If we worked in fast food, we’d want to work at this Burger King, because you don’t have to provide good service to score a perfect survey. You just have to give away food! Now take your free Whopper and get the hell out of here!
(Thanks to Levenhopper!)
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Way too Funny! How I wish I was the regional manager for that store. Only poor evaluations would be accepted as valid.
@GreatWhiteNorth: Wow you sound like a prick. Lighten up, its just a burger king.
I do that for both the BK & Wendy’s surveys.
It’s just faster.
Wouldn’t the fact that there are a lot of 5 ratings for this location send up some red flags?
@nursetim: The sad thing is that I seriously doubt that they’re confirming people rated them all 5s.
@Wombatish: It should raise lots of flags. It is Burger King, afterall.
@nursetim: Nope. If it’s like most other customer service surveys, only 5′s count. A 4 is as good as a zero.
@nursetim:
Or maybe the sign on the wall that’s likely seen by the regional manager and who knows who else that happens to stop by to check things out…
It’s like the scummy car dealerships that would give you a free (insert crappy add-on here) if you rated them highly at the manufacturer’s survey, in spite of the fact that they treated you like crap. No wonder most of the BK’s in my area have gone out of business…and hopefully the rest will follow suit before long. (Not to mention that BK is simply nasty as well.)
@scootinger: It’s better than McD’s.
@scootinger: How are they going to know? I’d tell them okay and them rate them down anyway. What are they going to do about, get mad at you for screwing them as they tried to scam the system?
@scootinger: Well, giving you something free may not be crappy, you have to weigh it out. I wasn’t thrilled with my experience last time I bought a car, but I did get the price I wanted, and for the favorable review I got an extra set of floor mats. Yes, I know I’m a very cheap review-whore. I’m not proud.
@takes_so_little: The last several companies I have worked for abide by the almighty customer survey. It seems they believe it’s the only reasonable measure they have to measure how good their customer service is, when in fact they are deeply flawed and easily corruptible.
@scootinger: Your BK might suck, but the one here is the only half decent fast food place for miles.
@tsume: “half decent fast food place”
oxymoron
@scootinger: Why would you buy a car from a dealer who treats you like crap?
@scootinger: Yeah, Charles Barker Lexus (WORST Lexus dealer around) does that – most Lexus dealers have stuff about how they love their customers everywhere…not this one, you walk in and are greeted to a poster of the dealership owner photoshopped onto a Time “Man of the Year” cover! But anyways, they give you half-off your an oil change and “free postage” if you fill out the prior visit’s survey in front of them.
The big evil Wal-Mart has this figured out: The credit card swiper thing says “Was your cashier friendly today” or “Is the store clean”…etc and it’s anonymous – works great!
We’re trying to do that into our seatback TV system as well – a survey about various aspects of the Virgin experience – in exchange for a free on-demand show.
Don’t you get a free sandwich regardless of how you rate them? I know Papa Murphy’s has a similar deal, but they always get top ratings from me because they earn them.
@Mobius: Yes. Yes, you do.
@Mobius: You get a free sandwich with the purchase of a medium drink. They are saving you the cost of the drink (though you may still want to buy one).
@RandomHookup: Here (Texas) you have to buy fries and a drink.
@Wombatish: It’s been a while…yep, you have to buy fries, too.
That’s nothing. At Gamestop, our manager told us, the employees (this is a major, major no no, just in case someone somehow doesn’t know this) to take the survey, and take it often. He also lied to several employees who asked if they could win the prize for taking the survey.
There are no bounds to the lengths some middle men will go to to look just a little better for the big guy.
@Wombatish: Actually I believe at Gamestop managers can lose their jobs for not getting enough people to take the survey.
@dragonfire81: They’re still not supposed to have employees take the survey.
And we had several stores in our district reporting 0-10 surveys, the lowest brackets. I’ve severed all ties with the company, but I haven’t heard of any mass firings.
@Wombatish: Last I checked there was no real prize for taking the survey, just an entry into a draw to win a PS3 or a Wii. I don’t think that motivates a lot of people to take the survey.
@Wombatish: there WERE mass firings a few months ago… not for lack of surveys taken but for this exact reason. there was a district manager and a number of store managers that lost their jobs for falsifying their customer experience results (by having employees take the survey among other things).
