Here's Mark's story:

On Monday, July 28th I ordered a pizza from Papa John's Pizza. When the delivery driver showed up, he handed me my Visa slip to sign with an 'x' written next to the tip line. To me calling any kind of attention to the tip line on a credit card slip is akin to holding your hand out and asking 'where's my tip.' I didn't like the presumptive tip, and had already paid an almost $2.00 “delivery charge” so I wrote a line through the tip line, rewrote the total and signed the slip.

This morning while getting ready for work, my wife informs me that Papa John's Pizza had overcharged us by $6.42. Quite upset about Papa John's Pizza stealing six-and-a-half dollars from me, I immediately googled Papa John's Pizza corporate number. I was transferred to the finance department, and left a message expressing my extreme dissatisfaction. About 7 minutes later I got a call back from Papa John's Pizza and the gentleman asked for the details of the transaction, etc. After promising the difference would be reversed to my debit card, he said that “Papa John's takes this sort of complaint seriously.” To which of course I replied “Please do not 'take this seriously,' resolve the issue.” Then the Papa John's Pizza guy got all defensive and wanted to know why I was calling him a liar. Anyway he promised to have a 'field supervisor' look into the situation.

If my charge was off by a dollar, say because the person keying in the charge transposed a number, I may or may not have been so upset. I would have waited until the local Papa John's Pizza opened up and discussed the matter with local management. But I firmly believe that the delivery driver took it upon himself to give himself a 30% tip. I also wonder how many other people have been 'fleeced' by this driver.

I hope to email you with an update about how Papa John's Pizza refunded the difference and took steps to show me that I am a valued customer, but the day is still young.

Well, we're impressed that someone at Papa John's called him back as promised, and in less than 10 minutes—that sort of thing is far too rare with many companies, and makes us think that Papa John's actually means the phrase. But yeah, they might want to rethink using empty PR-speak if they want to reassure customers that employee theft is not tolerated. But you shouldn't blame your customers for being skeptical when they hear that phrase—there's a reason nobody believes it anymore.

(Photo: Getty)

UPS agreed to refund $300 of Nick's shipping costs and to issue "a goodwill payment to him for his computer." Here's Nick's response:

So, a happy ending (thanks, I'm sure, to your site). Today, UPS contacted me, saying that since they couldn't find my computer, they were going to pay out the claim on the package and refund my shipping charges. All's well that ends well (that is, so long as they can get it delivered to the right address this time). Thanks for help in publicizing this, and the resources your site offers. I swear, you guys are better than the Better Business Bureau.

We don't really understand how paying for an insured computer that was destroyed adds up to 'goodwill' so much as honoring a stated policy, or why UPS searched their facilities after they admitted to delivering the package to a stranger, but hey, Nick's happy, and that's all that matters.

PREVIOUSLY: UPS Breaks, Steals Computer
(Photo: The Infamous Gdub)

Jason writes:

I work as a freelance videographer, and recently landed a high-profile magazine spotlight piece. The company that picked me for the shoot recommended that I use two wireless mics for the audio. I didn't have two wireless mics and told them that, but I knew I could get one from a friend. The other I ordered from B&H via UPS's Next Day Air service.

I ordered on a Friday but my order didn't go through and ship until Monday. I needed the mic by Tuesday night (hence the overnight shipping) so that I'd be ready for the shoot on Wednesday. The package shipped out as scheduled, but when I checked the status of the shipment on Tuesday morning I saw the notice, "PKG DELAY-ADD'L SECURITY CHECK BY GOV'T OR OTHER AGENCY- BEYOND UPS CONTROL".

I had never heard of that before so I did a quick google search. It turns out this notice isn't necessarily used when a package is actually being held for security reasons. Rather it's usually because a driver didn't (or couldn't) get beyond a security gate at the delivery location. In most cases it looked like the package was redelivered a few days later. I couldn't wait a few days, so I called their customer service center to find out what I could do about getting the package that day.

A customer service rep said that somebody from the local distribution center would call me back within the hour. Surprisingly somebody actually did just that, although it turned out to be less than fruitful.

The conversation with CSR Kimberly included this gem:

Kimberly: The driver couldn't get beyond the security gate.
Me: We don't have a security gate.
Kimberly: I mean the security guard.
Me: We don't have a security guard.
Kimberly: I mean the door was locked.
Me: There's a buzzer. And five people working the front office. And they're pretty attentive when delivery people come by. They don't like pissing off the residents.

But Kimberly told me that the truck was long gone, and not coming back. She gave me the option to meet up with the truck or wait until 7pm and pick up my package from the distro center. I opted for the meet-up since it would (presumably) be faster (I figured I would need at least a few hours to read the mic's manual, and learn how to use it before the shoot).

She told me I'd have to drive 12 miles to a construction site and wait for the driver to come. I thought she was kidding. She said she wasn't. I was to meet a driver (who was meeting another driver) at 3:30 at a construction site west of a hospital somewhere near Universal in Orlando. I was stunned. I paid $40 for overnight shipping. And this is what I get for it?

