I heard all the wonderful hype about this place, so we decided to come here today on April 10, Friday, at 5:25pm (order went through at 5:35pm) I was so ready to give this place 5 stars and write a great review on my blog and Facebook. Not anymore!! We received terrible and condescending customer service which I will write below. I would not be posting this if they had APOLOGIZED properly, but they did not.
It started off well at first. A young Chinese boy greeted my husband and I in a friendly way. We both wanted mango teas, but he said they were out and that the mango teas wouldn't arrive until May. That's all right, he was smiling and so polite. So we changed our order to Oolong Latte with small white pearls, and a Coffee Jelly Pu-erh Milk Tea. Here's where the trouble begins:
- He didn't understand my Yelp check-in free coupon and asked one of the girl staff about it. That's ok, he's probably new and training. But when my husband ordered the Coffee Jelly Pu-erh Milk Tea, the boy repeated back, "Coffee Jelly Milk Tea". I said again, "Pu-Erh, Pu-erh milk tea", now feeling a bit uncomfortable that he didn't understand English. (We don't speak Chinese, so I repeated to make sure he understood).
- A hint that I know that he must have been sleepy or tired was when he read out our bill as "$4.72" but the bill was really $8 something. So again, this worried me that he wasn't paying attention to his work.
-After we got our bill, I noticed the bill looked weird. There was a $0.50 extra charge. Now, I don't care about the money. I was concerned he got the order wrong. When we brought this up to the boy and the 2 girls working there, they started arguing back about the $0.50. I told them we don't care about that, I just want the right order. We got a coffee jelly Milk tea, but we wanted the coffee jelly Pu-erh tea. They offered to give the 50 cents back, they were obviously not listening, or were too lazy to make a new one because there was a line up behind us. So what if there is a line up? They should treat all customers equal.
- A Mandarin girl customer was listening and spoke up for me in Chinese, "They want the Coffee Jelly Pu-Erh Tea, it's different than what you gave them". I told her thank you for explaining. The girl staff then asked the boy staff why he made our drink wrong, and he lies, "I already told them Pu-Erh is sold out." No he didn't!! I immediately said he told us the mango teas were out, he never told us the Pu-Erh was out. Then the girl staff tried to treat us like stupid again, saying there's no coffee for our original order. Of course we know that, I have no idea why she wants to keep arguing. In all the time they wanted to discuss against us, they could have just made us the right tea.
- The 2 girl staffs began to treat us we were stupid again, and said this black milk tea is the same base and similar to the Pu-erh tea we originally wanted, and that we should accept it. I corrected them that it is not the same teas, and that I know my teas. I worked in the tea industry and my grandparents owned a tea store in Asia, so Shiny Tea staff's trick did not work on me. They just assume because we speak English, that we would know nothing about teas. Very arrogant for them to think that way. They also tried to treat us like it was about the 50 cents, how dumb since our original order would be 30 cents more. We don't care about the money, I work for a Law office as a Paralegal Assistant (and studying part-time to become a Lawyer). I do NOT care about the cents. I care about getting the right order and getting good customer service. We just want the RIGHT ORDER because I'm all about what is fair.
-In the end, after I stood firm and refused to leave, they finally made the right order. How interesting that they made it when the boy lied that they were out of Pu-Erh (so now he told 2 lies). Never lie and argue to a lawyer, I will know and observe what people say very carefully.
- They also did not give us a stamp card. This place advertises Buy 10 Get 1 Free. They owe me a stamp card with 2 stamps.
I will be sending this review to management. If they don't respond, this story will go on my Facebook, Twitter, and blog, and I will get a friend to translate it into Chinese writing too.
My main complaint is: Don't argue with your customer when you are wrong and don't try to act smart. Also, the boy should have apologized. He did not. He just put on a grumpy face. The girl apologized, but she said it without sincerity. read more