One of my favourite chicken joints has added online ordering to their delivery service.

Initially, I had great response to their service. The website was clear and easy to navigate. I placed an order for delivery at a specified time, and they were there within minutes. When I used their customer feedback form to tell them of my pleasure with their service, I got a response back within the hour. I would have held them up to anyone as an example of how to do online food service right. Emphasis on the words 'would have'.

One day, at the office, I got the craving for their chicken and special sauce, so I jumped onto their website and placed my order. In the past, I’d been using their option for scheduling a delivery time, ordering an hour or two in advance. But on this day it was almost lunch when the craving set in, so I opted for the regular delivery.

‘Your order is guaranteed to arrive in 40 minutes’ I was informed both on the website and in my email confirmation. And so I continued about my work and began to anticipate my chicken’s arrival. After 40 minutes passed and no delivery guy to be seen anywhere, I began to wonder what ‘guaranteed’ really meant. It didn’t say on the email confirmation. A quick perusal of their website turned up no information either.

After another five minutes passed, I emailed them to ask just what this guarantee was, because my chicken was now late.

The chicken finally arrived about 15-20 minutes late. “You’re a little late” I said to the driver. He agreed and told me there was some difficulty finding the place, then slid over the credit card receipt for me to sign. Guess ‘guaranteed’ was just a lot of huff and puff with nothing substantial to back it up. I signed.

It was only after my tasty chicken that I found attached to the bag my itemized receipt, at the bottom off which read ‘Delivery after 40 minutes, complimentary’.

I sent an email to the chicken place requesting that they not charge my credit card as the food was clearly late. With no response, I filled out their customer response form on the website, giving the details and again requesting they not charge me as per their policy. Whereas before the response was instant, all I received was silence. When my statement came in at month’s end, I found they’d gone ahead and made the charge.

The purpose of a ‘delived by or free’ policy is to highlight your attention to customer service. By having such a policy, you not only declare your intention of serving in a timely fashion, but you are willing to back it up with a complimentary meal if the promise is not met. Of course – if you don’t tell anyone about your policy, it’s not going to have any benefit. And if you then fail to follow through with your own promotion and renege on both your promise of timely delivery and a complimentary meal, you are actually going to harm your business far more than if you had made no promises at all. The $20 meal you quibble over is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential revenue from all my future meal orders – which are now directed towards the competition.

If you are offering a ‘delivered by or free’ promotion, then all of your delivery staff should be trained so that if they arrive late, the first thing they do is apologize for being late and inform that the meal is complimentary. There should be no haggling over time. There should be no excuses. Just a, ‘our apologies – please accept this meal free of charge’.

If you make a promise – keep it. If you’re unable to keep a promise, make amends.

Now – this is where the post should have ended. Only, the chicken place took my bad experience and made it worse.

After all my emails and attempts to contact them were ignored and my credit card was charged regardless, I chose to dispute the transaction. I provided the details to my credit card company and they put it into queue for investigation.

Yesterday I look up and there’s the delivery guy standing in front of my desk and he’s a little irate. He wants to know what my problem is that I’m challenging this payment. He tells me the chicken place is going to dock him for the cost of the meal and wants to know how that’s fair – what with him having kids to feed and making little more than minimum wage after paying for the cost of gas and maintenance on his car?

What's curious is that he is under the belief that I’m claiming I never ordered the meal and that he never obtained a signature. He had a copy of the bill in his hand to show me this. Apparently, if a driver fails to get the proper authorization for a credit card payment, the chicken place will dock their pay.

I explain to him that my only dispute is the chicken being late, and that the company policy is that a late chicken is a free chicken. He says that’s something all-together different because the company won’t dock a driver for a late delivery. I print off a copy of my emails to the company and he goes away satisfied.

Now I could see this kind of petty bone-headedness from management if this were some mom & pop chicken joint where they didn't know any better. But this is a national chain. How is it that the employees are given access to the name and address of people involved in a payment dispute? And what the heck is a national chain doing, trying to cheat one of their employees?

Does any of this inspire me to order take out from them again? Ever?
A shame, because I really, really like their chicken.