Ordered lunch online with Chipotle across the street from the office through the Chipotle website
Arrive at promise time to mild chaos and no orders at all being filled
Find out that the system that handles online orders is kaput. No online orders at all are being filled.
Not wanting to flail around finding another option without a line, decide to get into the live order line that’s just restarted.
While I wait, click the customer service link in the order email.
Chatbot accepts all my order info…then says it can’t help right now and ends the conversation immediately.
I try and fail to get back to the bot to try again. It might be deliberate or not, I’m not sure.
Finally get food. Mention to cashier, before I pay, about what chatbot did. He asks if I want to speak to manager. I decide yes, to see what my options are. I step aside and wait.
Manager doesn’t come out, likely still dealing with the fallout of the system crash. Cashier tells me of a toll free phone number I can call instead.
Ask to pay for my tacos, and cashier just hands them to me. (By this time, live order line is massive.) Over half an hour of unexpected waiting has occurred by now.
So now, the poll. I’ve gone back and forth between these two options for a bit. I’m leaning one way, but wondering what other folks thought. Having ordered in-store exactly what I ordered online, should I pursue a refund on my online order?
Sure, you experienced a lot of inconvenience, spectacularly unhelpful bot, and unexpected waiting; you deserve a free lunch.
Nah, you paid for tacos, and got your tacos. It’s a closed issue.
If you paid for, and were charged for, the online order, pursue a refund. If you only paid for the order you placed in the store, and not the online order, the matter is closed. Perhaps call the number to tell them the online thing is screwed up, but that would be a further investment of time into an already annoying thing.
I prefer to keep my complaints for things that are bad because they’ve chosen to be bad. If I order a well done steak and it comes out stilling mooing, I send it back and it is still oozing blood, then I want to speak to the manager. For tech issues and stuff that is annoying but for me falls into the bucket of “C’est La Vie”.
I probably wouldn’t call the number, but shooting an email to their complaints department would only take a few seconds. Maybe you’ll get a coupon for a free meal, maybe you won’t.
Any effort beyond that is throwing good time after bad.
You paid for what you got. You got what you paid for. So that transaction, malformed though it was, is fair and done.
Separately from the above, you had a lousy customer service experience. Fuss at the national Customer Service call center. Maybe you’ll give them some info they don’t already have and thereby do a Good Deed and gather karma points. Maybe you’ll get a coupon for your trouble. Maybe you’ll get an hour of listening to a computer tell you how important your call is. Every 15 seconds.
But this second “transaction” between you and CS is the right way to handle your hurt consumer feelings and perhaps get a reasonable redress for the (warning: first world problem) harm that was done.
Trying to hold your taco purchase hostage to the customer service foul-up is simply the retail equivalent of vigilantism: maybe emotionally satisfying in the moment, but almost certainly morally wrong in the end.
If I get fast food–and I’m no snob, I get fast food–it’s because I’ve kind of given up on having a good meal. I know that I’m asking underpaid and understaffed schlubs to heat up some unhealthy crap for me, and I’m just hoping there’s enough salt and grease to make it tolerable. I never complain about the workers or the quality, because my expectations are already rock-bottom.
I’m in the “move on” camp. (I was actually somewhat surprised the poll, at least now, overwhelmingly reflects this.) Write corporate customer service a letter/email if you need to, get some coupons for your trouble, and call it a day.
But, but but … we can’t move on yet. The OP @Leaper hasn’t even told us what kind of tacos he got. We’re not done here until we can critique his choice of mains, accessories, and condiments. Especially the condiments.
Given that you actually talked with the cashier about what happened, I would presume they gave you the food because you’d already paid online.
It also would not surprise me if the money eventually gets sent back to you anyways, with the online system having no record of the order ever arriving at the store or being filled.
I would certainly write a lengthy email to them. Not to get the probably morally dubious refund but to ask them to reimburse the 30 minutes that you lost.
The whole ‘order ahead’ thing at Chipotle seems to be a real shit show everywhere I go. Unless it’s at a non-peak time I wouldn’t even bother. Every time I go in to get in line there looks to be a bunch of pissed off customers waiting for their call-ahead orders that are past due and a bunch of stressed out workers. Seems like a system that sucks that corporate chooses to ignore while the customers and employees pay the price.
Some chains are just better at it than others. I have it worked out to a science with the Del Taco across the street from my work where if I place my order three minutes before my bus reaches its stop, they’ll have it ready for me when I walk through the door six minutes later. The Wendy’s in the parking lot is less consistent but still reliable. The Sonic next to Del Taco, on the other hand, is an absolute crapshoot where I can place my order ten minutes before I show up only for them to take five minutes to answer the walk-up box and then tell me they had no idea I was coming.
They didn’t charge you BECAUSE your online order was messed up. They have already addressed it.
Can you get it refunded anyway, because they have no record of that? Yeah, probably. It will cost you another chunk of time, almost certainly more time than it’s worth, and it’s not money they owe you. It would be a tiny petty dishonesty pursued because the wait annoyed you. But you signed up for that long wait when you saw the line and decided not to go elsewhere.
Is it worth complaining to customer service about the wait? I dunno. It wouldn’t be worth it to me. To me, it would just be wasting more time. But if it would give you satisfaction, go for it.
