Hi. I’m writing this email because I feel it is necessary for me to direct your attention to the fact that your Plano location delivered some of the worst customer service my two friends and I have ever received by any company last night. If you think your business is going to be successful simply because you offer a slightly more high-brow bowling alley and arcade (in comparison to other chains), you’re downright wrong. Poor service is the most prevalent deterrent for customers when it comes to choosing where we will take our business. Regardless of how good your location, pricing, aesthetics, etc. are, poor customer service will run a business straight into the ground. Last night, two of my friends and I really wanted to go bowling. We chose your location because it was the nearest of the three in our area and was right next to the restaurant we ate at and we knew there would be other things for us to do if we got tired of bowling. After we arrived, we were told it would be a 15 minute wait before a lane would open up, which was what we expected. What we DIDN’T expect was the series of events that transpired afterwords. When our buzzer went off, we walked to the counter to pay for one hour of bowling. We each also needed bowling shoes. The guy behind the counter, Nicholas (who’s name-tag also advertised he was a “TEAM LEADER” or “CREW LEADER” or something), quoted a price of $42 to us, which breaks down into roughly $14.25 per person. We each gave him our credit cards so he could split the payment among the three of us. After we received our receipt and began walking towards our lane, #7, my two friends realized that they had both been charged an extra $4+ more than me (the charge on my card was correct: $14.26). Since $18+$18+$14 doesn’t equal $42, we were confused as to what the extra charges were. At this point, we located and spoke to a nearby employee, Daniel, and asked him what the extra charges were for. He seemed to be very knowledgeable about your pricing and how much is charged per customer dependent on whether we need shoes, how long we planned to bowl, etc. (I’d like to interject here and say that, at the end of the night, Daniel was the only employee who even remotely seemed to care about our situation and at least acted like he wanted to help us resolve it.) He couldn’t figure out what the extra charges were for, so he suggested that we take the receipt back up to the counter and inquire about them. When we went back up to the counter, two or three employees were there. Nicholas looked like he was helping a group of teenagers who appeared to have just come from their homecoming dance. We were ignored for a few moments, so we called to another man (who’s name I can’t remember clearly, but I think it may have been Ben or something like that) who looked to be higher up in the chain of command, given his uniform, and asked him about the charges. He didn’t seem to really know what he was talking about. We were explaining ourselves clearly, but he wasn’t listening very attentively. He took the receipt and walked over to Nicholas to ask him about it. When he came back, he told us that Nicholas said he’d messed up and cashed the transaction out (or something like that), and had to go to do it again, and that’s why my two friends were charged extra. We didn’t get an apology or anything of the like from either of them for inconveniencing us. Then the man, “Ben,” pushed the receipt towards my two friends and said “What do you want me to do?” I’m sorry…but WHAT? We don’t work at Main Event. We don’t know what you can do to make the situation right for us. How about maybe you FIX IT? At this point, we were all becoming pretty annoyed. We just told him that we wanted him to explain the extra charges and, if they weren’t legitimate, to refund the illegitimate portions. He then offered to give us another hour of bowling…why would we want to spend another hour in a place that’s already delivering sub-par customer service? We told him no and just asked that the extra $8 we were charged be given back to us, to which he complied, even though he said he still didn’t really understand our problem. Then we walked back to our lane to FINALLY bowl as 30 minutes had gone by since we had paid. When we began bowling, the pin machine at the end of our lane kept messing up and would either get stuck in place and we’d have to manually reset or it would decide to reset itself and void whatever we’d just bowled. At one point, one of our pins got stuck in the gutter. None of us knew if we were allowed to walk down the lane divider to fix it, so we went to find someone who could help us. One of my friends and I began walking towards the first person we saw, who just so happened to be your FABULOUS (definitely sarcasm) employee, Nicholas. As we were walking towards him, he was picking up a cup and some silverware off of a table. When he saw us coming towards him, he hurriedly finished what he was doing and then started walking away. We were shocked! I shouted “Uh…EXCUSE ME.” and then he turned around. We told him what had happened, and he came over to our lane to fix the pin. After he walked down and came back, he didn’t say anything…just walked right past us in a very dismissive sort of way. The pin was still in the lane and it didn’t look like he’d even done anything, so we didn’t know if we could begin bowling again or not. We called out to him, and he turned around, gave us a thumb-up, and then walked away. Unfortunately, god didn’t smite him…so you can be sure he’ll continue dishing out terrible customer service for the duration of his employment. We began bowling again and there weren’t any more errors with our lane (CRAZY!) for the rest of the night. One of my friends was becoming increasingly angry with how our evening was panning out and decided she’d use the menu on the keyboard to signal to your bar attendants (with the pulsating screen) that she wanted to purchase a drink. We continued bowling…and since we were expecting horrible customer service, we counted how long it took for someone to come take her order. 12 minutes later, and no one had so much as come near our area. Finally, a man came over and we thought “About time!” but he started cleaning the beer bottles off the table next to us instead of taking our order. My friend was pretty angry at this point and walked over to him and suggested that it would probably be a good idea if someone would do their job and actually take her drink order. A couple of minutes later, a woman came by to take her order and was back within 5 minutes with her Long Island Iced Tea (SUCH IMPRESSIVE SERVICE!). We thanked her and continued bowling. We were on our second game and only had a few minutes left, so we started “speed-bowling” so we could finish the game. I bowled my last turn right as the game ended and our screen began playing the music video streaming at that time. We all started laughing and were having a good time trying to remember our scores to see who’d won the second game…and LITERALLY NOT EVEN 30 SECONDS AFTER OUR GAME HAD FINISHED, a kid (dark hair, long bangs, shorter on the sides, maybe 5’10”) came up to us and told us we needed to leave so they could open up the lane for other customers. WHAT AN ASSHOLE! But we gathered up our things and went to one of the sitting areas so my friend could finish her drink. We didn’t really do a whole lot of talking because we were all kind of stewing about everything that had happened to us that night. We really wanted to say something to someone, but our experience thus far had given us reason to believe that NO ONE THERE CARED. The three of us are coworkers and all work as “lower-level” management for a large movie theatre chain and have to deal with situations similar to this on a regular basis. Your employees were very unprofessional and nonchalant and didn’t really seem to care that we were all rather peeved by the whole ordeal. We thought it would be a good idea to inform Main Event’s corporate office about everything that happened last night. It’s taken me roughly an hour to type this message, so I hope someone actually takes the time to read it…not that I actually think there’s really much of a chance of that. My two friends and I have all told our friends about what happened, so don’t expect to receive any of our business ever again. We’ll just go somewhere else where we know our business will be appreciated from now on. Sorry! Sucks to suck.
jeremystaylor said:
lol! “sucks to suck” that place has always been terrible.
kalinified posted this
8:12 pm Sunday, September 30, 2012 | 
1 note