Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Dominos Pizza Needs to Rot in Hell

So, a few months ago, GF and I decide we're lazy and want pizza for dinner. And we're tired of, ya'know, the authentic pizzas we can order from any of the 6 pizza joints in the immediate neighborhood. So we ordered Dominos...on line. That's kinda fun. Well, I don't remember all the details, but the pizza was taking forever to get here and we kept getting their fucking call-center in Mumbai and they were either lying to us about when the pizza had left the store, or our pizza had been driving around Brooklyn for about an hour and 45 minutes, neither of which was acceptable. The kid finally arrived and I told them to shove their pizza and I ordered from one of the places I should have called in the first place.

Then I fired of the time-honored strongly worded email to Dominos customer support folks, who promptly sent back the time-honored, "We'll look into it" response. A few weeks go by and we want pizza again and I called one of the good neighborhood joints. For the fun of it, I found the "response" email from Domonos and zapped it back to them with a note saying, "We're having pizza again tonight, but not yours because you're still apparently looking into why your stores aren't capable of delivering delivery-pizza."

They sent me a nice note (yeah, right) with three $5.00 coupons (which will buy you about 3/4 of a pizza. Yay!

So, this afternoon, I decide I want pizza for dinner. I've got coupons. I'll get Dominos. Go onto their nifty website. Order pizza. Tell them I'd like dinner at 7:00pm. I receive the confirming email at 4:20pm. Nifty. I don't have to think about this again til the doorbell rings.

At about ten minutes after 7:00, I go back to the email confirmation. Click on the link to the "Pizza Tracker". See that my pizza was placed in a box at 6:41 p.m. There's nothing about it leaving the store. I figure maybe the Tracker doesn't update like every freakin' minute, so have a little patience.

7:30 rolls around. Call the number that's supposed to be in the store. Talk to the friendly guy in Mumbai. Get put on hold for 10 minutes. Talk to the guy who is in the store. He puts me on hold. While I'm on hold, the "Pizza Tracker" clicks over and says, "Your pizza expert Mahmoud, left to store with your pizza at 7:48 p.m." So, when the guy comes back on the phone to proudly tell me that the pizza is on the way, I tell him I don't want a pizza that's been sitting around for over an hour. Make me a new one and get it over here, puhleeeeze.

It's 8:30 now. I'm hungry.

Update: 8:45 pm. Still no pizza. Still hungry!

Update: 8:47. Phone rings. I answer. Guy with accent says, "Your pizza's been sitting here for like an hour. Are you coming for it or not." I holler, "Its a fucking delivery. You were supposed to have it here at 7:00. You're supposed to be a fucking delivery place." Pizza Guy laughs at me. Says, "This is really Shawn Powers, I read your post and just wanted to prank you."

Shawn is out of the family.

8:50: Still no pizza.

8:51: I realize I'm live-blogging a pizza delivery.

9:03: Still. No. Pizza. And Shawn, I notice their headquarters is in your neck of the woods. Would you go yell at them tomorrow?

9:10pm: Losing strength. Must hang on!

Update: 9:20. I call again! Where's my pizza. Tell the guy to call the kid and find out. He tells me the customer before me is paying with a credit card when he said he'd be paying cash. I say, "There's customers before me for my pizza at 7:00pm?????
Barely have the strength left to press "Enter"

Update: 9:31pm. Still nothing to eat, but I can console myself with this.

Update: 9:50 Call again. Where's my pizza? Its coming. When? Soon. Well, where is the kid now? Are you delivering to anyone else before me? Yeah one more customer before you. I hang up. Call Liberty Pizza. I'll send the Dominos kid back when (if) he gets here. I'll be sending Dominos their coupons back tomorrow. I won't have any use for them.

I'll also send them a link to this post.

Fuck Dominos. Really. Idiots.

Update, the last: It is now 11:05. Liberty Pizza brought a delicious pizza at 10:25 (less than a half-hour after calling them.) I am fed. I am calmed. I have Irish whiskey.

To clear up a couple of things. I like variety in all things including pizza. There are times where, what I want is a Dominos thin crust pizza. I like them. But since they don't seem to be able to get them to me, I won't be calling them in the future. (They never showed up.)

