We have more pizza delivery than we know what to do with around here. We have not set foot in or ordered from a Pizza Hut in ten years. This is one reason why it may well be another ten years.

How is it forcing it on you if you can opt-out?

I want MORE places to offer online ordering as it's a hassle for me, as I'm hard of hearing. What's taking so long?

Who gives their real email address to pizza parlors? Don't we all have a throwaway yahoo mail account for this kind of inevitable spam?

Thats too bad... sneaky too. The average person would just click the check box and not even read the rest.

If you guys like dominos try ordering from them. Their new pizza tracker thing is a gimmick but its kinda cool, at least I think. The only problem I've had with them is my local stores DSL line being out for a couple of months. I just didn't order pizza then because their phone etiquite sucks. That and you cant get through to them without being put on hold.

So their web site sucks even worse than their pizza?? That's *really* hard to imagine.

Update: I don't see anywhere to opt out of this, but I've had this account for a while. I didn't have to opt into spam when I signed up that I can recall. Or is it regional? I'm in St. Louis -- but when visiting the bf in FL I can make orders to be sent to his house from the same account/website, so I doubt it's regional.

My other choice for ordering pizza without having to make a phone call is Dominos, and Dominos tastes awful. My Pizza Hut usually does a pretty good job -- like any chain restaurant, if you go to a place that has decent staff, the food will be good, if they are lazy you won't like it.

Now what'd make me really happy would be if the local Italian places could set up online ordering, and the local Chinese places.

I have used my real email address for ordering Papa John's pizza online, and I haven't had any problems. So, they're not all like that... just Pizza Hut. And screw them anyway... their pizza is too greasy for my taste.

Is this a new thing? I have ordered pizza online from Pizza Hut and have never received an email from them besides the ones that confirm your order.

@Echodork: It's not that it's a trivial issue that we can work around. It's that Pizza Hut is not trustworthy in small things, so how can we expect them to be trustworthy in large things (like food safety and quality)?

@Buran: It's forcing spam upon you because you can only opt-out AFTER you've been forced to opt-in (at the time of initial registration).

Yahoo! sends all my Pizza Hut nonsense directly to my spam box.

Pizza Hut further antagonizes online customers by having unstated arbitrary online order minimums in some locales ($15 one place I was, $25 at another); and some locations will make you show them a paper copy of any discounts or coupons you use, even if you obtained the discount online. They don't make e-pizza e-asy.

For all you small-world pizza snobs out there, some of us in the hinterlands don't have access to pizza seasoned with the sweat of an eyetalian brow. On the other hand, we have Pizza Patron, and ellos acceptan pesos.

This kind of treatment says more about the people signing up for services like this than the company itself. Pizza Hut and the like have all weighed the net gains of keeping customers happy by not pestering them with unwanted email versus those of ad-based sales and exposure. If they found out that pestering makes more money statistically, then we need to instead be inoculating people against advertisement, not barking about yet another company that's just doing the math.

This is timely - I just ordered pizza online today from Papa John's and they had 3 different prices for their 20 oz Coke products depending where on the site you looked. At the top under "Special" it said, "2 20 oz Coke products for $2.39." Then down in the bevereage section it said that two 20 oz Coke products cost $2.18. After placing my order but before checkout, it asked if I would like to order any 20 oz Coke products - for $1.49 each. Crazy. (I didn't order any Coke, though - I was good and drank water with my junk food lunch.)

Pizza Hut is pretty nasty anyway... I'd say they're doing you a favor if you decide to try another pizza restaurant that allows you to order online.

I am just waiting for the day you can order Taco Bell and have it delivered!!!

It's really not that annoying. They send you something maybe once every two weeks I've noticed, and I don't really mind the heads up on their new deals.

I signed up for email offers with Papa Johns. I was horribly disappointed that all of the offers I received sucked. Something like "Buy a large pizza at regular price, get a free 20-oz soda". Great. Menu price is way more than 99¢ overpriced.

Also, this is what "pizzahut@example.com" email addresses are for. You can always block it, filter it, or throw it in the trash.

