Monday, August 29, 2011

BAD Wendy's!

We have done quite a bit of "fast food dinners" lately; I haven't felt very good and my other half can't cook a low carb meal to save his life!  That being said, our usual haunts didn't seem all that appealing yesterday.  McDonald's does great with the "no bun thing" after a visit or two (need to train your local cashier), unless you throw them a curve ball...like ordering a crispy chicken wrap (they're like $1.49) with grilled chicken instead of crispy and no tortilla!  I got it in a lettuce wrap if you are curious, chicken, bacon, cheese, more lettuce, and ranch, all rolled up and ready to nom!  Burger King is even better at getting the order correct, we get BK stackers there, plain (no sauce) and low carb please (their "no bun" button is marked "low carb"), for kicks, we add A1 or Barbeque Sauce, occasionally I add Ranch too. Carl's Jr. offers low carb burgers, I had a Portabella Six-Dollar burger several nights ago...eat over the sink, it's a runny one!

Jack in the box is "okay" about it, but they accommodate us when we go in.  They have a "policy" that says when you ask for no bun, you get no sauce either!  Ask for it on the side...  Also, they are generally not "bright enough" at the store we go to to put the cheese on top of the meat, so the cheese is almost always stuck to the plastic tray, edible though!

Then there's Wendy's...it isn't that the food is "bad"...the prices are outrageous ($18.22 for a half salad, 1 junior bacon cheese (in a "pair 2 deal"), one triple Baconator, and two drinks)!  Top it off with slow service at the counter (they make the food fast because they sub-total after each item so the cooks can start making them before you finish ordering...this could be fun, order food, hem and ha, change your mind 15 times!), and then the real peeve to my pet (my pet peeve that is)!  A rude cashier!  It took us 5 minutes to order our food, which we had already decided on before going to the counter because the cashier was too lazy to wait until we finished ordering the first item before zapping it back to be made.  She tried to walk back and tell them not to put it on a bun (to which they said "it doesn't say no bun"), then had to come back to the register, void it and start over.  Once my other half's burger was on it's way to being made, I ordered...  First my salad (the Chicken and berry one with Almonds)...she tells me "Pleas don't say no bun!"  It's a salad nimrod...  But, since I had wanted a burger, I said that I did want to do the pair 2 and get a Jr bacon cheeseburger....no bun.

After finishing the order on our end, it took us another 5 or so minutes to get her to total the order and let us pay!  She tried to talk us into just eating the carbs because they "are the best part!" and "so yummy".  Then she decided that it must be some kind of a joke...so she asked "Is this a diet or a triple dog dare kind of thing".  "Diet" she got in unison with annoyed yet completely straight faces.  I can only assume she thought we were still trying to pull a joke on us, because at this point I was getting very upset and was getting ready to tell her to get her boss...  I should mention this isn't the first time this has happened at Wendy's, I actually get this sort of response about 75% of the time here in Spokane...the Wendy's in Southeast Portland I went to in June did awesome and didn't even bat an eye when I ordered them with no bun!

Another thing that annoys me, especially on this visit, is that they never give you the itemized receipt!  I can only imagine the reasoning behind this...they can over-charge you and you are none the wiser, they avoid bad customer surveys because you need the 8-digit store code printed on that receipt to fill out the online survey (here), also, they avoid having to give away free food since you can't do the survey and get the code for doing it!  We never use the "free food for survey" coupons, even when we do the surveys...mostly because it is food we can't eat (pie, cake, fries, whatever...), but do let our opinions be known when there is an issue.  Lately, we have been filling out many of these customer satisfaction surveys, mostly for good service, even mediocre service so they can improve and get better at what they are lacking.

So, I sat down this morning to discuss my dissatisfaction with the computer screen and maybe let someone at the Wendy's corporate offices know about the repeatedly bad service we have been getting from their store (which we drive past to go to the stores we get better service at), only to be locked out because I don't have the 8-digit store number, because (wait for it)...we never are given our proper receipt (ever)!

My (current) personal opinion is that Wendy's can go suck it...I won't be returning, even if I do love those little junior bacon cheeseburgers with their tiny patties of square meat!

Opinions can change though...so, I hope that, like General Mills, Wendy's trolls the internet looking for people talking about them and wants to make this right!  On the topic of GM (the cereal company, not the car company), when Wheaties Fuel first came out, my other half absolutely fell in love with it, to the tune of two boxes minimum each week!  He tweeted/posted on Facebook/updated his no longer in use self-blog about how good it was when it first came out.  GM emailed him within hours of his posting to offer him coupons and discuss what he liked about their new cereal!  So, I know some companies are worried about their "social networking PR"...let's see if it extends to the fast food industry.  I probably would not have posted about it had I been able to fill out the stupid survey...

/end rant

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