To staff and Management 12/12
Medallion Center location
Dallas, TX. 75231
Today at Applebee's my wife and I went to celebrate our 2nd Anniversary together and had an unpleasant experience. When we went inside a large group of approximately eight people were waiting and then seated just ahead of us. We however, were not greeted or even acknowledge of being in the restaurant. There were three young waitresses not more then a few feet from us who totally ignored our very existence. One got some menus from under the customer service station and all three turned their backs and walked away. I commented on this to my gal and said, "What are we invisible". This was highly unusual behavior, as I have never before walked into an eating establishment where someone didn't at least say "Welcome to %” or “Someone will be right with you”.
A short while later an elderly gal did greet us and escort us to our table. Not wanting to spoil a good mood and the first time was had been to a sit down menu in a long time, we didn't make a big deal of it. Our waiter Dwayne L was very good and had an excellent manner. The Pina Colada was wonderful. The meal came quickly enough and the food was nearly perfect.
About 2/3 of the way through our meal a middle age female came by and asked how was everything. I assumed she was the manager on duty and I told her about our experience upon entering the establishment. I explained our initial encounter up with your people. She said sorry and that she would talk to the young ladies. Jokingly I told her that she should take the gals in the back and give them a good tongue-lashing. She said she would straighten them out.
Now I do realize that Applebee's is considered to be a neighborhood bar and grill plus the fact that the Dallas Cowboys were fixing to play in about 30 mins. Sure some football was being played on the monitors, but neither the restaurant nor bar was very busy. Nor was it loud since this was around 6:30 PM. The Manager was apologetic for the incident, but I don't know if she even talked to her waitresses. If this was prime time rush hour with many drunks or unruly people around perhaps I could forgive such behavior.
After paying for our meal and going home I reflected upon this incident some more and got a little madder because there was no follow-up from the MOD. I have spent nearly 20 years in Management and the Food Service business myself. She should have at least told the customer her name and assured us that this would never happen again.in all our years of life, neither my wife nor myself have ever felt so put out in such a careless manner. I later realized that the blame for such poor customer service lies not with the waitress gals but the Management of the establishment itself. I don’t think she was even wearing a name badge.
Should Applebee’s continue to operate its locations in such a disrespectful manner they will surely lose customers and likely go out of business.in these tough economic times it isn’t enough to provide an excellent product if you cannot present it in decent way. Half of the dinning experience is the overall ambiance and the most basic service is expected from everyone.
While this wasn’t a horrible incident, it was certainly one of the most ignorant and blatantly obvious sign of discourteous behavior that I have ever encountered. I would not boycott the entire chain of restaurants but will certainly not frequent the Medallion center location again. This did put a big frown on what should have been a joyous occasion for us.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss how to make a difference and improve your seriously damaged reputation for being what I thought to be a fine dinning establishment. I was always taught that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and I have never had to write a letter like this before.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
P.S. Follow up, sent online copies of this letter to both the online complaint department and directly to the store where we ate dinner over a week ago. Left them my phone #, My address, and email contact information of [email protected]. Have gotten absolutely no response or feedback from them at all. Why even pretend to offer service if you don’t actually do anything to help the customer? That’s just offering up lip service and you really aren’t going to help at all. I guess the next step is to email copies of this to all my online friends. Let’s see there are over 300 people on my AOL party list. Several hundred people on MySpace and Facebook friends are growing quickly, I don’t know how many people are currently on there. Applebee’s has already closed one store in the DFW area. Let’s see if we can’t put another one out of business since they don’t seem to care at all.
0 comments