@greensmurf: Just by chance I live where I can have Mexican food delivered. Also pizza, full Italian dinner, fried chicken, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, hamburgers, Lebanese, sub sandwiches, hot wings, steak dinners, sushi, and desserts. It's kind of embarrassing in a way.

@Michael Belisle: Their offers used to be really good, usually there was a buy one get one free offer that would come through once a month.

Now I've gone back to making my own pizza.

maggots.

Pizza Hut sucks.
Their dough is all pre-packaged and trucked over, sits in a freezer for god knows how long.
Their cheese/sausage/pepperoni/mushrooms/etc is all sent in bags, either frozen or otherwise.
You know those hot wings you paid 6 dollars for? Yep, pre-packaged.

It's expensive fast food, nothing more. And their stuffed crust is fucking awful, makes me want to throw up. The commercials are insulting because it's always clean, wholesome families portrayed via the healthy looking delivery boy with not a problem in the world.

@speedwell: Where do you live??? Because I'm totally moving there. Also, shut up, I'm hungry now.

@Michael Belisle: My last decent sized company had a "food@company" email. They opted into everyone deals and menu emails and when we wanted to order something we hit that email and searched for what we wanted. Worked out so well I set the same thing up for myself with gmail.

@speedwell: Me too, for the most part, but most of those places are pesudo restaurants, but Imagine if you could order Taco Bell and have it delivered? Especially if it were 24/7 delivery, no more border cravings at 1am....
Would that make all us Americans lazy?

@riverstyxxx: I agree. Where's the chloracne? Why isn't anybody drunk in those ads? It's like watching another planet.

Ugh, Pizza Hut has been driving me bonkers with their emails. One day I decided that I wanted a nasty pizza (I get hankerings for bad food every now and again), so I went online during class (*snickers*) to go and order myself the pizza so I could pick it up on the way home. Well, despite clicking the "I wish to stop receiving these emails" links and changing my email address in their database, I'm still getting them, and getting quite annoyed. Soon I'm going to filter them at the server level, or maybe bounce the email back to every possible email address @pizzahut.com.

@magic8ball: Houston, uptown, on a street corner where several ethnic neighborhoods happen to sort of intersect. Hell of fun but definitely not for the faint (or artherosclerotic) of heart.

@greensmurf: No, real live restaurants. Never seen anything like it, even in college towns. And true, no 24/7. Only one decent place even delivers after 9:30 or 10 (Sarpino's, hooray. Open 'til 1, and pizza with everything you can imagine on it but the stripper busting out the top).

Customer loyalty to Pizza Hut? Are you kidding? Dominoes and Poppa John's just not craptastic enough for you? Next time you want pizza, put some ketchup on cardboard and you should be satisfied.

@ChuckECheese: I do have problems from time to time with the minimums (it's lower for my bf) but I get around it by just picking up the food on my way home from work. That's a delivery minimum, though, not an ordering minimum.

I do not, however, get ad spam from them; I used to when I was in their "VIP Program" but they've since dropped that. I also seem to remember opting out of one spam mail ages ago that they sent me during the VIP thing (which was entirely optional) and I was never bothered again. However, that wasn't the same as my current online account. I really don't know why I'm not bothered with spam and others are. Go figure. I'm not sure when I got that last marketing mail, though.

I don't get hassled with "I need your coupon" but the local paper coupons are available online too usually. That particular problem I would guess is a manager who's decided to powertrip slightly and is probably just a local thing.

@theblackdog: Seriously. What's with that? PH used to have decent deals. So did Papa John's (I forgot about them earlier when I grumbled that Domino's is the only online-orderable place other than PH. I was wrong, PJ is a choice too and they're not bad).

Now, I page through the coupons and I wonder why they're even bothering. Their "specials" are what you would think pizza normally costs. They're ripping us off right when people can't afford to eat out.

I just get a single-serve pizza by ordering online from work or SMS if I'm out, and sometimes breadsticks, pick it up myself on the way home and save on delivery/tip fees.

