My wife and a couple friends frequent a local Burger King 2-3 times a month, and let the kids play in the play area.  On one such trip back in October my wife was overcharged $10 so instead of a $15 charge she was charged $25. Being an accountant the wife noticed the discrepancy fairly quickly. She also alerted her friends that were with her on that day of the issue, one of them was also charged $5 extra.

So the wife called Burger King and explained the issue. Seeing that her friend got his $5 back she didn’t think it would be an issue, but since she didn’t have her original receipt, store management was less than helpful.

If the customer says you charged them too much, and you know that another customer on the same day was over charged, then it would be advantageous to the business to err on the customer’s side and at least do a little investigation.  Neither of which were done in this case.

Now had this been me,, I would have broke the picket signs and besieged the Burger King. But due to the fact the Burger King in question is the only one with a play area and centrally located for the group, my wife decided to continue to frequent the establishment with the change of only paying with cash.

The cash basis Burger King went on for 2 months without a hitch, but then the mistake was made to use the debt card again toward the end of December. Low and behold an extra $10 was once again tacked on to the bill. Once again store management was unresponsive and it took days  even answer the phone.  Corporate was contacted and the number of the Owner was obtained.

After discussing the issue with the owner, records were faxed over. A couple days later security contacted my wife and explained that they would be investigating the issue.   Now fast forward a  couple weeks,  the security guy calls my wife and explains that they were able to isolate the employee and that employee was fired after admitting to overcharging unknown numbers customers over a 4 month period. They are also looking to press charges against the ex-employee.

Now Burger King still hasn’t refunded our $20 or provided any concessions even after it was found to be fraud on their part.  Which leads me back to question why wouldn’t management, owner, security or anybody refund the overcharge as soon as it looks plausible that the customer has a valid complaint?  Heck, they even asked my wife to be come down to the court house and file charges against the employee, which we promptly declined.  Come on we have already wasted much more than the $20 in the time it took to even contact them. Had this issue been taken care of and investigated in October countless customer would not had their hard earned money stolen from them when all they wanted was a Whopper!

The sad part here is this employee was overcharging 100s of customers over a 4 month period and no one caught on.  I know we couldn’t have been the only ones who noticed the incorrect charges, and attempted to contact management. How many customers just gave up? I mean what truly is $5-$10. Heck, the first time we ended up letting it slide after not getting anywhere with management.

Moral of the story: If someone contacts you and says they have a problem they probably do, or they wouldn’t waste their time. So take each inquiry seriously, and don’t ignore your customers or you soon will have no customers to ignore.