I see that Domino’s is now running a commercial in which their CEO is bragging about how customer focused the company has become.

Really? Really, Domino’s?

That really makes me shake my head and laugh, because I’ve contacted Domino’s about two separate incidents and I received no response whatsoever. My household used to order Domino’s at least twice a week, but since these events, we’ve never been back.

Both incidents went roughly like this

Domino’s has a nifty “pizza-tracker” feature that lets you order a pizza online and then track the status of your pizza as it’s made, in real-time. Or so they say.

The first dozen or so times I used the pizza tracker, I had no problems at all. It was accurate, easy to use, and fun to watch. In short, I was impressed. I ordered Domino’s pizza exactly because I loved the pizza tracker feature. It allowed me to save time because I could put my order in while at work, see when the pizza went into the oven, then swing by on my way home and pick it up for my family. Fast and easy, right?

Not quite. I found out that the tracker doesn’t really work as claimed, and I found out the hard way. One day, before leaving work, I put my order in, saw that the pizza went “into the oven,” then left for home, planning to swing by and pick the pizza up on my way. When I got to Domino’s, they told me that my order wasn’t ready. So I waited. And waited. And waited. My pizza wasn’t actually ready for another 60 minutes, give or take. Even though the online status indicator had it “in the oven” an hour before.

I asked the girl working the counter why the pizza was marked as going into the oven over an hour ago, and she said, “Oh, we’re really busy right now.” I guess Domino’s ovens cook pizza really, really slowly when they’re busy!

Not only did I waste an hour of my time sitting there waiting, but I arrived home to a very hungry (and very cranky) family.

I suspected that the employees were somehow mis-using the pizza-tracker system to pad their performance stats, so I used the customer support form to email Domino’s customer service. I only received a (probably automated) “We have forwarded your comments to the manager of Corporate Operations with the expectation that he/she will follow up,” but never got a response. I waited about a week then contacted the Manager directly (the automated email included his name and number), but again, I never got a response.

This happened to me not once, but TWICE. The pizza tracker was wrong twice. I waited and waited and waited for my pizza twice. I had a hungry and cranky family twice. I contacted customer service twice. I followed up with the manager twice. And I received no response whatsoever. TWICE.

The second time, after waiting about 30 minutes, I asked if I could just get a refund (I had paid online) and the girl at the counter actually YELLED at me, telling me how busy they were. Hey, lady, I’ve worked in the food industry too. I know it gets busy. But that really isn’t the customer’s problem, now is it? You told me my pizza would be ready in 8 minutes, I relied on that information and came down here to pick it up, and I’ve now been waiting nearly an hour. If the pizza is going to be ready in an hour, tell me it’ll be ready in an hour. Isn’t that the whole point of a “live pizza status tracker?”

Needless to say, we haven’t ordered Domino’s since.

It turned out pretty well for us in the end, though. Since Domino’s is so unreliable, I instead started stopping at Papa Murphy’s on my way home from work, and we’ve found that we like their pizza a lot more. Papa Murphy’s will put a pizza together while you wait, and you then take it home & bake it yourself. It may take an extra 15 minutes to cook the pizza yourself, but it’s better than getting stranded at a Domino’s for 60 minutes for a pizza that they said would be ready in 8 minutes.

Every time we see these Domino’s commercials with their CEO bragging about how “customer focused” they’ve become, we can’t help but laugh.