What would you do?

[Daddio]

On a busy delivery night a new staff member takes a delivery that is well outside of your area. The order is already in the oven when the mistake is noticed.

What do you do?

 

[paul7979]

Depends on what “well outside” delivery area means. I have been know to drive 4 or 5 miles past border to keep our 30 minute quote, but every once in a blue moo I’ve seen an order thats in a neighboring town 10-15 miles away. No chance I’ll deliver that, but I will offer it free for carryout if they want to come pick it up.

 

[pizzapirate]

Wow, how does someone take an order for another town 15 miles away? lol, nevermind, I should know anything is possible . . .

If we accidently take an order outside our area we just take it and let them know for in the future. There’s nothing worse than placing your order and waiting only to have someone call you later to say they can’t do it.

 

[bodegahwy]

We once had someone take an order that was 45 miles away.

Room 221 at the Holiday Inn. Driver went there, nobody answered the door. Called the room, nobody answered. Brought the pizza back.

Customer called a while later, “where is my pizza?” It was explained the driver went there with it some time ago, but nobody came to the door. Customer said it is possible he was in the shower. “We will make you a fresh one and bring it right over, sorry about that” Fresh pie made and delivered… nobody comes to the door.

Brought it back, figured someone is yanking our chain. After a while, customer calls again, pretty annoyed. After some conversation it comes out that he is in the Holiday Inn 45 miles west of us in another town… This was before we had caller ID. The customer had said room 221 at the Holiday Inn and the empoloyee taking the order just entered the phone number for the local Holiday Inn since we got a lot of business there.

We do not have too much trouble with it though as our delivery area includes the whole town and only a couple areas that are not in the city limits that are at our end of town. The huge majority of the area is the downtown area and the condos on the mountain. The few times that we have had an order outside the boundaries, we just deliver it and explain it is a one time thing. We also make a note on the customer record that it is out of the area.

 

[paul7979]

We’ve had a similar problem when our hotel keycards were delivered to a hotel in Ohio or Michigan. We had three orders one night to Motel 6 that were all brought back to the store. On the phone with one of the customers who were insisting they were in the room the whole time, I finally figured out they were over 1000 miles away, but still right off I-75. All of our “are you sure you’re in Motel 6, the one right off I-75” was pointless. I’ve never used that key card company again!

 

[NicksPizza]

If we made the error, we make good on the order. We do the explanation that we made an error and that the delivery is a one time thing for now. Vast majority of folks understand. Several will call again in a couple weeks saying “well you delivered here before” to get the phone person to cave . . . wife is often the recipient of the calls and reminds them we gave them a “one time delivery”. Amazing the powers of recall when you remind them Document in the POS system if you have one . . . in Point of Success we will flag the street as no delivery.

If it is just absolutely impossible, we call to apologize and offer compensation if they will pick up. Very few will actually flip out and shout at us.