Panera Corporate... yes, crickets.. over a week and not a peep from them. This started as a corporate problem with the Panera website, and ended up not going well at the Tyler Panera location, either. Corporate's website has a glitch that means the restaurant can sell food ordered online and paid for in cash to others before the order is picked up curbside. And the manager at the location, although polite, had an "Oh Well, it's corporate's fault, not ours" attitude towards my family's 90 minutes of lost time and $3-4 of gas completely wasted. No solutions. No bagels. Just, oops!
My daughter wanted bagels, and since the common ones were sold out of the Panera right near us, we found plain and cinnamon available at Tyler to make a 6 pack of the bagels she wanted, but it was a bit of a drive. So, we ordered them, and I paid cash with my bank account through Paypal. We gave them our exact ETA to cover the extra distance.
We actually arrived early, only to find that they had sold the bagels we ordered, and could no longer create a six pack of the kind of bagels she eats, even changing around desirable flavors (sorry, jalapeno is for salsa, not bagels).
The cashier was polite, and even understood it was not right. The problem was that the app puts the order up 10 minutes before the customer arrives. That's almost fine for hot dishes (as long as they still have the ingredients). For the bakery, it doesn't work at all, and I can't be the only person affected. When we order, those bakery items should be set aside at that time. Period. We paid for them at that time. (And not that it matters, customer-satisfaction-wise, but this was not a credit card where it just verifies and ties up the money. They got paid cash from a bank account.) When she asked the manager, the manager told her to sell us 4 plain bagels for the price of 6, which didn't include the cinnamon we ordered. Period.
We {finally} got the manager on the line. She didn't seem to understand that regardless of corporate's problem, HER CUSTOMER paid cash for an order. She just wanted us to leave without bagels, and we would get our refund in 2-3 days... maybe. After 10 minutes of excuses and no solutions, I asked her to please sell me a single bagel, and I would hand the cash out the window. We were in a very hot car, as she must have realized. It never even occurred to her to sell us a bagel that wasn't 4 for the cost of 6 !! She gave us a bagel and we left. When I logged back in, I noticed the order was completely removed from their system (as opposed to marked cancelled), so maybe that is why corporate doesn't answer. I only have the Paypal transaction now. They have a flaw in their website ordering design, but don't respond. read more