We visited the Anthem, AZ Baskin-Robbins and advise you all to stay away from this ice cream store if you appreciate good ice cream and superior customer service.
Like most, we opted one Wednesday evening to pour the family into the car and go out for ice cream. We drove out of our way to go to the Anthem Baskin-Robbins. We ordered a new flavor of ice cream for our son and he didnt like it. It was best described as a variation of cinnamon. We did sample it first, but after several spoonfuls it was like eating a handful of hot tamales. It was supposed to have ribbons of vanilla but it didnt. When we asked for something else (a replacement kids scoop) the little snotty 16 year old began to lecture us on how they cant give out free scoops of ice cream and would need to charge us another $1.50. We wrote to Baskin-Robbins corporate and got the name, number and email of the franchise owner. She is Darlene Parrish, The Presley Corp at 623-551-3561. Email is presleycorp (at) cox (dot) net. These were her words:
If you choose to eat part and then decide you dont (sic) like it any more (sic) and want something else, we have to charge you again. That is my store policy and my staff is trained in that matter. I'm sure as a business person you can completely understand that we can not (sic) afford to just give things away, even a scoop of ice cream in this economy or other wise. (sic) I hope you understand we are a business also and are in business to make a profit.
We of course pointed out that we could have sampled all 31 flavors, but they didnt see it in their business model to give a long-time repeat patron and a child a single scoop of ice cream? One would think we asked for free lifetime ice cream, birthday cakes the rest of our lives or some other egregious act - when all we wanted was a different scoop of ice cream after already spending $13 midweek, which is probably one of their slowest nights.
As a consumer you have a choice. We suggest and encourage you to visit Dairy Queen in Tramanto as opposed to Baskin-Robbins in Anthem. Its pretty clear to us that Darlene, the Presley Group and Baskin-Robbins dont understand anything about customer service and satisfying their top patrons children. It seems they feel it is better to lecture us on the economy and their inability to provide a replacement scoop of ice cream, rather than provide a child a scoop of ice cream. It was an amazing impression Darlene and Baskin-Robbins made on 2 kids kids they forget who are requesting that parents bring them to and pay for the ice cream in their store. We should also point out that little miss Bottom-Line Baskin Robbins has undoubtedly given away a free scoop of ice cream to friends and family. Was it that significant to give another scoop of ice cream to a kid?
All this over a kids scoop of ice cream you say? Well its a matter of principal now. We think Darlenes response was glib. Our kids are the driving force behind this posting as they still cant believe that a quick service food restaurant wouldnt provide a replacement scoop of ice cream. At this stage were not sure what Baskin-Robbins may do to erase the impression made on our kids. If anything, our oldest son is discussing economics in his class and this episode was a point of discussion. We intend to print this letter for all 30 students (students, who by the way, attend a school in the vicinity of this Baskin-Robbins) so they may discuss it in class and make their own judgment of what is right and what Baskin-Robbins can do to fix this problem.
Darlene did make a point to tell us
Its unfortunate that this was not satisfactory to you. We do hope you visit us again in the future.
Darlene we assure you we wont be visiting your Baskin-Robbins anytime in any future and we will share with everyone this story. If we do visit your store, it will be to hand everyone a coupon to your competitor. We suggest you change your policy. One cant imagine that someone disliking a new flavor of ice cream is that common of an occurrence and you might want to reconsider your approach and what you tell your associates.
We wonder if after all this Darlene, was it really worth trying to charge us an extra $1.50?
For us it is.
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