My brother takes advantage of these surveys, regardless of what you answer, you get a free sandwich.
I am convinced nobody reads these anyway. I had a problem with an Arby’s once, so I did the survey and sent a separate email. I got an automated receipt back, nothing else. A couple of weeks later I received automated follow up email asking “Did anyone contact you?” I answered that I had not been contacted. Again, no response. This was months ago.
@Devidence: It depends on the store. I work at Home Depot and we have a folder full of print-outs of people’s comments and ratings in the break room for everyone to read, and we also get awards (which come with extra $$$ in your paycheck) if our names are mentioned positively in it.
I don’t think they directly respond to poor comments, but they generally address the problem in the store.
@Devidence: It depends on the company. Wendy’s and Culver’s responded to my online complaints within 48 hours. It might be because they were both for customer service problems.
If you really want to make change at a restaurant, refuse their offer of compensation. I rarely complain about the food in a chain restaurant (it’s fast food, it’s all basically hot garbage). But I will follow up on poor CSR. If a manager or district manager calls or emails me and I explain to him “that I’m not looking for free stuff, I just want better service,” there is a definite change within the month.
@lincolnparadox:
Most of these places are franchises anyways, so finding and contacting the franchise owner might yield a faster resolution than calling corporate.
@lincolnparadox: it shows to them that you are not one of those thousands jockeying to scam the system for FREEEEEEEEEE stuff. Say that word and people will straight murder for something that was never rightfully theirs.
Even if you have a great experience at a fast food restaurant, do you really feel like filling out a survey? If you’re a manager and you need this, how else would you motivate customers than with free food?
I would love to fill one out and say “Great experience! In fact, I got a free burger just for saying so! A+!”
Where is this outlet? I’m hankering for a Whopper and can cruise the parking lot to find a receipt.
@RandomHookup:
This is on the back of EVERY Burger King receipt.
@basilray: I realize that. I’m asking where I can find this one that doesn’t make me BUY a soda to get the free sandwich. That’s what the hook is on this store’s offer.
@RandomHookup: I didn’t even realize Burger King was still around. They all shut down like 5+ years ago. (Seattle area) I think I’ve seen one in the past few years in the boondocks a hundred miles out or so
As a former store manager, BK Corporate looks at this survey VERY heavily. They send out the results at the end of every month. Basically, if you aren’t putting up the numbers, your district manager will be paying you a not so friendly visit.
That being said, the stores I ran never had issues with poor survey scores. It was tough to get people to take the survey…even if you informed them they got something free. The only people that regularly utilized them were the regulars, who always scored us high. My stores averaged a 4.35 out of 5 which was usually the top score in my district.
Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble but the free whopper is common practice. In fact, flip over your BK receipt and it will say to call and you get a free whopper and all you have to do is put the code on the receipt.
Free entree at Panda Experss for doing the same thing.
@The_Red_Monkey: You do have to make a purchase of soda to get the free burger.
@RandomHookup: Who cares? A soda is like $1.50.
@Galactica: A whopper is like, $2?
@Galactica: I guess I do. Free is better than the price of a soda and fries.
I am actually pretty surprised that everyone is taking this very lightly. I would have thought since this is …..shall we say…..fudging the numbers, bribery, and cover ups, that everyone would be a bit tougher.
@LegoMan322: Fast food only gets fast consideration…It took 5 minutes to eat the meal…do you really want to spend 10 minutes talking about it?
@LegoMan322: There are no crimes being committed here. Only policy breaches.
@fantomesq: Well, I would say that there is a lot of illegal activity going on here but I do not have the lawyering skills to take that further.
But I am voting for false advertisement (we all know “blank” food chain was ranked #1 by people on the internet) will hit a commercial soon.
Sellers on eBay do this all the time. In fact, this manager may have been inspired by this.
Retail managers are often judged on unscientific data. It’s not fair, but it’s hard to evaluate someone who has a subjective job.
Off topic for this post, but anyone else notice that you can’t comment on the Consumer Reports post before this? Coincidence?
@youbastid: No, there are some articles/posts that are for info only. Many of the “comment code” posts are the same way.
