bad experience on pizza hut delivery

Yesterday Cathy suggested to have pizza, so we called Pizza Hut to deliver using the office line. The order was confirmed pretty quickly and was told the delivery time would be 12.55pm which was 1 hour from the time of call. One hour? No problem with that... or so I thought. That was when, everything started to go downhill...

At 1.10pm, still no sign of pizza. So called the delivery again to check on the status. The girl at the other end, took note of the non-delivery and said that she will get the delivery man to call us. Still, no one called and so, at 1.15pm, we called the delivery line again. This time, a guy picked up, and before I could say anything, he correctly stated my name and he apologized profusely about the non-delivery and stated that he will need to call higher authority and get the DM to call us. DM I suppose is either delivery man or dispatch manager? No idea. But whoever it is.. our pizza was still missing! Very simply I asked him, "Is the pizza coming?" He said, "Of course!" Then I asked, "By when?" He said, "I'll get the DM to call you!" I was like .............................

By 1.30pm, still no one called and still no pizza. So, called them again and this time, someone picked up after a long while but the person made no sound and the phone was put down shortly. Hmmm... I can only imagine that perhaps, they haven't find good enough excuses, so didn't dare to say anything to me. Undaunted, I called the delivery line again. Someone manage to pick up and the girl confirmed the phone number that they are seeing in their system. To play safe, I gave her my mobile number while she went to call the store that was supposed to send the pizza more than 1.5 hours ago.

About 5 minutes later, someone called. He said, "My delivery man actually came to your office twice but nobody came to the door." I was like, huh? Nobody knocked and nobody came what. Then he said, "He called your office but it was asking for extension number. I also called you twice but always ask me for extension number so cannot get you." Errr.. I was dumbfounded. Was it really the office phone cannot get through? If that's the case, then those who managed to call in without knowing any extension lines must've been either very lucky or simply geniuses! So I asked, "What is the conclusion now? Is the pizza still coming?" He said, "Sure, if you want it, we'll send it in 15 minutes time and you will have to guide the delivery man to your office." Err... so I said, "You really should send someone who knows the address." He said, "Oh, our delivery man knows your address as he's been to your office twice. And he knocked and nobody open the door." I was like thinking, "Can't the man click on the doorbell like anybody else??" Strange.

So decided to cancel the pizza order since the manager said that it was he who dispatched the call to the delivery man, and he claimed that the delivery man did go to the office twice, and both he and the delivery man tried to call the office phone but cannot get through since they don't know any extension numbers, and hence, this non-delivery is none of their problem. No apologies from this end, not even for the futile wait, nor any discount offered if the customer want the pizza to be delivered in another additional 15 mins time (which would've made the total waiting time an astounding 2 hours)... so that was that, in accordance to that Pizza Hut store manager.

Feeling quite upset, I called the office number soon after the conversation ended, and indeed the recorded voice message will ask the caller to key in extension number if they know any, otherwise, it will advise the caller to press 1 for sales, 2 for something else and finally 0 for general enquiries. All in all, the recorded message would've played for less than a minute and if the caller had pressed the number stated, or just press 0, then the office phone would've rung. So, from this mini exercise, I can only conclude that both the delivery man and the store/dispatch manager lacked the patience to listen to the recorded instructions... customer can wait 1.5 - 2 hours, but they can't wait for just 1 minute. Sigh.

So I called the store again, and informed the person that I spoke to that the recorded message would've asked them to press certain numbers if they don't know any instructions. At this point, he became defensive and didn't even have the courtesy to listen finish to what the customer was saying, and began his chant that the main issue was that the delivery man had done his job by going to the address twice (although cannot find the entrance door...) and both he and the delivery man had tried to call the customer (albeit half-heartedly...) and that was that. Job done.

Haha, if they believed they had done a good job in this case, I have nothing more to say. I can only say, it was pure unlucky to be in this kind of situation and to encounter people who had this unlimited amount of self-assurance, and who gave themself a pat on their back even though they have gained one customer less. I wonder what did they do with the non-delivered pizza? I can only imagined if I had ordered some hundreds of dollars worth of pizza and whether they would still be as callous as that. No one at the address? Just discard the hundreds of dollars worth of pizza lo... no issue, job done because called the customer twice but the phone kept asking for extension numbers. Nope, don't know any extension numbers~

To Pizza Hut Management, perhaps can consider allowing the staff to update the status of the delivery into the system, so that when the customer called the delivery line to enquire the status, immediately someone there could've said, "Oh, we tried to call your phone but cannot get through. Can we get an alternative number to call you?" Something like that la. No need to wait for your customers to call you like 3 times. Of course, one customer less may not mean anything to you. That I understand.