It got even better when the driver never showed up. One of the two drivers was there, but this one knew nothing of the exchange and said that he had actually called for help because he was overloaded with deliveries. I brought a camera and took pictures of the meeting place. I thought maybe you'd get a kick out of them.

I called Kimberly back and wanted to know what was going on. I was pissed. I said that I needed the package and that I wanted a refund on the shipping cost. She called me back a few minutes later and told me that I could drive another 20 minutes to meet up with the driver who was now just a few blocks from my apartment building. The real kicker was that I only had 10 minutes to get there before he was going to leave again. This time I asked if I could just pick it up at 7 at the distribution center. She said that I could and that they would call me when the driver came back (they didn't).

She also said somebody would call me back about my refund "soon". It's been five days and that hasn't happened. I'll probably start making those phone calls on Monday.

At some point I mentioned that I was going to be sending all of this to the Consumerist. I don't think she knew what that meant, but I thought I'd give them fair warning.

Anyway, I picked up my package just after 7. The guy working the pick-up area threw my box on the counter. I winced. That mic cost me almost $600. Not cool. Especially after everything else.

In the end I got the mic, and did the shoot. I also got some swell pictures of a UPS truck in a dusty parking lot. Maybe you can use them for something.

Anyway, I thought you guys might find this interesting. Thanks for doing what you do.

Come on, UPS, put a little effort into your sketchy pickup areas. If you're going to send someone to a construction site, have the decency to leave a note or a riddle directing them back to the distribution center. Nothing complex. We would've been happy with a post-it reading: "Gotcha! Return To Distribution Center. (Next Time Use The Post Office!)"

(Photo: Jason_Hawkins)

When Amazon works, it's a great example of what man and machine can do together to make shopping easier. When it doesn't work, you're stuck with a higher-priced camera from Wal-Mart and a second camera you thought was canceled shipped from Amazon, with a refund taking 3-5 days to go through.

My siblings and I decided to go in together and purchase my Mom a nice camera for Mother's Day. She's a nice lady, and is getting tired of the one she has, so it seemed like a good idea. The BAD idea was trying to purchase it (along with a few accessories) from Amazon. But, they had it for a great price, and with the free shipping it seemed like a no-brainer.

So I placed my order on 5/1...all seemed well on the Amazon front. I got a confirmation email after placing the order letting me know that it would be shipped on 5/6. It's never taken more than 3 days for an Amazon order to show up in the past, so I figured it would be fine. After a couple of days, I logged in to Amazon to check up on it, and that's when I should have gotten worried.

Instead of showing my orders, there was an error message letting me know that there was a problem with Amazon, but rest-assured, they're working on it and it should be fixed shortly. Right. It gave me the same message the next day, and the next, so on 5/6 I sent Amazon an email asking them to check the status of the order, as it was for Mother's Day and I needed it by then.

I received a reply email later that day from Naresh letting me know that he would need 1-2 business days to research and he'd get back to me.

After two days (5/8) and no response, I decided to call Amazon. I spoke to a male representative (and I'm pounding my head against the wall for not catching his name, but I didn't) who let me know that he couldn't find my order, either. I explained the situation (it's for my Mom, I need it asap, etc), and he let me know that I could place the order again if I needed it quickly. This wasn't to my liking, but I wasn't about to disappoint my Mom (nor face the scorn of my siblings), so I asked when it could be delivered. His answer? Monday. This was not the answer I was looking for, so I asked him to please cancel the order, and I would purchase it locally. He said he would put a note on my account for the order to be cancelled.

So I set off into a raging thunderstorm to the closest store that had the same model camera. Wal-Mart. This is a story for another day, but I ended up paying waaaay more thanks to Wal-Mart's absolutely ridiculous price-matching policy. So, I'm out some cash, a lot of time, and it ruined my hair. Thanks, Amazon!  

Then, today [Friday May 9], I decided (just for kicks) to check my Amazon account. Lo and behold, it's fixed! Apparently, my order should be shipped on 5/11 or 5/12. Wait, what??? I am not a happy camper at this point.

So, I just spent another 30 minutes on the phone with Christine H. Bottom line? Amazon can (will) not cancel the order, and I can expect to receive a 2nd camera in the near future.

While she did try to help me as much as she could (and she was very nice), it was obvious that Amazon's policies limited what (if any) help she could offer me. When I explained that my bank account does not runneth over (thanks to a hefty veterinarian bill) and that, if charged, I would be overdrawn, she said that she would give me an advance refund on the shipment. In 3-5 days, I'll see my money back in the bank (never mind that Amazon will CHARGE my account as soon as it ships). She did send me an email explaining the very involving process of getting an overdraft fee credited by Amazon, but at this point, I'm just going to suck it up and transfer some emergency (i.e. DON'T TOUCH) money into the account.

It's not exactly what I would normally qualify as an emergency, but if it will keep me from having to deal with Amazon again, it's worth it. 