@youbastid: I’m guessing they don’t want to get called on the scummy tactic they are using, of giving you a “free” trial while taking your cc information so they can charge you w/o your consent in 30 days if you don’t cancel. This is dirty when a corporation does it, and it’s just as dirty when a consumer organization does it. Shame on you Consumerist!
I took one of these the other day, although there was no order that I give all 5s. I gave mostly 3s and 4s, I think. I don’t know where the receipt with my code went, either. I can’t tell if that one had the same deal here: free sandwich only with purchase of fries and a drink. Which is still pretty good, I guess.
Almost as bad as Home Depot having their cashiers stick a “Please fill the survey” into every bag and handing them to you as well. And how about those eBay reviews? You ever read the letters sellers send along w/what you order?
Once I brought one of the survey code receipts in, and a manager was working the register. He asked if I had rated the restaurant favorably, and when I said I had, he upped my fries and drink (you need to purchase fries and drink for the free sandwich) to larger sizes for no extra cost.
@josephbloseph: wow. i wonder what he’d have done if you said no! spit in your burger?
Burger King gives receipts? I need to look at the takeout bag more carefully when I buy my dollar-menu lunch on the run.
I was a manager for Wachovia for a couple years – they would put a ton of emphasis on random survey calls to customers that had visited your branch each week – you got graded 1 to 7 on a bunch of things, and anything below a perfect 7 was considered unacceptable – all it took was a single customer who was pissed at the bank for some reason, or was annoyed at being called at home, or had had a marginally poor experience at the branch for something that had nothing to do with customer service, and your branch was screwed. Employees spent half their time reciting these canned phrases that would show up on the survey instead of trying to actually provide legit, good service. I don’t blame this BK at all.
@TomCoughlin: My wife works for US Bank – they have the same type of thing on a scale of 1-8. If you don’t score an 8, the disctrict manager goes apeshit on the branch and ruins everybody’s day.
@downwithmonstercable: Which is insane since not every customer views the “scale” in the same way. Me for example, if I had a normal experience, I’d think that rated a middle number, not a top number, which apparently is different than expected.
@TomCoughlin: Career “managers” love hollow metrics like these things, because it does their job for them. They don’t have to actually monitor stores or branches or talk to customers or employees or even visit places if they don’t want to. They can do whatever they want and simply wait for the magic number to tell them whether to yell or do nothing.
BK stores trying to fudge numbers isn’t that uncommon. The Thomaston, Ga store would do this little thing with the drive through – if it was going to be over about 60 seconds serving time, they’d ask you to pull forward a bit, to the end of the driveway. Didn’t matter if anyone was behind you, you were off the pressure pad under the window, and so they got good service time from it. At times they’ve had 5-6 cars parked up like that, and as you can see via Google, its not really designed for it – [tinyurl.com] (streetview of the drivethrough)
Call me “Bad Consumer” but I’ve occasionally just written random letter/number combinations on the back of the receipt without taking the survey and they still take it.
I just like that they put spelled 5″s like that.
I was at a local Arbys a few weeks ago to buy one sandwich. They gave me 5 reciepts which would allow me to rate them 5 times. Each rating generated a free sandwich coupon.
Anyone notice that the ad for ConsumerReports subscriptions has absolutely no way to comment? Hmm. Maybe too many would be complaining about the similarities between the ‘free’ trial and the ‘free’ credit reports.
I’m sure I’ll hear crap for this, but I love me some BK Tendercrisp and the Chicken Fries..
And thier regular fries are mighty tasty as well..
Go Indiana BKs…
Kind of..
Reminds me of the Amazon seller that didn’t send me my item, but so generously offered $5 off my next purchase only if I would remove my negative feedback.
Actually, that was worse.
Honestly, if I ate meat, I’d probably take advantage of this. Free foods is free foods.
I know whenever I buy a car, they salesperson says “now, you’re going to be getting a survey soon, and we would really like it to be all “10″, OK?
Give me something I really want…. and I will fill out the survey. Yes… its hard to get people to fill out the survey unless you give them something of REAL value.
A free whopper with the purchase of a drink…. is not.
At steak’n'shake they have $2 off your next order…. which IMO IS a good value.
This just happened to me too!
At CVS last week, they gave me a free Take 5 candy bar if I agreed to rate them a 5 on the phone survey number on the receipt.
But you get a free whopper anyway, no matter what you score just for taking the survey!