Steve’s boss gave him a $250 gift card to restaurants owned by the Union Square Hospitality Group, a company that operates a number of four-star restaurants in New York City, and… the corporate parent of Shake Shack. He happily bought burgers with it for a while, until one terrible day when his card was rejected. He couldn’t use the remaining $80 at Shake Shack, he was told. He was sad. He sent a quick e-mail. Then he got on with his life.

I’m a huge fan of Shake Shack burgers – it’s a pretty quickly growing chain in the north east. I like to go sorta frequently, despite the infamously long lines for what’s called the ‘best burger in America’.

My old boss gave me a $250 gift card for Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), the owners of the Shake Shack chain. You could use this giftcard at any of their four star restaurants – or Shake Shack. I had used it once a month or so over the course of a year, until earlier this month, when it was rejected outright – despite having something like $80 left on the card.

The reason for this was that they had switched to a new gift card system at the beginning of the month, leaving me and this $$ out in the cold. They offered me my meal free and said that I could use that USHG card for a 15% discount, but that I was essentially out of luck with the rest of that balance.

I was quite upset and shot off an email and a tweet to Shake Shack, not expecting any response. I figured, I’d be paying for my burgers from now on without my gift card. To be honest, I was still able to use this gift card at other USHG restaurants and expected that I’d be ringing up the balance of the card with a big meal at one of the other restaurants, begrudgingly.

However, despite a wait of a few days, they responded very kindly, apologizing for the mixup and instead, making good by not only sending me a brand new Shake Shack gift card but also a t-shirt to make up for the mixup.

In a world where fast food is often equated with spitting on burgers and awful service, I have to say, I am very impressed. Not only is their food basically thebomb.com but their attention to issues is second to none.

Keep me posted if y’all have any questions – I’d love to talk a bit more about what happened!

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