As I am living in a kitchenless home at the moment im having to order a lot of home delivery. This also means a lot of frustration waiting for others to cook and bring my food to me… There is this thing called estimated delivery time, this usually means your delivery will be delivered within the time stated. Most delivery places have 45 min to 1 hour, which to me sounds very optimistic, that someone will send the order to the restaurant, the restaurant will cook it, give it to the delivery guy and he will drive it to your home. All this in less than an hour. It takes me 15 min to get from the road to the front door of my apartment which means they actually only have half an hour to make the food and drive it to my area.
Anyways my chain of thought has unfortunately been correct quite a few times. It’s not as easy as you might think to order home delivery food here. As I don’t speak enough arabic, I try to use a food ordering website (called Otlob) where all I do is click on the items of food I want. This is sent to the call center working for the website who will check the address of delivery with me. Until today, which means about maybe 35 times, I have never had a full conversation with them, and they have never told me the correct address. This is typical phone conversation with them:
Ring, Ring…
Me: Hello.
Otlob (speaking in arabic): Salam Aleykum, something something from Otlob.
Me: Yes.
Otlob: Confirm delivery address please?
Me: Ok
Otlob: 43 group, 35 building, 2 floor, apartment 32. (None of the numbers are usually correct)
Me: No, correct address, group 45, building 3, floor 5….
Otlob: Ok, bye.
They panic when they say the wrong numbers and when I try to correct them they interrupt me with a bye and close the phone. How the delivery arrives at the correct address I have no idea?!
Then they usually call the restaurant with my order and I receive it within the mentioned time. NEVER have I received exactly what I have ordered.
I ordered a salmon and egg breakfast from Costa Coffee one time and instead of calling me to let me know that they don’t have this, they just changed the order. The chef was like ummm we don’t have salmon this morning so ill just give her a ham and cheese sandwich, most people like this. UMMMMM, EXCUSE ME?! No, because if I wanted a ham and cheese sandwich I would have ordered one, it was also on the menu, but instead I chose a salmon breakfast. How does ham and cheese seem a good substitute for salmon and egg? One is meat and the other is fish. Anyways they sent me the order and to say sorry for changing the order they gave me a free strawberry juice…. Okey so give me a ham and cheese sandwich instead of what I ordered… How will a strawberry juice make this better, what if I was allergic to strawberries? What if I don’t like ham, cheese and strawberry, who is gonna pay for it then? Anyways I was so hungry by the time the order came that I ate it and I love strawberry juice… but my point is it’s not their right to change my order!?
Like when I order Pepsi, give me Pepsi. I ordered once ONE Pepsi light and received 2 Fanta… ummm hello? Two different flavours and two different companies. Maybe people who take delivery orders have to have the lowest IQ possible… I mean you don’t even have to go to school to learn that Pepsi flavoured drink is not the same as orange flavoured. And 1 is definitely less than 2.
When the im PAYING let me choose my own order! When you pay, you can send me whatever you want!
Another funny thing when ordering is if I call and ask if they speak english, they ALWAYS tell me to wait a minute… What do they do during this minute… Run around the office shouting: Plais zommone zpiking ze inglish here!?!? After about two minutes someone answers: Mrs Kristine? Usually the same person that answered the phone two minutes before. Did she take a two minute english course while I was waiting?
I have sooo many stories about deliveries that are hours late, delivery guy can’t find the apartment, sold out of this and this…. The list goes on. But ill tell you one last story. My favourite story.
I ordered from a restaurant in Rehab (Inside the compound) which is about maximum 7 min away from the apartment. I ordered through the website and they called me to confirm the wrong address as usual, I corrected then and they hung up on me. Then on their website it usually tells you the status of your order. It said delivered to the restaurant. Then the clock starting counting down the minutes until my delivery would be delivered. This time it was 60 min as it is a restaurant and not fast food. After 60 min I was still hungry… After 90 minutes i pressed the button on the website that says ‘click here if your order didn’t arrive’. I waited another 20 minutes while they were contacting the restaurant. Then the status of delivery was updated. It said it is peak hour at the restaurant but my order was on its way… So I waited. Another 40 min and I decided this wasnt fun anymore. I contacted the website customer service. They checked with the restaurant and came with this reply: We are so sorry but the restaurant had a power cut, but now the power is working again. They do not have the pasta Arrabiata would you like pasta Bolognese instead?… WHAAAAAAT???????????????????
WHY didn’t they call me if the power was cut and tell me no order for you…. WHY did they tell me the order was on the way….. WHY did they not tell me they didn’t have what I ordered WHEN I ordered it…. WHY did the power come back on exactly when I contacted the customer service…. All these questions went through my head, but I thought, it’s not the customer service guys fault…. I don’t know whose fault it was but I was hungry so I just told them to send the order. So at 12pm my ordered arrived. Note I was hungry at 8pm… And the food was disgusting.
There are a lot of stupid people working in home delivery and I don’t know why I seem to find all of them. When my boyfriend orders it always arrives on time and the order is correct and the delivery guy can find the apartment. No problems… But when I call all of a sudden all these stupid people interfere.
I can’t wait for the day I can order something and it is correct and arrives on time… Or my kitchen gets finished and I make my own food!
Femieshe 