At the end of a long day, too late to cook dinner, my kid asked for Sonic. Since the drive thru at this location is notoriously slow, I decided to park and press the red button. It was 9:20pm. After a long wait, my order was taken, and I inserted my card to pay. It was now 9:33pm. After seeing several customers pull up after me, place their orders, receive their orders, and leave, I began to grow impatient.
As cars began to thin out in the drive thru and parking stalls, leaving us and two other cars, a new customer pulled up, and I overheard someone on the intercom say, "Thank you for choosing Sonic, we are now closed." I looked at the time - it was 10:02pm. The customer pulled off. One minute later, all of the overhead lights shut off, and we were now sitting in the dark - In a part of town with a higher crime rate, where you definitely have to keep your head on a swivel even during daylight hours. I pressed the red button again, immediately. There was no answer, so I called the store. The phone rang infinitely.
Finally, someone answered the intercom.
"Thank you for choosing Sonic, we are now closed," a voice says.
"I didn't get my food, I've been here for 30 minutes," I reply.
The voice hesitates.
"Did you order on the app?" She says, seemingly ready to dismiss my claim to my food.
"No, I ordered right here. I pressed the red button, somebody took my order, and I put my card into the screen."
"Oh. Well your order should be out shortly. Our cook got slammed with two large orders at the last minute and yours is coming up."
As pissed as I was, I also had to stay mindful that if they don't care about timeliness or keeping up with orders, they probably don't care about tampering with my food. So I stayed polite.
"Can you please tell me about how long it'll be?"
"We have a couple of things coming out right now, I can't say whether or not they're yours, but it should be coming out soon."
"So you can't give me an estimate on how long it's going to take? I have to get my kid to bed"
"It should be coming out soon."
"Ok," I say, defeated.
At this point, I had every intent on driving away, and battling for a refund or disputing the charge the next day, but me and my kid would be back to square one: on the hunt for food, and potentially having to restart our wait, if we could find a place that was still open. So we stayed.
About 10:15pm, a young polite man popped up out of the shadows and delivered our food. He gave us an additional cherry limeade and a small tater tot for our wait. I didn't think this was acceptable, but I didn't want to take it out on him, so we checked the bag to make sure the order looked correct, and we left.
When we got home, (5 minute drive), we found that the food was ice cold, and my son had the wrong sandwich. At this point, he was so frustrated and hungry, he told me not to worry about it, and ate it anyway.
The next day, I called the 800 number, or customer service or whatever. After hearing my story, the young lady on the phone said that she'd notify the store, and thanked me for calling. I asked was there anything she could do for the inconvenience, and she said, "oh yeah. I can give you a credit in the Sonic app." I told her I didn't have the Sonic app, and asked if I had to input personal information like email and phone number etc, in order to receive the credit. She said yes. I told her I wasn't interested in signing up, and she sharply said, "Ok. Since you're denying the credit, I will reach out to the store, they will call you, and you can see what they can do."
I asked her, "What is my next step if they don't call me? Do I call your department back?" She said, "No. You call the store, since that's where you had the issue."
Needless to say, I never heard from the store. I called the store, and they didn't answer the phone.
If you are so high on drugs that your time perception is off, and you don't care about waiting in the dark for cold food like some kind of neglected house pet, this might be the perfect place for you. As for me and mine, we won't be coming back to this location.
Lastly, my mom always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." So I'll say that the cherry limeade was fire. Thanks, I guess. read more