Donna decided to be all efficient and stuff. She knew that she needed some pizzas for a high school team event on Monday, November 4th, so she placed the online order the previous Friday. Seven pizzas at 2:30 on Monday afternoon. The pizzas weren’t ready, though. Why? The system had corrected her order for Daylight Saving Time, and it wouldn’t be ready until 2:30.

She explains:

[W]hen I showed up, one worker told me the pizzas weren’t ready because I had ordered them for 3:30 p.m. When I showed her the confirming email I had received, clearly saying 2:30 p.m., she called over another worker. He said it was because I had ordered the pizzas before Daylight Saving Time ended for pickup after Daylight Saving Time ended.

In other words, the Domino’s computer had automatically added an hour to my specified pickup time. And really, this does seem like the only possible explanation. Fortunately, they could still cancel my order, but my team members went hungry. I emailed Domino’s Customer Service to complain, and here’s their entire response:

“Thanks so much for taking the time to contact the Domino’s Pizza Customer Care Team. We apologize for the situation you have encountered and will forward this information to the responsible department for corrective action if needed.

“We are committed to your satisfaction and consider your feedback to be a gift.”

Their mistake had already lost them all my future business, but that blow-off pretty much forced me to send this to Consumerist.

We passed Donna’s complaint on to Domino’s, asking whether this could really happen and whether they could help in any way. Even though it wasn’t evident from the message that Donna received, Domino’s never meant for this to be their only response.

While Donna read it as a brush-off, the way things are supposed to work is that she receives this “thanks for your feedback” note, and then the franchisee gets back to her.

A Domino’s spokesman explained:

I can certainly see why [Donna] believes this to be a “blow off” response, but it’s not truly meant to be. We do like to respond to customers as quickly as possible, to let them know we’ve received their emails.

At the same time, Donna was receiving a phone call from Domino’s. She writes:

I got a phone call from an extremely professional member of Domino’s customer care team who apologized beautifully and offered me a gift card. She couldn’t say whether the problem was Daylight Saving time or not, though she promised to pass the issue along to their IT Department.

I thanked her for the apology, but I declined the gift card, because I’m not out any money and because she was calling only after hearing from the Consumerist.

It’s possible that the franchisee would have offered her a gift card or some other material apology once they got through to her, and getting Consumerist involved just moved the timeline up.

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