I had a simmila experience at as few restaurants. One was a Hibachi place right after it opened. Our waites clearly did not understand Engish at all. She never got us our drinks and the food orders were half wrong. When we finally got our correct food the manager came over and said he would take care of it. There were 4 of us, 2 drinks each and $20 hibachi dinners each. The manager comped all 4 meals and all we had to pay for was the drinks. Needless to say we have been back at least a dozen times in the last year.

I could not agree more with Dave's assessment. I was in the restaurant business for ten years. Believe it or not, good restaurant managers want to know when the meal did not live up to a customer's expectations. That way he or she has the opportunity to turn the negative into a positive. When I had a customer that explained to me what went wrong, I always apologized, offered my card and name, explained what I planned to do to make sure that occurrence would not happen again and then did something that threw most people for a loop. I asked what I could do to make them happy. I feel like when a restaurant just offered desert or a round of drinks, it was the lazy way out and gave the manager an opportunity to avoid a confrontation. Every once in a while a customer would respond with "Buy our Dinner!". Most though said "We just wanted to make you aware of the problem." or "Can we ask for you next time we come in to ensure things go better?". Also, when I am out to eat and get really bad service from the server, I always tip 15% and then talk to the manager. If you leave no tip or a lousy tip, the waiter will think you are a jerk. They never say to themselves, "Wow, I guess I need to give better service to get better tips."

Nothing like losing a couple of bucks to regain it all and then some. Good PR move!

It's always nice to see when soemone responds positivly to service issues.

I have a friend who's faher (now deceased, unfortunately) was a master of getting comped meals. He would brag about his ability. One time, he took about 20 of us out for dinner for his son's (my friend's) birthday, and someone challenged him to get this meal comped.

My wife had ordered a cheese qiche. We're Jewish. When they brought the orders, my wife bit in, and promptly ran for the bathroom. Apparently they had run out of cheese qiche, and had substituted ham. Without telling us. My wife not only doesn't eat ham, it makes her ill.

We left, and I found out later that the "master of comp" had gotten the entire party comped.

And the approach that Dave used was exactly how he did it. He never raised his voice, made a scene, or anything. He was an executive of a manufacturing company, and would find the highest ranking person in the restaraunt, pull them aside to a quiet corner, talk for about five minutes, and then walk away. He always got what he wanted.

The food cost of comped entrees is nothing compared to the loss in revenue from a poor customer service.

I'm trying to instill into my kids the viewpoint that no matter what kind of job you end up in, you are always in customer service. Whether you are serving food to the public, or supporting complex banking applications, you always have a customer. Treat them right and you will prosper. Fail to do so and you are risking your livelyhood.

Restaurants (at least not huge chains) seem to one of the few industries that understand the concept of customer service. My wife and I had a similar experience regarding the wait, etc. a few years ago, and our situation was resolved, plus some. I just wish I could remember where it happened so I could praise them online.

That's the thing that some managers don't understand, maybe you lose money on that first meal because of bad service, but call it an investment, because word will get around about your Restuaraunt if you have lousy service. People make mistakes, but if you suck it up and admit the mistake and do anything reasonable to recitify the mistake, people will come back, which means more money for your business.

God my friends need to read this. They are classic 'shit disturbers' in restaurants. One time they ordered lemonade from this chain restaurant, and it was pretty expensive like $5 a glass. When it came out the things was filled to the bring with ice, and drizzled with 1oz of lemonade between the cubes. They dragged our poor waiter and manager over and discussed the how they weren't paying $5 for ice, they were paying for lemonade. They then argued that they wanted another glass but with no ice. They never got it, but we did get a few free sodas for them. In any case I was more worried that the staff were spitting in our food as we hadn't gotten them yet.

Congrats man, good to hear. Me, I'm either completly spineless or overzelous in these situations. I was down at Max Brenner's (Chocolate by the Bald Man) for dinner witht he lady a few weeks ago and everything was an abomination...I fumed all night...but I didnt want to go there in the first place.

@MyPetFly: It's probably because that's one of the few industries where customer service really matters. Sure, it should always matter regardless of the industry, but in most other industries bad customer service isn't all that likely to keep customers from doing business with them. When it comes to things like cable, phone service, etc, customers are much more orientated towards the price point rather than service.

