'd not be willing to find out if this is a localized issue or whether all locations have the same inability to deliver a good, hot pizza within a reasonable amount of time. So, take your chances! - - - - POST SCRIPT - - - - Dear Papa John's, If you would like to rent this space and replace this page with one of your own design - for you, I have such a deal! $1,000 will permanently remove this page, or your page can replace it for $50 a month. By the way, I promise, you'll get better service from me than I have from you! | |
| Return to Writings | |