WWDDD? Customer service issue of the day

[simpdog]

Burger joint. "gourmet" burger place so a step up from McDonalds but it's not like you're getting steak on a bun.

Sunday is kids eat free day, so cheap friend takes wife + 2 kids. They ring through the whole order, kids are free and the adults were getting an advertised deal. NOPE. Cash girl talks to manager and they can't do the advertised deal (which is essentially $3 off a combo for each adult). Friend says fine ring it back through and do the kids free. Better to have two kids combos free than to have the adults with $3 off per meal.

When they bring out the food, they mention they forgot to bill the 2nd adult fries/drink. They only charged for the burger and the difference is about $3 plus tax. Friend asks to see itemized receipt and it all checks out.

Friend ends up talking to manager who was going to fix it and says "for $3 plus tax on an error your cash made normally a restaurant would just eat that cost". Manager says well we didn't bill you for the drink or fries...BUT if you give us back the drink (an unopened bottle of water) we'll just forget the $3 and you can keep the fries since we made them.

So full list of options
-pay the $3 + tax
-give the drink back and get nothing
-argue more and possibly get the bottle of water free too
-Should he also follow it up with a call or letter to the restaurant letting them know the full situation?
-LOL about giving back a water. Even if it's unopened, what if kids wipe their filthy hands on it?

I side with my friend who gave back the water and didn't pay the $3. But should he have really paid the $3+tax?

What would you do in this situation? AND the real question is What Would Dan Druff Do?

[Belly Buster]

Are you saying they refused to honour the promotion, or that the stuff they bought wasn't part of the promotion?

[simpdog]

Are you saying they refused to honour the promotion, or that the stuff they bought wasn't part of the promotion?

In order to get kids meals free you need 1 adult meal per kid meal.

So because they only charged for 1 adult meal and 1 burger, there were not actually 2 full adult meals on the bill.

[Belly Buster]

In that case it should be pretty easy to work out what the cost should be. On the basis that they can't even do that right, I would argue with them that they can fuck off for the extra $3. If it is fast food style (i.e. pay up front at the till) and you've got your food and paid already, then that is deal done.

[Dan Druff]

Believe it or not, I'm on the burger place's side here.

I am assuming that it says somewhere (either on the $3 off promotion or the kids eat free promotion) that they cannot be combined with other promotions. If it doesn't, they actually have to honor both when it comes time to pay the bill. That's extremely important here, actually, but you left that part out.

But assuming that there is some printed restriction, they are 100% correct to not allow both promos to be used together.

And what about the forgotten charge for the second fries/drink? Totally reasonable to ask your friend to pay the difference, because your friend underpaid due to a ring-up mistake. While it would create good will just to forgive the whole thing, you can't fault them for asking your friend to either pay the correct amount or return the drink.

There is only one exception to this, and that's if you went through a considerable amount of trouble beforehand, which resulted in the error.

I had this at In-N-Out recently.

There was a new girl working there, and I ordered a 4-patty burger. Before anyone accuses me of being a pig, I was giving one of the patties to Benjamin (he prefers bare patties to burgers with buns), and the In-n-Out patties are pretty small in general.

Anyway, the girl was really confused and kept saying, "So we have 3 patties...", and I kept correcting her to 4. Finally, at the end, I asked, "So you have 4 patties, right?" She said, "Yes, 4 patties." I must have gone through this 3 versus 4 thing like three times with her.

Well, I look at my receipt about 2 minutes later (before the food comes), and indeed I was only charged for 3 patties! I brought this to her attention, and she said, "Oh, sorry. Well, I can fix that. That will be 92 cents for the extra patty, please."

I told her that I wasn't going to dig back in my wallet again to pay for this, after she repeatedly got this wrong, even after all of my attempts to correct her during the order. She sat there with a stupid look on her face and kept saying, "No", before a more senior member of the staff (who overheard it) said, "No problem, we'll put the other patty on for free."

This wasn't so much about paying the 92 cents, but more about having to pull my wallet out again and pay after the girl repeatedly got it wrong and ignored my previous attempts to correct her.

In a situation like that, you comp the customer.

When it's just an accidental undercharge, the customer should really pay the difference.