In restaurants (particularly sit-down ones), service matters a whole lot. Bad service can easily keep customers from coming back regardless of the quality of food and price point.

something tells me if you hit applebees or outback steakhouse trying this, they wouldnt give 2 flying fig leaves what you say. i went with friends to outback on NYE (i didnt book it, a friend did. i'll never forgive him). it took 2 hours and all the food was incorrectly prepared. the manager came out and acted like we were lying to him and all we got were 3 coupons for their stupid blooming onion app. needless to say, even after calmly telling them we were disappointed with our service and the wait time their response sucked and i've vowed to never go there again.

My boyfriend and I love Olive Garden and one Friday, we came in at about 10:15, which is normally plenty of time to get us out of there by 11, which is when they close. But there was a wait and they were apparently short-staffed so we still didn't have appetizers by 11 and didn't get our food until 11:30. In all honesty, we hadn't noticed the long wait, but the waiter and manager came by right before our food came out and apologized and comped the entire meal. The kicker was that we weren't even unhappy and hadn't complained and for the two of us, we'd ordered two whole meals and four desserts to go, on top of what we ate there.

I love Olive Garden.

Good article- with some timely tips on the importance of complaining without being a jerk.

@nikkomorocco: Hey, can have your blooming onion certificates since your not going to use them? lol

We we semi-regulars at a local Japanese restaurant and ended up getting truly abysmal service and not so good food one day. We told the manager, and they didn't comp us the meal, but did tell us when we came back, they'd treat us to an entire meal to make up for it.

Sure enough, they did. However, after we told them right when we were seated that we were there to collect, the staff attitude promptly changed and our service was far worse than the night we complained about.

So much for that...at least it was free.

My friends had gone out to a Shari's (24 hr dinner type thing if they aren't in your area) one night after a wedding reception. Since it was after the reception everyone was completely trashed. Many of them were also quite nicely attired in suits and what not.

They were probably having a little bit too good of a time and they started to over hear one of the near by tables complaining about the noise and the fact that they still hadn't gotten their food yet. One of my friends in a suit got up, walked over to the table told them that he was the manager and that he would have their meals comped. Then he went through the restaurant, found the real manager, explained the situation, actually got their meals comped, brought their food out, tore up the ticket and told the other table to have a good night. They were absolutely thrilled with the customer service from what was just another customer.

Hilarious.

Usually if a place does this, I give back the value of what they comped in tips- to show I'm not being a cheapskate, and I appreciate it.

I love stories like this. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume the manager would welcome the chance to make things right, and 99% of the time you'll get your problem solved or your money back. If you don't, well, you know never to go back there again (and you can feel free to blog it and tell the world never to eat there!)

I've gotten a free meal at Chili's when they took 40 minutes to bring out two sandwiches, and I got a free meal at an IHOP when the ham was so salty I couldn't eat it. In both cases, the manager took the initiative to comp the food before we could even complain.

@Copper: I had a fairly similar experience in a local Pizza Hut restaurant. It was a simple matter of going there to eat during a shift change-over, which seemingly meant that there was confusion about where exactly the pizzas that were sat on the counter were meant to go. My friend and I were just chatting away, and took a long time to notice that we hadn't got our pizzas yet. I couldn't find our original waiter, so I approached a different one. Shortly after that, he came to our table and explained the problem. For our trouble, we got the pizzas comp'd, got larger sizes than we ordered, and got offered free dessert, or dessert vouchers.

For Pizza Hut, that's pretty impressive.

My son and I went out to Red Robin and the chicken sandwich I had was sub-standard as was his burger. The piece of meat only covered half the bun and the onion straws were a bit limp and on the other half of the bun. His burger was overcooked. I didn't say anything at the restaurant but did file a complaint on their website. The store manager called me the next day and then sent a $25 gift card...which was more than we'd paid for our meals. I was surprised at how fast they responded and have continued to take the family there on a regular basis.

One thing I didn't do in my e-mail was rant. I had a well written complaint letter in there which is probably why I got the response that I did.

I do this all the time as appropriate. I can't say I've ever really had service so bad where it's warranted a discussion with a manager.

I have had food that was that bad, sometimes horribe. I do it politely, say why I did not like it and explain that after watching TV, I'm a bit leary of sending food back for replacements. 9/10 I'll get the meal knocked off.

