Red Lobster — Restaurant in Calgary

We are regulars at Red Lobster and we typically come with 6+ people at a time and spend a great deal of money to treat our family and extended family. To say our last visit to the restaurant was a disappointment would be a gigantic understatement.

We dined here on February 20th to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, we were a party of 10 and every single one of us left the restaurant certain that we would not want to dine at this location again, and at the very least never again when the manager who dealt with us is working (his name was Ash).

One outlying positive thing from the evening was our server (I believe her name was Ulfeta) who was outstanding, supportive and kind, despite the evening we had.

Our very disappointing experience occurred as we were trying to pay for the bill. We had a number of promotional vouchers to use towards our bill (of which we have used several times before, without issue). The promotional cards were for $10 off per person per table, expiring at the end of February. We wanted to use one person at our table (for a total of 10), like we always have done and did just a few weeks prior without any issues, I might add. The server came back to us an informed us that the manager would not accept more than one per table. We kindly explained that we have been able to use more than one in the past, and that the voucher clearly stated 'one per person per table.' She said she would grab the manager to explain.

What ensued afterwards was a VERY long conversation and process, wherein the manager was utterly unhelpful and downright rude to us. He refused to listen to what were saying and kept repeating and insisting that he could not take more than one voucher. After a long time talking back and forth, eventually he said he would run through multiple ones. He then said he would have to break up the bill into 10 separate bills to make this possible. What happened after that was about 1.5 hours of trying to pay 10 separate bills, wherein our server lost a few of the bills (we pointed it out to her), duplicated charges on some and was completely unsure of how to process them. She seemed very overwhelmed and stressed about having to ring in the bills this way, but the manager NEVER reappeared to help her (save for the few times we caught him peaking around a corner looking at our table). Our server was truly magical as she tried to make everything work and make us happy. We really got the sense that she listened and cared and wanted to offer solutions.

As we were leaving, the manager finally appeared near the door and told us to 'have a good night.' This was absolutely unacceptable to us, as he had been very rude and completely dismissed our concerns, how could we have had a good night after that? We told him this as we were leaving and he got even more defensive and started shouting that he 'did everything he could.' He repeated this over and over and over again. We firmly stood our ground and told him that we had never felt more dismissed and ignored at a restaurant.

I always expect at the very least a good manager should be a good listener and a great manager should be solutions driven. The customer is certainly not always right, but there can be ways to suggest options and alternatives that can make everyone happy. We did not feel that he was at all concerned about the happiness of his customers. We will NOT be going back to this location and we are happy to bring our money and our service to the Macleod Trail location, which has never treated us this way or took issue with using coupons...

So, I feel like this is a common theme in the reviews I am seeing here for Red Lobster, but the customer service was abysmal. After a day of travel and exploring Banff, my Husband and I stayed the night in Calgary. For a treat, my husband decided to order in Red Lobster as we were both so tired. He ordered online through the Red Lobster portal which is partnered with Door Dash. We waited patiently for our order but once the order hadn’t arrived 30 minutes past the expected delivery time He tried to find out where our food was. He was not able to find an order on the Red Lobster site nor on the Door Dash Site so He called Red Lobster.

The manager Atul, did not seem to really care that our food had not arrived. In fact his first statement/question was “have you contacted door dash?” After my husband had explained that we had tried but could not find a place to see our orders progress anywhere. At this point Atul did get in contact with Door Dash for us.

By the time our order arrived it was at least an hour late and of course the food was cold. Door Dash did contact my husband after the order arrived but the person on the phone did not seem very sincere in there apology. There was not offer of any kind of compensation to try to make things right. I also want to note that when the driver brought our food to the door he was argumentative and kept trying to say that the address was wrong, it was not.

I will say that even though we had to reheat our food in the hotel microwave, it was very tasty.

We learned 2 lessons tonight. 1 - if the restaurant you are ordering from is partnered with a delivery service like Door Dash, it is better to just order through the delivery service as you can at least track your order. 2 - the customer service at Red Lobster and Door Dash...

Update: Red Lobster contacted my wife in response to her negative review and provided us with a full refund and a gift card. I'm going to improve my review to 4 stars 🌟

After a long day in Banff with my family and after having checked into a Calgary hotel, we decided to order in from Red Lobster 🦞

Their website informed me that delivery would be made by Door Dash. I was notified by email that my delivery would arrive by 8:41. I got a text from Doordash saying that it would be there by 8:39. At 8:37, I thought I'd wait in the hall. I had tipped $10 (my order was less than $60) and had another $10 in cash to give. When my order hadn't arrived over the next 30 minutes, I decided to contact Red Lobster. The manager on duty, Atula, asked if I had the information of who to contact with Door Dash. He said tht the food had left his establishment 45 minutes prior. I reminded him that I had ordered from his company's website. He provided the typical "I'm sorry for the inconvenience", but didn't seem interested in finding out where our food was. Only after reminding him of that, did he offer to contact Door Dash. Door Dash support contacted me soon after and again only seemed interested in "apologizing for the inconvenience". The food finally arrived, cold and 40 minutes late. The driver said that the address provided was wrong. No apology, whether sincere or otherwise.

Disclaimer: I'm not entitled or being a 'Karen', I simply wanted someone to know what was going on, act like they care and value the customer.

Note: we heated up the food in the hotel room microwave and it was great. The store manager did call to make sure we got our food. FYI: I never asked for a credit or gift card... neither was...