My Swiss Chalet nightmare!
I have always loved Swiss Chalet for their famous chicken dinners, great service, and of course their dipping sauce, but that all changed when I visited this Guelph location.
I had only recently arrived back in Canada, from being a couple years abroad, and decided to meet my family for dinner in my hometown. Arriving on a Sunday evening, we found this restaurant nearly empty. After taking our seats we ordered our drinks, and then the waiting began. 5 minutes,7 minutes, 10 minutes, and then another table was seated behind us, and miraculously our server appeared took their order and served them drinks. We asked the waitress when we would get our drinks and she rudely replied in a short and abrupt tone 'soon'. I'm not sure how long "soon" is for some people but it definitely isn't another 10 minutes. When the waitress finally reappeared she dropped off the drinks and left. We still hadn't ordered our meals, so we called her back. This time you could see that she was clearly frustrated with the fact that we came to her table to eat. We all politely ordered our 1/4s and 1/2s chicken dinners and like magic she disappeared. However magicians typically reappear with flowers in hand, or in this case food would have been nice but this Diva was no magician! We saw her for split seconds while she served the table behind us. She cleared their table and left again in the same mysterious fashion. The next 20 minutes passed slowly, then it was 30 minutes, and by 45 minutes without dinner or refills or the sight of our waitress, we approached the manager. Almost instantly we found our table filled with dinner platers; very cold and stale dinners! The chicken was probably from the night before, the potatoes were cold, dry, and wrinkled. To put it nicely, these dinners were sucked of all their life, heat, and flavor, long before we arrived. Again, we approached the manager. Another 15 minutes later the store was empty, save us and a few staff, and hot steaming plates of golden delicious chicken finally arrived. When this horrible experience was just about all over, we received the bill and went to the counter to pay. The absent actress appeared out of nowhere, this time gracing us with her artificial smile and fake friendly behavior; "Did you enjoy your evening?" Clearly she wasn't there for it. We paid the bill and turned to leave when she came up to us and said "you forget to add my tip". My calm wonderful mother turned to her and said, in a very polite and courteous style that only mothers can do, "I'm sorry, but we didn't forget".
The next day I completed the online Swiss Chalet survey and retold this nightmare experience. The next day the General Manager 'Mohammed' called me to thank me for my comments and extended a gift voucher for another dinner with my family. He said that once we were off the phone he would email it and then I could simply print it off. Two weeks went by without ever receiving this voucher, then I contacted the Swiss Chalet headquarters about how this horrible service continued. Until this day I have not received a reply, voucher, or apology from this company.
Truly Dissatisfied,
~Matthew
I have always loved Swiss Chalet for their famous chicken dinners, great service, and of course their dipping sauce, but that all changed when I visited this Guelph location.
I had only recently arrived back in Canada, from being a couple years abroad, and decided to meet my family for dinner in my hometown. Arriving on a Sunday evening, we found this restaurant nearly empty. After taking our seats we ordered our drinks, and then the waiting began. 5 minutes,7 minutes, 10 minutes, and then another table was seated behind us, and miraculously our server appeared took their order and served them drinks. We asked the waitress when we would get our drinks and she rudely replied in a short and abrupt tone 'soon'. I'm not sure how long "soon" is for some people but it definitely isn't another 10 minutes. When the waitress finally reappeared she dropped off the drinks and left. We still hadn't ordered our meals, so we called her back. This time you...