Bottom line? Amazon is the Grinch who stole Mother's Day...Boo to you, Amazon! (And I still haven't heard back from Naresh.)

Amanda

Fine, it was a one-off problem, mistakes happen and all that. But why do customer service reps promise to return calls that they never return? This seems to happen across the industry, and it may be the easiest way to improve customer service.

The only information Minoru has to go on to reconstruct the last, sad hours of his new laptop's life are the status tracking updates:

• Apr 22, 2008 3:36 AM On FedEx vehicle for delivery
• Apr 22, 2008 5:24 PM At local FedEx facility
• Apr 23, 2008 1:10 PM Shipment exception / Unable to deliver

Wow. So now I'm really disturbed. I called FedEx, and the rep tells me that the package is damaged, and they will not deliver it. I demanded more information, and she switched me to her manager. Ceci Watts at Cincinnati call center was absolutely 0% helpful. You could tell she handled this type of calls frequently. All she could repeat was the same stupid line no matter what I said or asked. This isn't word for word, but it's pretty much how it went:
 
Me: So was the package on the truck at 3:36 AM or not?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan.
Me: What does that mean?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan.
Me: So what does it mean? "On FedEx vehicle for delivery" sounds like it at least made it to the truck for delivery. I would like to know if the package made it to the truck, and when and where the package was damaged.
Ceci: That's irrelevant.
Me: It's relevant because I need to know why I don't have my package.
Ceci: It's irrelevant.
Me: So was it a lie? Are you saying the status was a lie? It never made it to the truck?
Ceci: It was a miscellaneous scan. It doesn't matter.
Me: This is ridiculous.
 
Ceci insisted that there's nothing they can do for me, even though they destroyed my package. My laptop was fine until it entered that mysterious 14-hour window on April 22. It was in FedEx's hands, and it somehow got damaged, and who knows where it is now. The only option for me, Ceci said, was to contact Apple. So even though it's almost impossible for anybody else to be responsible for the matter, they're refusing to correct the situation or be helpful about it in any way. Now I have to take my own time to contact Apple, Apple would have to investigate it, then send me another computer.

Matt writes:

My wife is due to deliver our first child in about two weeks. We decided to buy a bassinet to keep by our bed for the little guy, leaving his crib in his new room. We had store credit from Babies 'R' Us, so we ordered one from their website and applied the credit to make it more affordable (side note: all the bassinets in store are over $100, online is the only way to get one cheap from BRU). What we got is decidedly not a bassinet, as seen in the pictures attached. The packing slip-never removed from the box-claims this is a bassinet, instead of a badly damaged/shipped car seat.

BRU's response: print out a return shipping label, drop off box that may not be accepted by UPS (BRU said we may need to get another box...) and wait 4-5 days for item to arrive back in their warehouse, then wait 7-10 business days for credit. All of this leaves us without a bassinet, with BRU holding our money, both from credit card and store credit until well after our son is to be born. Reversing the charged on our credit card leaves us without the substantial amount of store credit.

Their solution to having a bassinet soon enough: order again and wait for the credit(s), but not too soon, for they say the problem may not be fixed yet, so we'd maybe get another pink and plaid, beat up car seat instead of a bassinet for our new baby.

After all, the thirty minute guarantee has been around for decades. The pizza chain that can break that will have a serious edge over the competition. Unfortunately, there's no real way to do it without sacrificing either quality (and there's little enough of that to go around anyway) or safety.

Wat needs to happen to get a pizza to your door in ten minutes? As soon as you call, Papa John's either need to have your specific pizza under a heat lamp, or they need to just blaze putting it together. Neither equates good pizza.

On the safety side of things, even a thirty minute guarantee encourages drivers to get reckless — their jobs are the ones on the line, after all. We don't know what Papa John's driver policy is (do you know? Send us an email!) but a lot of companies that promise a pizza to you in thirty minutes or less punish the driver if it doesn't get there in time. Sometimes this can be pay docking (Domino's famously used to do this) but even if it doesn't become financially punitive, it looks bad if a driver continuously fails to meet the time limit imposed. Those precedents could eventually equal firing. Thirty minutes is already a slim wedge of time to get pizza to somebody's door... does anyone really want to live in a Cryptonomicon Snowcrash-like world of samurai-sword wielding pizza deliverators boiling the asphalt at 200mph?

Scratch that last question: of course you do. Who doesn't? So maybe Papa John's is onto something here. Still, until a Papa John's pizza chef can flip on a Cronenberg transportation device to beam a steaming pizza straight into your hands, we'd rather get a good pizza delivered to us in thirty than a heat-lamp pizza delivered in ten minutes by a bloody corpse who just crawled his way out of a car wreck.

Edit: Of course, it's Snowcrash. Sorry, I spaced and confused it with one of Stephenson's other books. Which is too bad, since Snowcrash is the only thing he's ever written that doesn't just suck.

Papa John's 10-minute pizza [Food Facts]