› Budget101 Discussion List Archives › Budget101 Discussion List › Awful Carrabba’s coupon experience
- This topic has 11 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated August 27, 2009 at 3:43 pm by .
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April 8, 2009 at 9:39 pm #272307
lisa196622193
Last night my hubby and I went to Carrabba’s. We go quite often. I brought an Amici Club coupon for a free calamari appetizer, which I received by e-mail.
I explained to the waiter that the coupon was identical to another one that I had received by e-mail, and that I was worried that the second coupon could have been re-sent by mistake. I asked the waiter to check the coupon for me first, before going ahead and ordering the appetizer. I wanted to make sure it would work.
After we finished eating dinner, he said he’d take the coupon now. He came back after a few minutes and he rudely said, “You already used this coupon. You can’t use this.
You already used it!” I got so angry! i re-explained the situation to him and told him that it was his fault.
i didn’t like how she enunciated certain words to make me feel like i did something wrong. instead of cheerfully saying something like, “no problem,” she said, “yes, this coupon was definitely a mistake. if you ever receive a coupon like this again, make sure to have the waitstaff come get me so that i can approve this first. i’ll let you have it this time…”
the only reason she let me use it is that i really had to exhaustively explain it to her, after i had already explained it to the waiter. just the act of having to do so much explaining was embarrassing to me.
of course, the waiter avoided us after that, but i didn’t want to leave before letting him know what we had to go through with the manager. i told him that he put us in an embarrasing situation, and he said i put myself in an embarrassing situation. i told him that i had asked him to check out the coupon beforehand in order to avoid such a situation and he said that it’s not his responsibility to manage such things.
while the waiter and i were arguing back and forth, the young manager came over again and said, “you need to leave now.”
it’s such a shame. all these corporate headquarters of chain restaurants really have no idea how young and unprofessional their staff can be!
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April 9, 2009 at 12:13 pm #419200
jaime
What a horrible experience. I feel so bad for you. I hope today is a much better day 🙂
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April 9, 2009 at 12:23 pm #419201
Katie31
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April 9, 2009 at 1:27 pm #419206
lisa196622193
Thanks for listening! 🙂
Can you believe that we did tip the waiter — I’ll bet he was SO surprised when he noticed that we left a full tip!! He did wait on us for a full hour (many trips back and forth, i.e., rounds of drinks, bread, water, meals, other little requests, etc.) so we always leave a tip for all that work even when we’re ticked off about something and feel the need to speak up. When I’m ticked off I sure do speak up about it but I don’t withhold money.
I unsubscribed from Carrabba’s mailing list.
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April 9, 2009 at 1:55 pm #419211
tsgal
I wouldn’t have left a tip. Even though he did work for others, he didn’t for you. He gave you a hard time and then he (sounds to me) lied to his boss to cover his own butt.
People are just that way, it’s sad but true.
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April 9, 2009 at 2:40 pm #419212
rtebalt
You should really call the corporate office & inform them of this situation. They need to know when their customers are treated so awfully!!! If I were you, I would also call the local Carrabas and ask to speak to a different manager.
In this economic timethey can’t afford to treat people that way. I had a similar experience with a manager at a Kmart (although it wasn’t NEARLY as bad as what you described!) I called & spoke with the manager & told him how I was treated & explained that in these tough times I could just take my business to another competing store. He was so apologetic.
He said he did not want to lose me as a customer. He even gave me a $20 giftcard! I’m not saying you do it for the free gift card.
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April 9, 2009 at 2:45 pm #419213
rtebalt
Oh, I told my husband what happened to you. He said he believes all the Carrabas have the name of the owner/ proprietor on the door. Hubbie said you should aske to speak with him/her.
You may even be able to look up a contact number (office number) for him online. Hubbie says he needs to know what kind of people are working for him.
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April 9, 2009 at 5:35 pm #419221
lisa196622193
Well, my hubby did go to http://www.carrabbas.com and wrote them a long, detailed letter. I’m sure he had to provide contact information. Haven’t heard anything back.
All I can do is hope that karma gets those two. Liars won’t ever get into any trouble. We’re afraid to set foot in there again anyway.