I never used any profanity with the real Dominos guy. (And Shawn totally baited me. Excellent work, young man.) The worst language I used with the real guy was when he told me that there was still one pizza being delivered before mine. I said, "Well after you screwed up delivering the first pizza, I'd think you might make this one a priority." He put me on hold again and I hung up at that point.

Like I said, when I send a real paper letter with their coupons back to them, I'm going to send them the link to this post. Could you guys act like you're a lot more people than you actually are? I need them to tremble at the scope of my reach.

I'll post about Science Guy tomorrow. Getting pizza is exhausting.


Shawn Powers said...

Would you like your 38 cents back? You can put it towards some real pizza...

Shawn Powers said...


Shawn Powers said...

NASA has delayed the pizza delivery, due to adverse employees...

John the Scientist said...

Dude, you're buying chain pizza in NYC. WTF, over?

Out in my corner of the boondocks we got nuttin'. No good Chinese, no Thai, no Greek, no nuttin'. The one thing we got is good local pizza, but it's tomato paste on cardboard compared with the local stuff in NY. You are a spoiled, rich man you are, to be eating junk when the good stuff is literally begging to invade your home.

Think of your poor starving neighbor to the north and wise up, man. ;-)

Nathan said...

Well, I'm not eating anything at the moment. GF thinks we're on some secret Domonos blacklist.

Shawn Powers said...

Wow... Dominoes is a Michigan invention, eh? Yeah, quality-wise, that about makes sense.

BTW -- I had plans to end with a witty, "What am I gonna do with a pizza that has chicken livers on it?!?!"

But you were not in the loveliest of moods regarding good ol' Dominoes. Ya scared me a bit. LOL! ;)

MWT said...


Dominoes is sadly the nearest pizza to me (at home; at work there is no pizza period). Everything else, I pretty much have to drive to get it (because of course they don't deliver after dark, because my neighborhood is allegedly too crummy).

Arrr. And now I want pizza too. All I have with me tonight is beef barley soup. So not fair. :(

vince said...

We hates them, precious. Yes we does. Nasty Dominoses.

neurondoc said...

Nathan, you totally slay me. Now I want pizza -- the good NY kind of pizza which I pine for here in MD.

MWT said...

You know, you could probably just cancel the Dominoes pizza and get a local one faster...

vince said...

Nathan, bet I could send you a pizza from here and you'd get it faster.

But it's good to see you're "Googlicious."

kimby said...

Vince, I was thinking the same thing..I could walk a pizza to Nathan and GF faster..and i live in another country!

And you can order pizza online?
Who knew?

Jeff Hentosz said...

"And you can order pizza online?"

If "ordering" inherently includes "fulfillment," apparently not.

It's been over a half hour since Nathan updated and well over eight hours since he last ate. You all think the cats are okay?

vince said...

Apparently you can order it, but you can't get it delivered.

(with apologies to Samuel Beckett)

Say something!
I'm trying.
Long silence.
(in anguish). Say anything at all!
What do we do now?
Wait for Dominos.
This is awful!
Cook something.
No no! (He reflects.) We could order all over again perhaps.
That should be easy.
It's the start that's difficult.
You can start from anything.
Yes, but you have to decide.

Janiece said...

Seriously, dude. Domino's? When you live in Brooklyn?

We don't order from Domino's and we live in the white bread suburbs.

Shame on you.

And Shawn? You're totally a member of my family.

And, oh yeah - fuck Domino's.

kimby said...

(clapping at Vince's take on my favourite piece of work)

Good Job there Vince...

Nathan, hang in there...I hear pizza is very good for breakfast.

(ducking as pizza box flies in her direction)

MWT said...

This would be a good time for Tom to interject something about making one of his homemade pizzas and delivering it to Nathan... if he were here.

Nathan said...

Wait 10 minutes and then look for the final updated at the end of this post.

Tania said...

I was scared to post anything, for fear that you would get totally cheesed off. Good thing you decided to hit the sauce, once you finally got a pizza.

Unknown said...

