Complaint History & Business Rating for Pizza Hut

Karin S. says: Today, I ordered from my local Pizza Hut on Walzem Road, which has been delivering to my house for 18 years. Yes, they have often forgotten items such as sauce or icing or even outright gotten the order wrong, but in the past they always apologized and tried to complete the incomplete order. Until today.

Today once again our sauce and Icing was missing, so I call our Pizza Hut. Instantly I am put on hold, this is fine, I am used to being put on hold by them. They take me off hold, I explain the issue, the manager mumbles something about the problem that I could not really make out, then without warning, she puts me on hold again. Then I am shortly hung up on after that, nothing resolved. So I call back, say no I do not want to be put on hold because I was hung up on. I mention my incomplete order, get an insincere apology and then am put on hold for probably a good 5 minutes even after my refusal to be put on hold. (A huge part of me believes she was trying to get me to give up and hang up by keeping me on hold so long.) The manager finally picks up, and after I complain that I was hung up on by her earlier (she was the one handling my earlier call) I get told by her, "I didn't hang up on you, it's not my fault."

I have worked in customer service, fault or not, it is her problem. She proceeds to argue with me, I am getting frustrated and my voice does raise by now, due to her refusing to resolve my problem or take any responsibility towards resolving it. I ask to speak to her manager, only for her to tell me she is the manager. She has repeatedly argued with me, more than once she threw my own words about managerial responsibility back at me in an out of context manner, and outright refused to complete our order in a timely manner because there were other orders that she needed to deliver before she could complete my incomplete order. Nevermind that my incomplete order arrived well before those orders she is insisting on giving priority to now.

She then proceeds to hang up on me a second time because, in her words, "I am yelling at her." Yes, my voice had raised in frustration by this time, no, I never cursed or called names or traded insults.

What happened to, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience, let me fix this for you?" I was never offered this service by this manager. What I was told was that none of the mistakes were her responsibility. It's discouraging when you have a customer service problem and it becomes no one's fault to resolve it, not even the manager's.

And yes, I have worked in Customer Service, I handled jobs in a print center. (Which I feel is very comparable to the fast food industry. Both have customers who require specialized orders and detailed attention, often within a limited time frame.) Mistakes were made sometimes, not always by me. But they were always my mistakes to fix when dealing with a customer, regardless of whether the mistakes were my fault or not. Never would I have once considered telling the customer, "I didn't do the mistake; it's not my fault" like this Pizza Hut manager did me.

Fact: the customer doesn't care who is at fault. They don't want to hear excuses on why the mistake happened. They just want the mistake fixed.

Needless to say, we never did get our icing and sauce that we paid for, which feels a bit like theft of funds, though small, to me. I did report the manager to their national headquarters and they acted very concerned and understanding about my frustration, claiming to give it higher priority. Time will tell I suppose.

Just sad though, what should have been an easily resolved mistake was blown all out of proportion by an unprofessional manager who preferrred to argue with a customer over "Who is at fault?" rather than accept responsibility for correcting mistakes made while under her management. All I really wanted was the icing and sauce I had paid for to be delivered.