bacon tagged: ,

How Much is a Little Bacon Really Worth?

Posted by in Customer Service, Food & Drink


UPDATE: Because this was still annoying me, I called the restaurant’s manager and asked about their pricing.  She gave me some interesting information, which I’ve added below.

The other day, I dropped by a local Burger King for lunch. No, I realize that it isn’t exactly ideal diet food, thank you, but I’d had a bad day and wanted a little comfort food in the form of a burger.

On this particular occasion, I asked for the addition of bacon.

Most restaurants — even nicer, family-style dine-in restaurants typically charge about a buck to add bacon. But when I arrived at the pick-up window, the total for the meal seemed a good bit more than I was expecting.

When I questioned the total, the cashier reminded me that I’d asked for bacon, and that bacon is $2.40. She acted like she was surprised I’d even question such a charge, as if charging that much for what turned out to be three narrow strips of bacon was the most reasonable deal ever presented to an unsuspecting customer.

Does this strike anyone else as outrageous? Surely I’m not the only one who thinks that’s an absurd price to pay for bacon. I can go to the grocery store and buy a whole pound of it for about three bucks. And I’d never want a pound of it in one sitting, anyway.

Sorry, Burger King: I like your burgers, but not your prices. I realize times are tough, but they can’t be that tough.  When I can go to a fancier restaurant and less than half what you charge for add-ons, it’s time for a change.

UPDATE: I called the restaurant and spoke to the manager who told me that the cashier had incorrectly rung up the purchase.  Bacon only costs 80¢, and cheese would have cost 60¢.   The cheese, I assume, was part of the price of a Double Whopper with Cheese, but even so, I was overcharged.  I’m at least relieved to know that Burger King isn’t charging more than twice what restaurants like Applebee’s and O’Charley’s charge.

But there are two problems with this explanation:  the cashier, when I questioned the higher price, specifically told me that bacon costs $2.40.  She certainly believed that this is how much it costs, no matter what buttons she pressed.  She added, “Bacon is expensive.”

The other problem is follow-up.  The manager kindly offered to give me a free meal, which I declined.  She then asked if I had called the 800-number to report the incident.  I told her I had not called an 800-number; I’d have loved to have found an 800-number, but I told her that I had gone online to a website listed on the back of my receipt to fill out a survey.  She apologized, explaining she had misspoke when she asked about a toll-free phone number and had meant the website.  She mentioned that she had my email address from that survey, and that’s how she knew about the incident and was able to investigate and explain the situation.

But if she had my email address, why didn’t she contact me immediately?  Why didn’t she apologize? Why didn’t she make the offer then?  My visit happened on January 20th, eleven days prior to the day I spoke to her by phone.  It isn’t like she didn’t have time to follow-up with a dissatisfied customer if she had wanted to.

In this day and age, social media guarantees that businesses need to do more to make sure a complaint is addressed as completely, effectively and quickly as possible.  If you take the old saying that tells us that a satisfied customer will tell one person, and a dissatisfied customer will tell 10, then factor in social media, that dissatisfied customer will tell hundreds.

Especially when no effort is made to rectify the original problem.