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April 10, 2009 at 1:45 am #419234
tsgal
Lisa, I’m sorry that you and your husband had to go thru what you went thru. I worked in a place that the manager did it all the time, to cover herself. It would really upset me to no end, so that’s why I was thinking that that’s what the young man did.
So that way the Manager wouldn’t get mad at him for the mistake. You know how people can be, blame someone else and no one will know. It’s good that you hubby wrote to them about this, maybe someone will step in and take care of it.
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April 10, 2009 at 2:23 am #419236
justicemsb
Most places don’t want the bad publicity. I would definitely follow up with a phone call to Corporate, otherwise, you may or may not hear anything. Phone calls get more of a positive response, especially for what you went through.
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May 4, 2009 at 9:07 pm #420876
danghsia
wow that was rude
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August 21, 2009 at 1:12 am #424386
lcove2000
That’s sounds soooooooooooooooooooo frustrating!
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August 27, 2009 at 3:43 pm #424547
jdm5lughatch
I love Carrabbas and this story reminds me of one horrible experience we had while visiting our local establishment a few years ago. I knew the owner Proprietor very well because we used to go there up to 4 times a week. On this one particular visit I wasn’t feeling well but my Fiance wanted to go out to celebrate our anniversary or something along those lines.
The waiter came out and apologized himself and said he was in the back helping clean up or something along those lines. He took our drink and dinner order and then came back with the drinks and bread. We asked for straws and he told us they were out yet the table across from us had some.
We just went with it. Whatever, not worth arguing over some straws.
They bring them out again and still no waiter. No refills no nothing. By this time I am livid and not feeling good to boot.
So we finish our meals never getting a refill and still not having even seen our waiter. The place is pretty much closing and we are still waiting for our waiter. The manager on duty wasn’t walking around or anything.
I am fuming at this point because we have been there for 2 hours. I am not always this patient. Maybe it was because I was sick and just didn’t feel like getting into it that night I truly don’t know why I waited so long for everything.
Well the waiter brings us the check I give him my card immediately because I wasn’t sure when I would see him again. We then wait again which seems like an eternity for my card to come back. It comes back and he tries to be polite but I wasn’t listening to a word he said.
I had it in my mind to talk to Frank whom at the time was the Proprietor for that location when he came back from the company trip to Italy that apparently all of the Proprietors went on. Well as we are walking out I get to the car and start to open the door for my Fiance and the front door opens and out runs the waiter. He yells “hey!
what the f*** is this for!” i stopped in my tracks and and started to walk towards him because i was already so mad i was surprised i was even able to control myself. i started to yell back and ask him if he is serious.
this guys says to me “you have a reputation for being a bad tipper.” i looked at him and said you are about 2 seconds from getting knocked the F*** out so you better stop talking nonsense. I looked at the familiar faces and say I have a reputation?
If I have any reputation it’s coming here too much and tipping far better than most I am sure of that (we had the regular waiters whom happened to be off that night and they wouldn’t charge us for appetizers or drinks every now and again so we would include what they cost into the tip so that their tip was higher than average). They all look at me and say we have never heard this nor have we ever received a bad tip from you. So he had apparently thought I was a different customer or mistaken me for someone else they may have talked about earlier that evening.
The manager followed me out and said he would talk to frank as soon as he came back.
A week or so later we go back and Frank is in. He comes over sits down with us and apologizes for everything. Lets me know that he fired him because it was completely unprofessional and he deserved what he got.
I looked at him and said how can I have such a reputation when I always leave a bare minimum 20% and most of the time it’s upwards of 30-40%. He said he believes he had me mistaken for another regularly bad customer that was there at the same time. Several of my regular waiters came up to us and said how shocked they were and couldn’t believe that happened.
A couple even mentioned the waiter in question was very abrasive and difficult to work with not to mention flipped out on another customer the same day.
I just had a pissed off customer leave my establishment as I was writing this. I did some work for him and he messed it up when in stalling it. He brings it back to me in pieces and expects me to fix it for free or a discounted rate because he just spent X amount on it yesterday.
It’s not my fault he messed it up and yet he acts as though it is and denies denies denies it until I have to prove it to him that it’s physically impossible for it to have happened the way he explained it. Now he admits it and expects me to fix it for practically nothing. Why should I after all you did was deny deny deny and then admit when you knew I had you caught in your lie.
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