Quick Chek’s mobile ordering is broken
Or: Dean Durling, you need to find out who came up with this ridiculous policy and FIRE THEM on the spot.
Originally, I was going to spend some time and write and polish this, but then I received this text message, which is really just a thinly veiled threat about disabling my account, which really set me off. Here’s the email I sent to social@qchek.com and to Russ Mensch, the PR firm credited with the announcement of QC’s mobile ordering.
To: social@qchek.com, Russ Mensch <russ@menschpr.com>
Subject: go ahead and disable my account
Go ahead and disable my account. I was going to try and figure out how to delete/disable it myself.
I WILL NOT BE USING YOUR MOBILE APP EVER AGAIN.
I’m uninstalling it from my phone right now, as I type this email. I won’t be re-installing it until I see a public press release that you’ve changed your broken policies around how your app is implemented, anyway.
I am still absolutely furious about the order I placed. I will be posting my experience in a public forum after I finish sending this email, because what happened should NEVER have happened and I’d like the public to know about it.
My wife and I are currently sick with the flu that’s going around New Jersey, so my 16 and 13 year old daughters were being incredibly sweet and offered to WALK the 1.1 miles each way from our home to the Quick Chek we like to go to, so that we could have a bit of a break and not have to cook a meal.
I noticed the marketing at the store about the new mobile ordering recently, so I decide to give your mobile app a try so my wife and I can place our orders exactly as we want them, to what we thought, would make things easier than the kids taking notes and trying to duplicate our orders at the kiosk. They would just place their orders when they got to the store. This seemed like a great plan.
An hour and a half later, they returned home … without our food. When I asked what happened, this is what they told me:
“They refused to give us your order because they needed to scan some barcode on your phone.” Obviously, they didn’t HAVE my phone, nor should they have NEEDED it if whoever designed your online ordering policy had any sense in their head, whatsoever.
They knew everything needed to authenticate themselves that yes, they were there to pick up our order. The orders aren’t pre-paid online anyway, so it’s not like you’re protecting customers from some stranger coming and stealing another customer’s order. Nobody from the store called me (I provided both my email address AND my phone number) while my kids were at the store trying to pick up my order to confirm that it was okay to release my food to them to pay for and bring home.
I’ve used other mobile apps to order food from other companies: Five Guys, Taco Bell, White Castle. All three of these allow you to even pre-pay for your order through the app, and NONE of them require me to produce a barcode or even my mobile device when I go to pick up my order! NONE of them. So, who at Quick Chek designed the policy that requires it? FIRE THEM, they are too stupid to be trusted with that responsibility.
Let me just say that I love Quick Chek as a convenience franchise. It is my go-to whenever I’m traveling around NJ and need food, cigarettes, and now gasoline. The people I’ve usually interacted with at many stores around New Jersey have always been friendly, helpful and one of the reasons I love going back. Dean Durling has really done a great job growing the brand. I will continue to be a happy customer, but I won’t be using your mobile app ever again.
Whoever came up with the policy around your mobile ordering? They obviously didn’t think it through. They obviously didn’t do their competitive analysis. Whoever insisted on that being a requirement is wrong, and everyone who didn’t challenge it as being a bad idea, I question their critical thinking skills. This should have jumped out at anyone who was paying attention and raised the question, “Do we have a good reason to put an obstacle between a customer who desires to give us money, and completing their transaction?” Customer safety (theft of another customer’s order) or anti-fraud (preventing fraudulent orders) are good reasons. But, neither of those are the case here.
Anyway, I wish you guys lots of luck because like I said, I love Quick Chek and want to see you guys win, but you have a lot to learn about how to do the technology/mobile part, and giving a happy and loyal customer a horrific experience like the one I had, followed up by a thinly veiled threat in an automated text message as the follow-up, is the path to LOSING customers, not gaining them.
I know that I wasted a lot of time writing this email. I know that nobody who actually has the ability, authority or desire to do anything corrective about this problem is going to ever see the email, or this Medium post. But, maybe if mine is just the first of many to follow, eventually it will bubble up to someone who cares and can do something about it, and it’ll get fixed. I guess that’s the best possible outcome that I’m wishing for. But, the realist in me knows that it likely won’t, but who knows…
