Thursday, February 14, 2013

Customer Disservice Part Deux: The McRant

I don't eat take out much anymore. Maybe once or twice a week I will treat myself to something. But sometimes you just get a craving, y'know?

Tonight was one of those nights. I work overnights so I live a reverse day. Evening is my morning, Midnight I get to work, 4am is lunchtime, and so on. Tonight I really wanted a burger, some fries, no big. Just a little grease as a treat for my lunch.  That being the case I paid a call on one of my local McDonald's restaurants, since they are the only burger joint in St. John's open 24 hours.
So at 4 AM NST (2:30AM EST) I rolled on up to the drive thru for McDonald's (506 Topsail Rd St John's, NL A1E 2C2) and the guy on the headset at the other end of the speaker box informed me they couldn't take orders at that time because the systems were down. Fair enough, it happens sometimes. Can't fault anyone for a computer issue and there's more than one McDonald's location close by, so I headed to the Mount Pearl location (34 Commonwealth Ave, Mount Pearl, NL A1N 1W6) at about 4:15 AM NST (2:45 AM EST) and the girl on the headset there told me; "Unfortunately, we're closed at the moment."

That's right, a restaurant with an advertised 24 hour Drive-Thru told me they were closed.

Undaunted, and still craving a good burger, I went back to the Topsail Rd location, hoping that maybe whatever system issue they were experiencing had corrected itself. I was encouraged by the fact there was a car in front of me in the Drive-Thru that didn't just speed away five seconds after pulling up to the speaker. The car pulled ahead to the first window and I pulled up to the speaker. it was 4:35 AM NST (3:05 AM EST) and the first thing I noticed was that the Breakfast Menu was in place on the menu board next to the speaker. Then the voice through the box told me that A) Any order would be a 10 minute wait and B) They had changed to the Breakfast menu for the morning.

Now, I checked the McDonald's website and it confirms what has always been known. Breakfast starts at 5 AM in whatever timezone you happen to be in. Now fully realizing I'm nitpicking a bit here, I should have still had 25 minutes left to potentially get my burger fix. Sadly this was not the case.

Burger-less I came home and decided that I would at least let the McDonald's people know about my disappointing experience at two of their franchise locations. Then I found out that McDonalds.com only accepts email feedback for American stores. Then I checked Mcdonalds.ca and they don't accept email feedback at all. You can call one of three provided long distance phone numbers during business hours or submit your feedback in writing. You read that right, in writing! It's the 21st Century people, online communication is a standard at this point, yet one of the world's biggest purveyors of fast food only accepts phone calls or snail mail!? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

So in lieu of either of those routes, I'm making my own way. I'm bloggin' this!

Later

Steve

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