I make sure that the server isn't the object of my hate ("I realize that you didn't cook this and you did a fantastic job..") but will often "see if anything could be done" about that. If the plate's empty, good luck, but if the dish has been picked at or one part eaten (say, the side of veggies with a steak) it's obvious that something was wrong.

Being calm and appreciative of the service is the key. They'll advocate for you. My friend's a restaurant manager, first question he asks when he gets a similar comment: Are they acting agressive or loud? If the answer is yes, pay up.

At least they copped up to their lack of service that night. I went to a local Chiles once and the service was awful...this is the second time we'd been there mind you (the first time the waitress kept filling water into my husband's soda cup, but we thought it was funny and she rectified it right away) and the restaurant was nearly empty yet our server took forever to get our order, and then brought our order without silverware, sauce, or drinks. We finally got silverware and finished our entire plate minus the bit that required the sauce and our server kept apologizing saying, "Let me go get it right now" and he'd come back with something for another table and not ours. Finally we got our check and I told our server, "Why did you put drinks on this tab? We never even got them" (even though we had reminded him) so he blamed it on 'the drinks guy' and said he couldn't have the drinks removed from the tab without the manager. So the manager comes out ten minutes later, saying, "So, I hear you had some bad drinks? What was wrong with the taste?" I'm sitting there like, "WTF?" The guy totally copped out and lied to his own manager about what the real problem was. Looking back now, I should have really gotten dirty and complained about the whole affair, but instead I just asked for the drinks to be removed from the tab as we had never gotten them (not even water). This really sucks because I like Chiles very much, but you can sure as hell bet I'll never go to the one we have here ever again.

I recently ate at California Pizza Kitchen for a late lunch. The server presented the dessert menu just minutes after being served our pizzas. She then came back a few minutes later with the menu forgetting that she had already presented it to us. She then presented the check before my friend had finished her pizza. The restaurant was not busy, but maybe it was the end of her shift.

I complained via their web site, and got an email from the general manager of the restaurant asking ME to call him so he could apologize and learn more about what had happened. I wrote back giving him my phone number, which had been provided when I complained via the web site, and asked him to call me. It's now been over a week, and I haven't heard from him. I won't be eating at that location again.

Omg

I went to an Applebees last night, and these group of girls kept complaining about how their food was made improperly. This chick sent her steak back once and the manager came over and offered her a gift card for next time and she was like "no I'm not coming back to this shit hole ever again."

She could stand to lose a few pounds, so maybe it was a good thing she didn't eat that steak anyway.

I ate at a local pub, Barley Mow, and it took like an hour to get our food on a pretty calm night. My Fish n' Chips had hair in the fish, which was awesomely disgusting. Complained and made a remark about how I didn't want another order if it would take an hour to get my food back. Within 5 minutes (!) I had a fresh order of blazing-hot fish n chips. Why it took an hour to get the first one is beyond me.

All told, the entire experience took us like 2 hours for 3 people to get food and a pint. The upshot? Politely complaining about the wait times and gross, hairy fish got the entire bill comped. That's 3 entrees and 5 pints of beer for free!

that is definitely one of my pet peeves. an inattentive waiter... where it takes a long time to get the drink order or doesnt stop by to ask if we need anything during the meal. but what is the biggest problem i have is when the meal is finished and we have to wait forever to get the check and have them perform the transaction and get outta there... its at that point that i start reducing the tip as the minutes pass by. the other pet peeve i have is the waiters that don't write down the order, they memorize it... they're only opening themselves up to blame when order comes back incorrectly (which has happened several times).

@bonzombiekitty:

Very true. For the most part, it's the service that draws people in to restaurants anyway. Most of the food is pretty much the same from one place to another, and a lot of it can be cooked at home.

@falc:
One of my biggest pet peeves is when you are looking around for a waiter, and then you take a bite of food, and your waiter chooses that exact second to come and ask if everything is ok. I've been to places where there's no way it could have been an accident, because the waiter only showed up to ask after the food when everyone at the table had food in their mouths. Seeing no one answer, the waiter would promptly leave, since no one asked him for anything.

@humphrmi: Oh those jews. They sure know how to do it right.

Joking, of course ;)

@nursethalia: Our Chili's has a similar inability to leave silverware, but it just got funny after a while, as there were no other problems.

I was at Big Bowl with my wife. I ordered the beef and brocolli. It was so-so. Not great but not bad either.

