Below is the comment I left on the Outback website, on July 15, 2007. If you read any of this, be sure to read the bottom to find out how the local owner/manager responded. Had I thought of it, I should have posted this to the blog way back then.
+-------- Message on Outback Corporate Web Site --------+
Last night my wife and I ate at the Bellevue, Nebraska Outback because today (July 15th) is our 35th Anniversary and I have to go out of town at noon. I want to thank outback for turning our Anniversary dinner into a nightmare.
We arrived and were seated immediately. We ordered our meal of two Prime Ribs (16oz and 8oz) cooked medium well with drinks and Bloomin Onion appetizer. The drinks and Bloomin Onion arrived within a reasonable time. After tiring of the Bloomin Onion, I asked our waitress where our salads were. She said she didn't remember ordering our salads and that she would check whether she had placed our orders for salads. She came back a few minutes later and said she could not find our order anywhere and needed to re-take our order. We repeated our order for a 16 oz and 8 oz Prime Rib, medium well done and salads. Our salads arrived and then eventually the Prime Rib arrived cooked rare. My wife and I looked at each other and just shrugged. We ate as much as we could and decided to take the Prime Rib home and finish cooking it. The next time the waitress came by, we asked to get take out boxes for our meals and that the complimentary dessert for our anniversary be to-go. She asked if everything had been Okay, and I explained the issue with the under cooked Prime Rib. She apparently went and told the manager who came to our table. We explained how things had gone and he left to check on what had happened. Meanwhile two boxes and a bowl of ice cream covered in chocolate syrup with whipped cream and a cherry arrived. We explained that the dessert was supposed to be to-go and the waitress went back to make it to-go. My wife took several bites of the ice cream and commented on how good the chocolate tasted. At that point the manager arrived with a complimentary bottle of wine, a coupon for $45 off on our next visit and an offer to pay for the order minus the alcohol, which I considered a very generous offer. Finally the ice cream to-go arrived, we finished paying our part of the bill and we left with our boxes, ice cream, wine and coupon in hand. We get home and my wife decides to try some of the ice cream. That is when she found that ice cream didn't have any chocolate syrup, just vanilla ice cream with whip cream and a cherry. She just threw it in the freezer in disgust.
I find that we now have a $45 coupon that I don't know who I dislike enough to give it to. Obviously, neither my wife nor I intend to go back, but maybe sometime in the future when I confuse Outback with LoneStar and can't remember which one gave us "the anniversary experience" we might come back, but by then the coupon will be long lost. This is not how we had intended to spend our 35th anniversary.
+-------- Manager's Ultimate Response --------+
I went out of town that afternoon and was gone for most of the week. When I got home Toni (Martha) said the Bellevue Outback owner had called and wanted to talk to me. When I called him he apologized profusely and said that he was married too and understood the situation. Later we received a box of very expensive cookies and a debit card with $100 on it. We did go back to the Bellevue Outback and the experience was delightful.
No comments:
Post a Comment