The Obfuscation Report

Settle in gentle reader and I'll tell you a tale of a simple trip to a fast food restaurant. Remember the days when the customer was always right? Remember when the manager or owner of a store would be personally insulted if you didn't have a fantastic experience at their store or restaurant?

Well those days are long gone. I give you todays example of Yum! Brands who owns the local KFC/Taco Bell on Brownsboro Road here in Lousiville Kentucky. Forget that it's pretty ridiculous to have a KFC and a Taco Bell in one store and forget that disgusting "I'm in a shame spiral famous chicken bowl" they serve and just listen.

I go in last night for a quick meal. I had my reservations about this particular store in the first place because even though I've lived all over the world and all over the U.S. this store seems to be the worst I've ever seen in a fast food restaurant. However I decided to take the risk one last time instead of driving another 5 minutes to a better run store.

So I ordered, and my girlfriend ordered and when we got the bill it seemed a little light. And the girl taking our order seemed a bit on the slow side, but I thought she had it down. First we got the receipt and sat down to wait for our order. I began to scan the receipt to see if our order was correct but honestly couldn't make heads nor tails of it. It was a fucking mess.

Then as we're waiting for our order, an irate customer comes in from the parking lot. Apparently he'd gone through the drive through and they'd told him it would be a few minutes and he'd been sitting out there for 20. He was pissed and just wanted his money back. This seemed to be a foreign concept to the staff of this particular KFC/Taco Bell as they just stared at him with dumb unblinking eyes as if he'd grown a second head coming off his shoulder.

During this little episode a woman calls out our order. When we open the bag I can tell it's immediately wrong. I mean seriously wrong. Of the 7 things we ordered 3 were missing. And we'd ordered very very slowly and were standing two feet away from the woman who took our order.

I didn't feel like waiting in line behind the other guy to complain, so I just decided we'd leave.

However, I was so annoyed that this store had again fucked up my order and confirmed it was the worst fast food restaurant in America that I decided I'd contact Yum! Brands today and register my disgust.

Yum is headquartered in Louisville and I'd thought it might interest them that the worst store in America was right in their back yard.

I headed over to the Yum! Brands website. I looked for some way to contact them. Ahhh the "Contact Us" button seemed to be the only place that had anything to do with customer feedback. I clicked and it immediately asked me to input my birthdate. I thought this was a bit odd, but entered my birthdate and was taken back to the home page. Confused I clicked "Contact Us" again and it said "We're sorry, you're not old enough to use this feature."

Thinking I entered my birthday wrong I tried again. Same result. I logged off, cleared my cookies, and came back and tried again, this time claiming to be 102 years old. Guess what? Same result. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. http://www.yum.com/

Now I know what you're thinking, wow that's pretty stupid. I guess they don't want customer feedback. Good story Punisher, now get on with your life.

But I couldn't let it end there. I had to call Yum! Brands. Yes, I actually called them. When they answered the phone I explained what was happening and that the Corporate Website seemed to have a problem with it's contact us feature. The woman who answered the phone laughed and said "Well I'll put you through to our help desk."

Seriously, she put me through to the fucking corporate help desk. The guy who answered that line thought I was an employee. I told him "No, I'm a customer." and I explained why I called and he said, "Oh, that's not our department. Thanks for calling" and hung up on me.

Apparently Yum! Brands doesn't give a shit what it's customers have to say.

Corporate America. Ugh.

Labels: American Corporate Republic