The waitress asked me how I liked my food.

I said it was "OK".

The waitress replied, "Just OK?".

I said, 'I've had better."

The waitress said, "We want you to enjoy your food. We can redo the dish for you or you can a different dish you think you would like better."

So I order a different dish. I was impressed!

My best story of restaurant customer service was from Malo in Los Angeles, wherein, after I sent a letter to the manager complaining about the service at my birthday party, he retroactively comped the entire meal and THEN invited us back for a free dinner on the house.

@Copper: Their breadsticks + dipping sauce is crack.

I think it's pretty funny some of you are complaining about crappy meals served at crappy chain restaurants like Applebee's, Red Robin, and similar. How good of a meal, exactly, do you expect to receive at one of these mediocre-at-best eateries?

@falc: The thing you have to understand is that it is not always the waiters fault in this case. Especially if you are ordering mixed drinks. In the restaurant where I work the Bartenders prepare any alcoholic beverage. When we get busy they sometimes get backed up taking care of all of the drink orders from the bar and the floor.

On the waiting for the check to transact the problem can be a limited number of terminals to run the check through on, or even a slow internet connection. This can slow everyone down.

Basically if I run into these problems I try and keep the guests informed.

I had an awesome waiter at the 'el-dorado' hotel in Reno a ways back. I had this really REALLY good soup and asked if I could have a second bowl instead of the steak dinner I had ordered originally. He looked at me and said the soup was on the house no charge have a great night and enjoy Reno.

I tipped him the full cost of the meal plus his tip. What a great memory off of that trip (I was feeling a bit under the weather and it was fantastic soup)

I went there later in the week and the
steak was great too! So was the service.

Outback in Colonial Heights has always been bad. I hate getting my salad appetizer and meal at almost the same time. Nothing like a nice night out getting rushed. I have told them to drop the appetizer or take it back if we get it with the meal. Its just not worth it at that point.

When a new Chinese place opened up near my apartment, my wife and I went for a sit-down dinner to check out the food. The waitress was friendly, but her English was a bit lacking. We ordered our food and I asked for "two cokes." She went off, and 15 minutes later comes back with our food in a bag. Confused, I look up at her, and she says "to go?" Guess I wasn't speaking too clearly when I asked for the cokes. Anyway, the manager was nearby and we all had a good laugh. He gave us the drinks for free, and we ordered takeout from them often until we moved.

@mmcnary: I totally agree with you.

You better hope spit is the only thing they put in your food if you go back.

When I get bad service, I leave no tip, an explanation of what they did wrong on the receipt, and never go back. There are hundreds of places for me to eat within 10 miles of my house, so why risk bad service a second time?

I used to be a restaurant manager, I was promoted to manager specifically for my customer service. If a customer had a complaint, I would usually bring over a dessert and a chair and sit with them for as much time as I could allow and talk about the service and usually offer to personally serve them the next time and give them a voucher for something free, usually an entree or two. Even that customer who cursed me out because the blue cheese was green got that service.

@tfvdw2at: The tip is where I differ. When I go to my favorite places, I usually tip 20% when I get the "normal" service from them (they know me, and my friends, and my family because we go so often). When the service is really bad, I'll tip maybe 5% or so.. and they know that because I normally tip very well that someone really screwed up. Plus they know that when I go in there, they're automatically going to make around $50.. and when I take a few friends and family, they can expect to see around $200 + tips. It's a family owned sushi joint. Very good. Matsu Sushi in Lynnwood, WA.. I've never had a bad meal from them. Having been there over 100 times in the last few years, I've only had bad service a couple times.. and they were always new people.

Also, I don't tip on alcohol. It's one thing to tip for actual service, but your pouring me some wine and being very strict on pouring just enough is not worth a $2 tip.

But ultimately, I disagree with tipping well if the service sucks. Just because the waiter won't make the correlation between a crappy tip and crappy service doesn't mean you should just default to giving them a full tip. It means you should reduce the tip and still speak with the manager, so that they understand why they received a crappy tip. If you reward them the same for crappy and great service, then they likely won't work as hard when they know they'll get a good tip even when the service blows.

@G-Dog: You can't expect the perfect experience every time. Even great places can have their moments and days.

Hell, I'm a surgeon and even I'll go into work every once in a while totally hung over and half asleep.