I'm glad you finally were fed. Unfortunately, with globalization and "ease of use" in order anything online, some companies are a lot better at fulfilling orders than others.

Although,there's always that nice saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...uhh..uhh...you can't get fooled again.

Sorry, channeled GWB there, but you get the general idea. Dominos needs to close their doors for three hours some upcoming week and teach their employees customer service.

Was there no way you could call the chain directly? Or go down there and demand to speak to a manager?

Or would have that just gotten you killed?

Shawn Powers said...

I think had he gone down there, there may have been some killin' -- but maybe of the vigilante hungry man type.

He would have knocked the guy behind the counter down... and the rest of the them would have fallen like... yep... DOMINOS!

(Who's cheesy now Tania?)

Nathan said...


Here's the thing about NYC. You can have anything delivered. I used to joke that the only reason you had to leave your house was to got to the ATM to get more money. Now, most of the delivery services will take a credit card, so total reclusivness is now possible...even without a staff of loyal minions.

Each time I called, I answered a series of automated voice prompts and then spoke to the guy in Mumbai and then got transferred to the guy who was about a mile and a 1/2 from me. It never occurred to me to go down to the store and see the guy in person. That would have defeated the purpose of delivery entirely.

Your comment reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry arrives at an airport and they don't have his rental car. He says something like, "Taking the reservation is the easy part. Keeping it is what's hard."

And Shawn, contrary to my explosion on the phone with you, I try to keep myself calm(ish) when dealing with idiots. I'm a "write to the CEO type", not a "hit the High School dropout behind the counter type". One of my favorite phrases is, "May I speak to your supervisor?"

Jim Wright said...

Nathan, you are a funny guy - But, Shawn? Shawn is the master. How the hell did he get your number?

There's one pizza delivery place near me, Pioneer Pizza. They suck. Frozen microwave pizza would be better. Other than that, not a lot of delivery in the wilds of Alaska.

Me? I make my own pizza - and it's damned good, if I do say myself.

Shawn Powers said...

Heheh... I mention my methods on my blog -- but basically, there is only one person with his name in New York City.

whitepages.com baby...

And thank you. :)

Shawn Powers said...

Oh, and Donna (my wife) just read your comment, Jim, and her response was, "Isn't he like the Navy intelligence guy?"


Nathan said...

"Isn't he like the Navy intelligence guy?"

That was my thought exactly.

Random Michelle K said...


I have to admit that I was curious how Shawn found Nathan's number too, but our phone isn't in my name, and when I had a phone in my name, the number was always unlisted.

So I automatically assume people have unlisted numbers. :)

Jim Wright said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jim Wright said...

I might have mentioned somewhere before, I don't spy on Americans. You are an American, aren't you, Nathan? (If that is your real name)

Whitepages (smacks head, his own for a change), sure you could do that. Personally, I would have gone another route: passed a new law, created a whole new NSA division, monitored overseas phone calls for at least a month, interviewed most of Brooklyn, maybe waterboarded a few pizza delivery folks, and invaded a small uninvolved country. But Shawn's method worked too, I guess.

Note: Previous comment deleted due to stupid use of the wrong conjugation of You, possessive. I didn't want to look like a dumbass, don't tell anybody

Nathan said...

At this point, I'm not sure which blog I should be posting this on. I was feeling totally "one-upped" by Shawn's prank and was thinking about a way to get him back. I went so far as finding his address, finding a pizza place in his town and looking over on an old Whateveresque thread to see what he likes on his pizza.

I stopped short of actually ordering a pizza and having it delivered to his house. Seemed a little too obsessive even for me. But it would've been funny.

Shawn Powers said...

hehehe -- yes, it would have been funny. I'm curious, was it BC Pizza that you found? (It's the only delivery place, and it's pretty tasty)

Also, don't feel too obsessive. I looked up pizza places in your area too, and was planning to have a pizza delivered to your house. The problem is, believe it or not, there are quite a few pizza places in Brooklyn. I SOOOO wanted to get a pizza to your house before Dominos could...


Jim Wright said...

