Pizza Hut Completely Screws Up Customer’s Order, Accuses Him Of “Getting Physical” With Driver

pizzahutsitegrabEven the best pizza places will completely botch the occasional delivery order, but what sets a good one pizza joint apart from the bad ones is how it handles those gaffes. But it looks like one Pizza Hut decided that it is fine with being on the wrong end of that customer service spectrum.

Consumerist reader James says he recently decided to order some pizzas and soda from his local Pizza Hut, so he went online and placed his order using his credit card.

The first sign that things might not go so wonderfully: the soonest available delivery time was two hours out. James wasn’t bothered by the wait time, so he placed the order anyway.

The pizzas eventually arrived, but the driver did not bring the soda that James had already paid for. At first, the driver claimed that it wasn’t on the order, but James pointed out that it was right there at the top of the form.

The driver said he’d need to return to the store to get the soda, but James would need to pay for the pizzas first.

This is where we point you back to the second paragraph in which we note that the order had already been paid for by credit card.

James shows the driver the e-mail receipt for the order, showing that it had been pre-paid. The driver calls back to the store but his boss insists that it’s a cash order.

Because it would be stupid to pay twice for the same order (which was also incomplete), James said no to the delivery.

“He got angry and left, telling me it wasn’t his fault,” writes James, “which I agreed with.”

And so James once again called Pizza Hut, hoping someone could sort this mess out. The call center “agent” he spoke to put James on hold while he called the actual local Hut.

“He came back and told me that the manager told him that I got ‘physical’ with the driver and they would not deal with my problem in any way,” writes James. “This was so ludicrous, anyone who knows me knows I don’t get physical with anyone. Probably haven’t since the fifth grade.”

Even though he was now persona non grata with the folks at the local Hut, the phone rep confirmed to James that the order had been prepaid online. However, the local store was refusing to cooperate because of this claim of James getting physical with the driver.

“I told the agent to reverse the charge from my credit card and forget it,” says James. “He said a District Manager will have to call me back to determine how to handle it.”

James never did hear back from this District Manager, but the charges were later reversed. No one from Pizza Hut has reached out to him about the situation.

UPDATE: Pizza Hut has responded to our request for a statement on this story.

“We apologize that this customer didn’t have an acceptable experience when ordering from us,” reads the statement. “Our team members work hard to meet and exceed customer expectations, but we fell short in this situation. We will work even harder to make sure the experience is better next time.”

As for the question of why James had to go through a call center instead of calling the local Pizza Hut, the company says that “Some of our franchisees during peak business activity have calls flow to a central call center, which is likely what happened in this instance. It’s on a case by case basis.”

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