The last time I ordered a pizza online was in 2005. I placed the order on the donatos.com website, drove ten minutes to the store, pulled into the drive through, and listened to an operator at HQ reading my online order to the store clerk over the speaker phone. Yes, I drove faster than the tubes.
And I think the last time I ordered Dominos was 2008, but it was so not memorable, it may have been earlier or later than that. However, craving pizza this evening, and falling for the drivel in Domino’s latest commercials, that they’re so new and improved, we decided to give them a try. I went to their website, saw that I could order online, and figured I’d give it a try. I bet you know what’s coming…
I placed the online order at 5:31 and was presented with a little Flash app that showed "Domino’s Tracker." "Okay," I thought to myself, "this is is kinda cool." It apparently updated itself as things progressed, as the next thing I know, the prep stage completed and then it showed at 5:33 that it was ‘in the oven.’ "Wow. This is cool! I need to start capturing this." See below.
So Anscial, who happened to do the prep, did a QC check at 5:40. I guess that means it was done. Sweet. Nine minutes from placing the order to it coming out of the oven…dayum!
Notice, Dan left the store with my order at 5:44…or did he?
Here we are at 5:56, allegedly enjoying our hot, fresh pizza. Uhm, no. Not so much.
Being a little worried that maybe Dan left our food somewhere else, I called the store at 6:05. The manager stated that they had timeframes to meet, that the tracker was more of a guideline than an exact system, and that he had to call Dan back for some more orders, but our pizza was definitely on its way.
Our pizza finally showed up at 6:31. Cold. Not hot and fresh, not even warm and acceptable. Cold. This should not be surprising considering 50 minutes passed between coming out of the oven, and arriving at my door. Did I mention that Dan got out of his car carrying the boxes? Not an insulating bag; just the two pizzas in their cardboard box.
The Dominos store is 5.9 miles away on roads that do not drop below 35 mph until the last 1.2 miles, and there is only one left turn between here and there, in a residential neighborhood. With traffic (and I’m sure no delivery driver has ever exceeded the speed limit) that is 12 minutes, tops. Allow for another two deliveries en route at 5 minutes apiece, and round up and we should still have seen our pizza delivered by 6:15.
So here is what I left on their website.
<- ignore this Google Adsense ad!!! it’s just not worth it!
And yes, I grabbed a custom tinyurl for this post. Funny, I was so pissed, I used bit.ly in the comment without noticing. Don’t type angry. And this is what I tweeted. Do you thing @dominos is paying attention?
Oh, and less than 30 minutes after we finished eating, my wife got sick to her stomach. I’m feeling fine at this point, so I’m not saying causality is present, but still…
Next time, I’ll be calling the guy with game.
direct link for RSS and email subscribers…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLne3BxIdM
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Ah, the eternal struggle to find good pizza. I don’t mind the chains (that much), but it’s the smaller places which tend to deliver great tastes.
Thanks for showing us Domino’s attempts at technology are more “smoke and mirrors” than anything else. If the progress bar doesn’t work you’ll lose more people to disappointment and frustration than crappy pizza.
When I was in Charlotte (in the Southpark area) I loved ordering Hawthorne’s pizza. They actually had a pretty good New York style pie. Mellow Mushroom (when they were still in CLT) had a wicked crust with some fantastic flavors too.
Now that I’m back in SoFla the pickings aren’t so good which is surprising when you consider the heavy concentration of New Yorkers living down here.