When you place an order on Pizza Hut’s website, you have to create an account, and to create an account, you have to check the box that says you agree to their privacy policy and terms of use. It also says, “I agree to receive information about Pizza Hut®/WingStreet® couons, promotions, announcements, events and specials.” This e-commerce blogger is amazed that Pizza Hut would resort to such a sneaky tactic, which ultimately ruins the customer experience and probably costs them online orders.
Here are the two biggest problems Tim sees with Pizza Hut’s “no choice” strategy:
First, it completely eliminated all of the value mentioned above that could have been created by an online order. Since we called in [and abandoned our online order], conversion costs increased, Pizza Hut will never have the opportunity to add our email address to their marketing lists (via a check or a non-uncheck), they will never have the chance to up sell or cross sell to us in an automated fashion, they have completely obliterated any loyalty we had and they provided an utterly terrible customer experience. Moreover, their customer retention and market share numbers just dwindled by a body count of two (my friend and I).Second, the strategy that Pizza Hut is utilizing makes me wonder if most users don’t notice what they’re getting themselves into and if this is what Pizza Hut is shooting for. Well known practice in eCommerce is to force a customer to agree to a sites general terms of use in order to transact on that site. Sometimes, at the same time a user is agreeing to the Terms of Use, a second, optional, opportunity is provided that allows the the customer to opt-in to advertising. If only one option is given, it is by and large a Terms of Use agreement. Therefore, if a customer only sees one option, and doesn’t read the details, they assume that they are agreeing to a sites Terms of Use, and that no option to opt-in to advertising exists, let alone that they are opting in if they agree to the Terms of Use.
Despite the “no choice” opt-in trick, it’s fairly easy to get yourself off their spam marketing list after you’ve registered. Here’s what their Privacy Policy has to say about it—note the comical way they make it sound like users had a choice to begin with, when they obviously didn’t:
For those who initially opted-in to receive future offers or promotional materials or to allow the sharing of Personal Information with third parties may subsequently opt-out as follows:For email communications: (a) send an e-mail to webmaster@pizzahut.com or (b) if you are a registered user, deselect the option on your accounts profile page under “My Account” on Our website;
For text message communications, (a) send an email to webmaster@pizzahut.com and include the appropriate mobile telephone number(s), (b) send a “STOP” text message to “749488″ or (c) if you are a registered user, deselect the option on your accounts profile page under “My Account” on Our website.
Or do what Tim did—don’t bother ordering from Pizza Hut online, and in fact order your pizza from a competing restaurant until Pizza Hut decides to stop forcing its marketing on online customers.
“That’s Freaking Spam-tastic: PizzaHut.com Requires Customers to Opt-In to Advertising When Ordering Online” [PlumberSurplus]
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Pizza Hut…..people eat that stuff? I’ll be dammed.
They could give the stuff away and I still would not eat it. Would much rather give my money to the local pizzeria.
They lost my business at least once due to the requirement to submit to their email Spam in order to buy online.
This is ridiculous.
@wideawake: To quote George Carlin: “Americans’ll eat anything, Anything! If you sautee or deep-fry raccoon’s asshole, people will buy it and EAT IT!”
@wideawake: Don’t be a snob, or worse a troll. If nobody was eating Pizza Hut pizza, the wouldn’t be in business, now would they?
Hmmm, I order from Pizza Hut, only online, maybe 3 times a month, I hate pizza, but I like the breadsticks (mmm I dip them in hot sauce) I’ve been ordering online for about 2 years now, and I’ve never gotten any spam, not even in my spam folder… I guess I remembered to unclick that thing when I signed up.
I think this is a recent requirement for those just registering now at PH’s site.
@Michael Belisle: Yea I totally agree the Papa John’s offers suck balls. All I’ve seen is dumb shit like “Buy a Large 5-topping pizza for only $14! Exclusive to e-mail subscribers!”
I order pizza hut online and I cant remember the last time I got an email from them. You can always unsubscribe afterwards.
@MyCokesBiggerThanYours: “You can always unsubscribe afterwards.”
Famous last words.
Once I found a nice locally owned establishment, I forgot Pizza Hut even existed. The quality of the pizza I consume has obviously improved.
I find it odd that the official email address is “webmaster”. Not just because the job of webmaster has little to do with processing of marketing data, but because the address of webmaster is often overloaded with spam and other crap that I bet most companies don’t even read that address.
Why TF would anyone buy Pizza Hut pizza in the first place? That stuff is certifiably awful!
Second, why give them your real email address in the first place. Many people I know maintain a pool of free accounts at the likes of Yahoo for just this purpose. I have accounts at Yahoo that I log onto every month or so. My only action on login is to mark most of the messages as spam and log out. I have absolutely no expectation that any message to these accounts is meaningful at all.
I wonder if Microsoft, when it becomes MicroHoo, realizes that it will be acquiring many accounts that serve no purpose other than as spam sinks? Afterall, they are going for the eyeballs, right?
The only reason to order from Pizza Hut is that there is no other pizza place within 20 miles. I guess poor customer service goes hand-in-hand with their disgusting pizza-like product. Papa John’s isn’t any better. I gave them a try a couple of times. Their pizza seemed to have an aftertaste of melted plastic. Scary. If the only pizza I could order were from Pizza Hut, I would just keep a couple of frozen pizzas from the supermarket in my freezer.
@sprocket79: So are you implying that someone who eats at Pizza Hut ONLY eats at Pizza Hut? I order from them once in a great while, but I’m well aware that there are other, better options. I’m pretty positive that anyone that goes to McDonald’s knows that there are better options. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for it.
It doesn’t have to be original to be true.
@sprocket79: But what you said isn’t true. “don’t eat at Pizza Hut. Their pizza is gross.” That’s an opinion not a truth. It’s also not very helpful.
I’m somewhat of a pizza connoisseur (even ordered pies by FedEx from NYC several years ago). I will say that Pizza Hut is good in its own way… the sauce is pretty tangy and the entire pizza has kind of an oily or greasy consistency which to me is a good thing. On the downside, knowing Pizza Hut’s economy of scale and being a sister of KFC/Taco Bell, they’re likely sourcing the cheapest, most highly processed ingredients available, something less likely to be happening at your locally-owned brick oven pizzeria.
I will say that I’ve also ordered online through Dominos the last place I lived (where there is no brick oven place) and I was highly pleased with the service, and didn’t get opted into any crap. I recommend them if you don’t have any good local pizza.
You can also make your own pizza. Though in my experience I haven’t had much luck making a good dough, and good cheese is DAMN expensive (us end consumers don’t get the good deals the pizza places do). Where I live right now there’s no pizza delivery, so I usually just buy the best pizza I can find in the supermarket (I hate how it’s always a caky crust though). </ramble>