I was too amused to be annoyed.  Called up to order pizza from PH, current coupon in hand.  It included 10 hot wings and a large pizza, about as simple as it gets.  Slam dunk.

Phone guy, after talking to manager:  “Uh, we can’t do that, our wings come prepackaged and we can only do packages of eight.”

Me:  “Coupon says ten.”

PG:  “They changed everything around just yesterday, we only have packs of eight.”

Me:  “So you’re going to dishonor the coupon?”

PG (defensively):  “You can talk to the manager if you want.”

Me (quite calmly):  “No need.  It’s a simple question; ask whoever you need to ask.  Yes or no:  are you actually going to dishonor a current coupon?”

PG:  “We can’t do ten wings.  They changed everything.”

Me:  “Not my issue.  Yes or no:  going to honor or dishonor your coupon?”

PG:  “I guess the answer would be we’re going to dishonor it.”

Me:  “Okay, thanks, then no need to place the order.  Bye.”

It’s not that I am greatly bothered over a couple of chicken wings.  It’s not that the Pizza Hut (818 N Vineyard, Kennewick, WA) evidently isn’t very well run.  It’s that the guy couldn’t even think sensibly enough to ask his manager to do something intelligent.  The coupon came in one of those mailed coupon packs, so they have to know they’ll hear about this again; obviously a manager needs to devise some form of counter-offer if the coupon is somehow physically impossible to fulfill.  I’m receptive to almost anything except ‘tough beans’ as an answer; ‘tough beans’ basically says “we are dishonoring our advertising, and screw you if you don’t like it–we simply don’t care.”

So I called PH’s customer satisfaction hotline, carefully concealed on their webpage in hopes that no one would call.  The automated answering system did its all to convince me I couldn’t even talk to a person, but I’m persistent.  It put me on a protracted hold, then hung up on me after about five minutes.  Tried again, silent void.

WWHCD? He might get confused if you ask him to locate Libya on a map, but he knew a lot about how not to screw up selling pizza.

What better way to entertain myself while on protracted hold than by blogging the experience to share with the world?