The thing is, though, asking to get taken off their spam list won't necessarily get you taken off their spam list - nor will it get you taken off the spam lists of whoever else they've sold your email address to.

@Buran: The cost of cheese and wheat have gone up dramatically in the last couple years, at least when you're talking about buying it by the ton.

I too miss the days of two large (which really means medium, but whatevs) and a 2-liter for 10 bucks.

One "please unsubscribe me" email was all it took for us. Now, fighthing them on a double charge took a bit more effort. I had to call the individual store manager because the corporate number on the website ordering system was no help.

That goes directly against email marketing best practices that companies usually use. Why would a company sign someone up who isn't interested? Big companies like that use email service providers to send out email and handle ISP issues, so it actually costs money for them to send an email. Unfortunately, they aren't going against the CAN-SPAM act, so you can't report them. How ridiculous. Save a ton of money or sign up a bunch of people who don't want to hear from you? The choice should be obvious.

I also recommend avoiding "Round Table Pizza". A medium costs around 20 bucks and everyone is incredibly snotty. I sent the company a complaint and the site wasn't even working right.

I love da online ordering thing, and I'm sorry to say it, but of all the pizza places in my area (and we have a lot) Pizza Hut has the best online ordering system. They've never gotten it wrong, in fact I can order really complicated pizza's which is hard if I call it in because most of my local boys are hispanic, and I don't speak Spanish. It's a win win.

Dominoes has online ordering but all the shops in my area (2 in range of my place) aren't hooked up yet. mt. Mikes I love to order from as well, but their menu system isn't as complicated, and I always end up spending like $20, for a pizza and salad. Papa Murphys, nothing. Papa Johns, not sure. Little Ceasars, nope.

I'm getting hungry thinking about this.

I get emails about once a month from Pizza Hut vs. 2-3 per week from dominoes in the mail. I think someone once said, Pizza was the worlds most perfect food. I don't think it's perfect, but I do enjoy a good slice.

At first I was going to say "why don't you all just pick up the phone and spend the 45 seconds it takes to order a pizza", and then I realized that for those of us who live in areas where people who work behind the counters don't...how shall I put this delicately...have a great grasp of the English language, online is the best/most feasible option.

There's got to be a way to discontinue receipt of these e-mails through an opt-out link in e-mails they send you?

Ok is it really that much more effort to pick up the phone and call in your pizza order? Also - don't eat at Pizza Hut. Their pizza is gross. Do yourself a favor and find a good local pizzeria.

The problem does occur if one can actually ORDER PIZZA FOR DELIVERY from their local Pizza Hut via internet or phone. Somehow I get ad flyers for pizza hut delivered to my apartment complex mail box yet the local pizza hut cannot deliver to our complex because "it is not on their system" not too far away or not too dangerous but -not existing.

The other option is to eat something that is actually real food and avoid these fast food chains altogether.

@sprocket79: Good way to tell if they're a decent local chain is by seeing what type of beers they have on tap. If they have a selection of dark/imported, you're probably in a good place. If nothing but cheap american shit, then avoid.
Doesn't mean you have to drink, but pizza places that are cool tend to have good beer.

@Tracy Ham and Eggs: Oooh that's pretty good. I didn't think of making one generic food address and signing up for offers willy-nilly.

But with the generic name, you miss out on the fun when you're on the phone with a business:

Party Poker CSR: May I have your email address please?
Me: partypoker@example.com
PPCSR: No sir, I need your email address.
Me: That is my email address: partypoker@example.com
PPCSR: Alright...

@Bentpost: @sprocket79: That is very original, for every time consumerist posts something about a fast food chain, nobody ever comments that people just shouldn't eat there and should find a local, good place instead. You should post this kind of valuable insight more often, because it makes a huge difference in the way people conduct their lives.

@HRHKingFriday: And where's my raise to buy their overpriced food? That's right, I didn't get one. You can't sell at prices people can't pay.

@pinkbunnyslippers: Try doing that with earplugs in, whydoncha.

For Papa John's, at