I have a better idea, you guys should have a sourdough crust, double cheese, black olive, mushroom, and sausage pizza delivered to my house. Tonight. Around 6:00PM. Yeah, I'd be totally pwn'd, I would.

Anonymous said...

Too hilarious! All of our local pizza delivery places have sucky pizza... even Papa Murphy's (pick-up take-n-bake) has gone downhill. Of course, who looks at a small western Washington town as a pizza metropolis, anyway?

I miss Moose's Tooth.

Glad you finally got pizza, Nathan. :)

Nathan said...


Yeah it was BC. They have a website that was pretty easy to find, even after google connected me with one that's about 50 miles from you.


If you sit waiting for that pizza tonight, you might end up feeling like I did last night. I don't recommend it.

Thanks Jeri, Glad you're back.

kimby said...


Thanks guys.

I am SO calling my husband to pick up Pizza on his way home from work.
(not Domino)

Jim Wright said...

Hey Jeri, where ya been?

Anne C. said...

Now I want pizza too. I usually make my own (there are also some boutique pizzas on my way home), but I've been wanting to try Pizza Hut's Pizza Mia, since it has whole milk mozzarella on it, like I put on my own. It's not going to be as good as my own, but I'd like to see how it compares.
Thanks, guys. I'll think of you while I'm working it off at the gym.

Anonymous said...

We had a family medical emergency after our trip... and the subject thereof has asked me not to blog about it.

However, he didn't mention commenting on someone else's blog. :P

Eldest son - who has been seizure free for 18 months and ready to take his drivers test - had grand mal seizures in both the Las Vegas and Seattle airports on the way home. I drove straight to the hospital after the second; they admitted him and he spent a couple of days as an inpatient.

After a couple of days of being sore and wiped out, he's fine, although depressed. No one knows why, we have an appt w/ his neurologist in a couple of weeks.

Poor guy!

Jim Wright said...

Grand Mal, epilepsy?

Sorry to hear about it, Jeri. And I can certainly understand why he didn't want you blogging about it. Hope all is well with him now.

Nathan said...

Sorry to hear that Jeri. Hope they can get things under control.

Anonymous said...

Yes, grand mal epilepsy. They call it tonic/clonic seizures, a seizure disorder, these days actually... he has more rare partial (used to be called petit mal) seizures too.

I hope they can get them under control too - he's 18 and fast approaching leaving the nest. Dealing with this kind of thing without an built-in family support system seems like it would be pretty scary.

OK, Nathan, I've pretty thoroughly hijacked your thread, sorry. But I did order Domino's for dinner... best of a sorry group of choices here.

MWT said...

Eep. Poor guy indeed. :(

Random Michelle K said...

Aw Jeesh Jeri!

Now he has to be seizure free for another two years before he can try for his driver's test?

That's miserable.

Steve Buchheit said...

Damn, Glad we do pick-up pizza. We finally have a Dominoes here in little Orwell, only got them once. Wasn't a good service issue here either. And the people seem put off that I came in to order. They didn't seem to know what to do with me. For our little burg we have four pizza shops.

Jeri, glad he's doing okay now.

Tania said...

Jeri, I'm glad he's ok now. Let's hope the neurologist will be able to focus in on what's triggering things.

Pizza here in Fairbanks can be hit or miss, so we usually make our own. Mine with whatever I think sounds good. John's lots of marinara sauce and he doesn't really care what else.

Eric said...

At the time of this writing, the first hit on a Google search for "dominoes rot in hell" is... (drum roll)... Polybloggimous: Dominos Pizza Needs to Rot in Hell. Congratulations, baby, you're at the top of the pops. Number one with a bullet. At the front of the hit parade....

Nathan said...

Google was obviously created to reinforce delusions of grandeur.

I can live with that.

Anonymous said...

Dominos has brought its suckery all the way to Pakistan. They recently opened a new branch close to where I work. I went there a couple of weeks ago to check it out. To my surprise they overcharged me and got my order wrong. They're a perfect clone!

Hopefully this will make the corporate bigwigs tremble.

Nathan said...


Dominos is now quaking in their boots at the thought of my international minions losing their phone number.