"We plan to be mediocre because we are Indian..."

"We plan to be mediocre because we are Indian..."

This is the message I got from the Chilli n' Spice management the other day! I am sure this means nothing to you, so let me start from the very beginning.

It was a Friday evening, and I was attending a dance class. A was supposed to call Chilli n' Spice restaurant and place a take-out order which I would pick up after class. When I got out of class, I saw A's message on my phone saying he couldn't get through to them, so he had placed an online order, which was a service they were now providing apparently. I had another errand to run after class, so I reached the restaurant 25 minutes later than the time they had promised the food would be ready.

When I asked for the food, there was confusion and panic. No food. How come, their faces were questioning. So was mine. Apparently my order had not reached them. Why? The guy said he hadn't been around to take the order. I thought that was the whole point of an online order. There wasn't any human "taking" to be done. Looks like they need someone who can read a computer to actually transfer the information from the order to the chefs.

I was pretty mad, since it was close to 9 pm and I know A was famished back home. They said they would place the order right away, if I could please just wait another 5-10 minutes. That obviously was a big fat lie, since I have never known Chilli n' Spice to prepare an order in less than half an hour. My voice started to rise and I asked to just be refunded my money so I could be on my way. The guy called the lady in-charge (owner?) to authorize the refund. She asked me what I had ordered, and I almost shouted at her that I didn't want any food from them, just my money back. She said, "Calm down ma'am, I am refunding your payment, but I need to make sure I am refunding for the correct items." I fell silent.

As she finished the transaction, she apologized for the mix-up, saying this was a one-off incident and wouldn't have happened if I only had placed an order on the phone. That's when I got really riled up. No ma'am.This is the first time I placed an online order, but blunders have happened almost every time I placed a take-out order on the phone. Once we waited in the car for more than an hour for our food (probably another case of having forgotten to inform the chefs). T was very small at the time and I had to feed her in the car! Another time I was pregnant and craving a particular Indo-Chinese item. Well guess what, we got home to discover the wrong item and they had the nerve to nonchalantly say, "Just bring it back and we will replace it". Well, I stay far away and don't have the energy to drive back out there just for a replacement, not to mention that it was well past dinner time (again!) and I was starving. They promised to replace it another time, but didn't honor it the next time we went there, even when we had them call the person who talked to us (no surprises!!) In fact, I would hazard to guess that I have had some issue or the other with this restaurant more often than not. Her response to all this? "You can't expect excellent customer service at an Indian restaurant..."

As an Indian, I take severe offense to this statement. Anyway, I didn't expect excellent customer service. I just expected service. In fact, I just wanted them to honor the most basic commitment implicit in a restaurant business. I pay you money; you give me food. In a reasonable amount of time. I am not saying it has to be super fast. I was 25 minutes late in the above incident anyway. But if you don't give me food at all, that is not bad customer service. That is fraud. I guess their reaction to this would be, "Honor? Commitment??? What's that????"

Oh and the last gem of a comment from her... "You must be the one unlucky customer!"

Are you serious? So my bad luck is responsible for all this? And please tell me I am not the only one who has had such experiences with them......