company advertises that they offer a 10% discount to seniors; however, when SUBWAY's headquarters are alerted to a failure to carry out this policy, they are unwilling to act to rectify the problem.
I visited SUBWAY several times during this past September. I am 71 and certainly look my age, but I was unaware of the discount. It was not offered to me when I bought my first sandwich at the store on the corner of Perry Street and Seventh Avenue South. So when I found out about the discount, I requested it the next time I bought a sandwich at this same store. When I looked at the receipt, however, I didn't see the deduction there, so I asked about it. The clerk's reply was unclear, and both clerks insisted that the discount was "figured in". But something about the transaction continued to gnaw at me. Were these SUBWAY employees playing games?
I went back to the same store (this was the third time that month) on the last day of SUBWAY's September five-dollar foot long offer and bought a sandwich and again asked for the discount. I decided that I would not argue with them or dicker about their reasoning--if that's what it was--nor would I check their accounting; I'd just take the receipt home with me.
Which is what I did. Again, the discount was nowhere to be found. That was when the organizational bull started piling up....
The first thing any consumer would do was go to the company's web site, so I did that. On that site I found their complaint link and sent in a gripe listing not just the abovementioned store's location, but another location nearby. (The latter told me they were "out of" a certain sandwich on the September $5 deal, citing that it was "the last six hours of the September sale". It seemed worth mentioning in my blanket complaint; but the focus of the complaint was the store at Perry and Seventh.)
About a week later I got an email from the company in which I was asked to restate my complaint. I did this, leaving out the precise address, expecting that SUBWAY already had that location data I had sent into their web site. I replied by basically restating the complaint, adding that I had the store receipt, if they cared to see a copy. A week later they replied with another form-like letter--one in which they asked me to state where the store in question was located. In a somewhat peevish reply, I reiterated the information and complained that no one seemed to be taking me seriously. Then a letter--from a different official--asked me to basically provide the same information...again.
In an admittedly scathing reply I pointed out that what was happening to my complaint was the kind of runaround that used to be given welfare and other "entitlement" applications. I spoke from authority, having discovered this policy when I was a New Jersey State caseworker decades ago. It's something unofficially called and unofficially applied as less eligibility. The name means that, the more obstacles you place in a person's path, the more you're likely to divert that person and get him to basically give up his application, or whatever he's bothering you about. That was over a week ago. I promised the insular SUBWAY functionaries that I would wait this long. I told them that all I wanted was their assurance that 1] they were serious about their employees offering and actually giving the 10% senior discount, and 2] that they would speak with the clerks in the store I had my bad experiences in.
So far they have remained silent. read more
