Team Pizza Hut, I wanted to share my unpleasant meal booking experience with you today i.e. 15-Apr in Ahmedabad. You claim to be one of the best in the industry but my experience today has forced me to think otherwise. I am never going to promote PH again to my friends and relatives.
I wanted to order some Veg+ Non-Veg Pizzas for a family occasion and was trying to check the menu on the website. But when I selected the outlet close to my residence and tried ordering the meal, the nonveg portion was not reflected. After a couple of attempts, I called your super-efficient call center number 3988 3988 around 1040 am. I asked the lady on the call that the portal had this particular issue and I was not able to select nonveg items. She told me that she can see some nonveg items against this outlet. I asked her how is there a difference in what I can see and what she can see. She said she was not aware of the reason. When I asked her if I can book the order for my meal through her, she said yes. I proceeded to book the order including nonveg items for 1 pm delivery and with cash payment option. I asked her if I will get the order details on my phone and she said yes. When I did not get any order details for quite some time, I called again around 1145 am and I was told that the order is logged and will be processed on time. I will get text message once the order is processed and taken out for delivery.
To my surprise, I got a call at 1240(just 20 minutes before my chosen delivery time) from the outlet. I thought they are calling to confirm my address but to my surprise, the person said that they don’t serve Nonveg items and cannot process my order. I told that I needed delivery at 1 pm and you are calling at 1240 pm to tell me that my order cannot be served? Did it take them almost two hours to find this out? He said he got the info just 5 minutes ago. When I argued why was the order was taken by PH call center in the first place if they knew this fact, the person passed on the line to Mr. Ashley - managing the outlet. He said he was not aware why this happened but he was not in a position to do anything. I should speak with the call center to check. When I told Mr. Ashley that there was no fault from my side because I was told that the outlet serves nonveg and the order was also taken, it is they who should be resolving this issue internally. At this point, Mr. Ashley told me clearly that he cannot do anything and refused to process my order telling me that I am free to speak with their call center who processed the order but he will not do so on my behalf.
Totally confused, I dialed the call center at 1250 pm wanting to know what was happening and the lady tried to convince me that the outlet does not serve any nonveg food. My question to her was - why was this fact not known to the person who took my order and she had no answer. When I asked her to divert the order to some other outlet and get the order processed as well as home delivered, she kept me on hold for some time and then told me that I should wait for 5-10 minutes and I will get a call from the outlet. Surprisingly, I did not get any call from anyone.
Frustrated, angry and starting to feel hungry by now, I dialed the call center again at 1 pm(the delivery deadline for my original meal order). This time, the guy at the other end wanted me to repeat the entire story again. Without losing my patience, I did so and this person tells me the same thing which I had heard umpteen times by then. He clearly told me that the order was taken due to some technical glitch. I so love this word. "Technical glitch". I mean, if something is wrong, be it either the system or the process or any mistake by a person, and the customer is at the receiving end, blame it on a technical glitch.
I was in no mood to have another duel of words with your call center agent again as I was already famished and even my family was waiting for the order to be delivered. I told him to convert the order into all veg items which was finally processed and delivered to me around 145 pm.
Needless to say, PH is never again going to be on my list of restaurants. Not only was I unhappy with the order getting placed then canceled and finally converted to all veg, I am pissed off by the way the entire episode was handled by PH team. I am sure this is not the first episode exposing lack of knowledge of the call center agents or some missing links in the system like showing nonveg items if the store is the only veg. The scariest part is that PH does not feel it important to rectify the gaps in their systems OR train their agents appropriately.
I would have been happy if the order was actually routed to some other store and was delivered, even at the cost of adjusting to some rule breaks, primarily because it was their fault. But it seems no one at PH was ready to accept that it was their fault. And on every interaction, I was made to feel that it was my fault that I chose to have faith in PH and placed my order with them.
Frankly I don’t expect any flutters or any drastic actions or even any apologies from PH, out of this note but if every person who reads this article, understands the pain I have gone through and realise they also can be a subject of such a harassment anytime, and think twice before going to / ordering any meal online on PH, the time spent on writing this note is worth the effort.