Live and learn. This Subway location won't do squat to fix a problem -- the most common of which, in my experience, is serving stale -- not toasted! -- bread. And we're not talking a little dried out either -- think crumbs all over your clothes and in your hair because the bread is so crusty on top it shatters when you try to bite into it. (If it's generally true that you like your sandwiches toasted you may not notice. But definitely keep this in mind if you dislike toasted bread or are headed back to the office after lunch!)
At first I thought it was a fluke but a stale if not half stale, half soggy sandwich happens several times per year, which constitutes a pattern. Now if all they chose to do was apologize and make right, that would represent an inconvenience but not a one-star rating. Unfortunately, what adds to the frustration of the situation is that the employees and management play games with the customer's time and money when a problem is brought to their attention.
The last straw was on Mother's Day. The employees claimed they could not help, even with a receipt and a purchase less than an hour old, because their manager was not on duty. As a result, they said to wait until Monday. However, earlier today (Monday) my spouse talked to the manager who bizarrely claimed, through extremely broken English, that she remembers my spouse asking for "soft bread" and that *she* made the dried-out sandwich we received on Sunday. (You can't run a cash register without entering an employee ID so either an employee was using a manager's code or the manager was present on Sunday but chose to blend in with the other employees -- because the story on Sunday less than an hour after the sandwich was made contradicted her claim that she was working that Mother's Day Sunday at all. (Sadly, the one thing they do better here than "sandwich art" is giving the customer the runaround.)
Subway policy is not to offer refunds; however, they will replace food by permission of management. But when the receipt was brought back with the stale bread, which the manager said she would accept after explaining we had salvaged the contents by buying replacement bread from Albertson's -- the employees advised my spouse to return A THIRD TIME because the manager was not there and had not left any notes. (If the manager had any intention to resolve the situation she might have asked for my spouse's name but never bothered doing that either, nor could she speak her name clearly enough for my spouse to understand at this or any other previous time we have reported an issue -- hence a "final straw" moment for us and this review. The only thing my spouse was able to make out from her broken English is that her normal hours are from 6 a.m. to 3 pm, yet when arriving on the same day for a replacement sandwich she was again not there and my spouse was sent home empty handed.
Continually passing the buck to the "owner" doesn't pass the smell test because while there is only one head manager/owner no properly run food/retail establishment is run without a shift lead, who is empowered to make basic decisions in response to customer complaints. (Keep in mind this was about a single foot-long sandwich. It's not like we expect a random employee to be empowered to replace an order for a party of 12 but not empowered to address a problem with a single sandwich?)
I would like to think I know a little bit about how Subway works because I worked there myself years ago. As such, the bread should not be that dried out unless A) they are over-cooking it (unlikely though because that would also cause the bread to turn a deep brown, if not burn, plus the ovens are essentially designed to be foolproof for consistent, corporate-approved results). Thus, my guess is, B) this location is not baking fresh bread on a daily basis to save money. In that case, if it is a slow day instead of discarding it or donating it to a food bank the remainder is served to unsuspecting customers, which is a violation of Subway franchising rules.
When I worked at Subway in college, some of the other college-age kids that worked there began trading sub sandwiches for pizza with employees who worked in the same strip mall. Word finally made it back to the manager who staked out his own store late at night from across the street to observe what was going on -- then fired the employees who were stealing food. I can only hope that an area district manager for Subway will do the same at this location to ensure the licensee is indeed arriving at 6 a.m. to bake fresh bread -- with someone to cover for her on days off -- because those are the rules she is contracted to follow to maintain her franchise license.
In closing, I encourage anyone who has been given excuses for inaccessibility to anyone who can address a problem in a timely manner to report the situation to corporate. With enough complaints, they may follow through with an audit. read more