A customer ordered a veggie pizza with some additional toppings thru Eat24. She called to complain about cheese being on her pizza. Her rationale? Cheese is not a vegetable. I explained to her that all pizzas come with cheese unless otherwise instructed. She hung up. Moments later I find she has written a 1 Star review of our restaurant calling the employees stupid and again pointing out cheese is not a vegetable. I responded to the review again trying to explain our procedure for making pizzas and had she requested no cheese we would have gladly accommodated her since it’s not uncommon for us to get requests for no cheese along with a myriad of other special requests.
She responded by standing by her review: stupid employees.
I’m considering reporting the review. It would have been one thing to have made a request that we did not follow through on. She would have had grounds for her review. But to insult the employees over matters of routine and procedure while playing semantics over what constitutes a vegetable is quite another.
How would you handle it? Have you gotten bad reviews because of the default ways you do things at your store? Should those types of reviews be allowed to stand?
Thanks for your feedback.
Ignore her. Pretty much anyone who reads that review with even half a brain will realize how stupid she is.
Agreed. Yelp and other review sites have their crazies. I do use reviews to see how the place does when I’m not there and as sensible feedback. For the crazy reviews, you can try to report it but unless the review isn’t about a customer experience, they’ll likely leave it up. Best thing to do is write a calm response to the review a day later after you’ve cooled down and move on. People will read the review’s response and assess their opinion. Can’t please everyone. You can also Blacklist someone on EAT 24 so they never order again. Anytime I have issues with a customer on there, I blacklist them so they can’t order again.
I agree this is purely a review written by a complete moron and anyone will see that just ignore the review. Everyone knows that all pizzas come with cheese. She is probably a wacky vegan. Anytime someone has dietary or allergy restriction they should speak up we are not mind readers.
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I have a number of 1 star reviews based on my restricted delivery area. My response is a simple “we are sad that you have given a review base on not being able to get our food rather than on our food.” If people reading the reviews can’t understand the difference there is nothing you can do.
Leave it. You responded courteously and correctly. She’s the fool
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Just got a 1 star review a few days ago because we weren’t opened… how is that a review? Didn’t even try the product. Heh.
I could write a book with all the reviews that don’t belong on my page.
One of the many things that is wrong with these sites… You ought to be able to get that removed since they never made a purchase… good luck trying though.
The bulk of our 1 star reviews pertain to our delivery area boundaries. Makes no sense to me. Its like writing a negative review for a restaurant that is too far away for you to drive to.
I would like to say I have 12 - 15 of these. I have petitioned Yelp to removed them but they said NO. They did remove 1 because it was a trucker and he was based on the east coast.
I do the ole free pizza bit when someone writes a bad review. It seems to work wonders. We had a girl a week ago 1 star us say that we should be “shut down” due to our inability to deliver to her area. I offered her a free pizza for her troubles, she changed it to 5 stars and said we were the best pizza she ever had. o_O
lol, funny thing is. That violates their TOS. You basically paid them for a review 
I’ve had a few 1 stars based on my limited hours, yelp took them off. I have this woman that left me some crazy ass reviews, and I responded accordingly. My customers comment on it and enjoy the theatrics of it, and I’ve gotten many new customers from it as well. I think when you get a crazy bad review, especially if its personal like these were, it actually motivates readers to come in to support you and they want to see for themselves…helping business, haha.
I read your " you figured us out " response. Classic! I won’t do that even though I want to really bad. I’ll just live vicariously through you
Thanks for the responses. It was pretty apparent this person was going to go bawling to Yelp. When I pointed out that we don’t classify our dough as a veggie, she tried to break it down to the bare component of since dough is made from flour, and flour is a grain, grain=veggie. So clearly classification is something that seems to escape her. We don’t classify our sauce as a veggie even though it’s made from tomatoes which are technically a fruit.
Like the saying goes you can’t fix stupid I know it’s hard but don’t let it get to you.
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I totally agree, IGNOR IT. You responded correctly the first time so now just turn your back on it. You DO NOT want to get into a debate (they just love to do that with you). I get a good laugh over some of the reviews that I read and like others have said, idiots stand out like a sore thumb. I read a review once where a person was complaining that their “supreme” pizza didn’t have corn on it, never mind the fact that the store didn’t use any corn!!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor