Worst Customer Service Ever Experienced

I used the website subwayfresh2u.co.uk on 07/08/21 to order a platter as part of a buffet for my daughter’s third birthday, to be ready for 11am on 08/08/21. I went to pick up the order at 11.05 and when I arrived, the employees there had no idea what I was talking about. They asked me was I Deliveroo or Uber etc. I showed them my phone with my order confirmation email, order reference 63368 and clarified the address of Store #65438 Unit 1, Whitton Road,Tesco Store Unit 1, Bracknell,RG12 9TZ. I was then left standing there whilst the employee went off and spoke to her manager for 10 minutes on the phone not knowing what was going on. I went and sat down patiently and waited. She then came out and said that she would do the order. Once the order was ready at 11.30am (half an hour after I had booked it to be ready for). I went up to collect it and asked if the franchisee (Chirag Dalwadi or Chiragkumar Dalwadi - chirag_dalwadi@yahoo.co.uk) had suggested I receive any gesture of good will or compensation for the inconvenience. She said no and I responded that it would be nice to throw in some cookies or a 2 litre bottle of drink to make up for the poor service. She asked if I had ordered any of those online and I said no. She then said no you can’t have them. I mentioned to her that I will be making a complaint to subwayfresh2u and she then panicked and gave me one 500ml bottle of drink. Naturally I complained about the entire situation and martina@altaine.com got back to me quite quickly. Initially she was very good and responsive. It took two days for the franchisee to get back to me and when he did, he sent me a long generic email stating that he had reviewed the CCTV and audio at his store and apologised for the issue I had with his staff. Bearing in mind I wasn’t complaining about the staff, I was complaining about the fact I ordered the platter and it wasn’t ready. He didn’t address the main part of my complaint at all stating that I didn’t put in my original complaint that I had received the 500ml bottle of drink, despite it clearly being in my original complaint email. Basically he didn’t read my complaint properly and thanked me for my feedback and didn’t offer ANY form of compensation. I responded within 10 minutes informing him that I wasn’t happy with the response as he didn’t actually address the main part of the complaint and hadn’t read my email properly. There was no response to my email and he has been ignoring me ever since I sent the response on 10/08/21. I copied martina@altaine.com into my responses and she also ignored me. I then sent an email at the end of the working day the next day and subsequent emails every couple of days asking why I am being ignored and for my complaint to follow a complaints process and be dealt with professionally. During being ignored I found an email address for a Tesh Patel, Tesh@sub10.co.uk He/She covered subway franchising in the area that the store was based so I thought he/she might be able to assist or at least put someone in contact with me that could help me. I forwarded the email chain I had with the franchisee and Martina on 11/08/21. I received no response. I then sent him two more emails over the last couple of weeks just asking him to forward my email to customer services and received no response. Martina did reply at one point stating that she is not ignoring me but that it is up to the franchisee to sort out the complaint. As she had been copied into every email I sent to the store manager she could see that I was being ignored. I asked her to please forward my email onto someone above the franchisee so that the complaint can be dealt with professionally and taken seriously and she then provided no response. I sent an enquiry to the central customer services team at www.subway.com/en-gb/contactus/contactusform on 11/08/21 and had no response so I sent another enquiry a few days ago and have still had no response. My wife then messaged the Subway UK Instagram and they stated: “Hello, We have been in touch with the franchisee and it seems a solution has already been offered. The franchisee is the highest point of contact for this type of issue.” Shortly after this I received another email from the franchisee (Chirag Dalwadi). This email was almost an exact copy and paste of the original email he sent me, minus the bit about reviewing CCTV. He again thanked me for my feedback and said he was sorry about his staff. He still didn’t address the issue with the platter and it seemed like he didn’t realise that I was the person that he had already spoken to, using his yahoo account. My wife then responded to Subway UK on Instagram, that no solution had been offered and that the franchisee issued me with a generic copy and paste email response, not addressing the actual complaint and not offering any form of compensation. This was on 17/08/2021 and guess what, they ignored her and have provided no response. This is Subways favourite thing to do. Ignore the problem so it just goes away, no need to provide good customer service, it’s only one customer. Anyway, I was then forced to create a Twitter account specifically just to contact @SubwayUK to see if I could get anywhere. I sent them the entire blurb about what happened (a slightly shorter version of this) and they took a day and a half to respond: “Hi Sean, You have already contacted us on Instagram. We have been in touch with the franchisee and it seems they have already offered a solution. As our restaurants are individually owned and operated, the franchisee is the highest point of contact for this type of complaint. Please contact the franchisee for any further information. Thank you.” I responded with screenshots of the email that the franchisee (Chirag Dalwadi) had sent me, asking them where in the emails I had been offered a solution. Also if they had read my complaint properly, they would have seen that I was being ignored by the franchisee, and everyone else I contacted from Subway, so contacting the franchisee was not an option I had. Guess what, they ignored me. I then tweeted Nigel Doughty the Country Director of UK & Ireland Subway with a screenshot of the lack of customer service that @SubwayUK had offered me stating that there was no solution offered. Yet again I have been ignored. Moral of the story is, Subway do not have a complaints procedure and if they do it certainly isn’t followed. If the franchisee says that the problem has been sorted then they will believe them at face value and not investigate the case/complaint at all. I’m sure that if someone higher up in Subway saw the email chain of how many people had been approached and the fact that no one took any positive action or engaged me in a professional and adult conversation to try and find a resolution, then they would have a lot to answer to, however they refuse to escalate it, meaning that you have nowhere to go and eventually you just have to accept that they couldn’t care less about their customers. Chirag Dalwadi owns four Subway stores within the Berkshire area. The one in Lexicon is also owned by him. Of course I refuse to give him anymore of my money as he clearly doesn’t want me as a customer, so I will be actively avoiding all of his stores which is a shame because I used to love Subway before this incident.

Sean Butler - 20/08/2021 | report this review