Swiss Chalet — Restaurant in Clarington

Terrible experience with delivery tonight. We haven't ordered Swiss Chalet in the past 8-9 months because the delivery times are always 5-10 minutes late, but we figured we would order it earlier this time in hopes that it would arrive when we really wanted it.

Placed the order at 4:58pm to be delivered at 6:10. At 6:14 the app still showed as "preparing" so my husband called. The employee he spoke with was very polite and apologetic. Told us something happened with the order but the driver would be leaving with it in 5 minutes and that the store would be issuing us a full refund because we hadn't received it by the requested time. She said to keep an eye on our credit card invoice and if we didn't see the refund within a few days to call back and ask to speak with a manager.

At 6:26 when we still didn't have our food, my husband called back and asked to speak with the manager. Shannon came on the phone and said the system crashed which was why our delivery tracker still showed as preparing, but the driver would be leaving with our order in 2 seconds. My husband asked why the previous employee had said it would be leaving 10 minutes earlier and Shannon said the employee didn't know what she was talking about. My husband asked her which one of them was lying and she got extremely aggressive, and told my husband she didn't know anything about a refund since they technically have 20 minutes so we would just have to wait (at this point in the conversation it was already 6:30 so the 20 minutes were up). She asked if we still wanted our food (as my husband mentioned we needed to leave the house by 6:45) and he said yes. He asked how long it would take and she told him it would get here when it got here and if he had a problem with it to call the customer service contact centre. He asked if she was getting frustrated (as she was giving quite a bit of attitude at this point) and her response was "a little bit", so he asked for the phone number to head office which she refused to give.

He called the contact centre and was able to put in his complaint and have the refund issued. The agent there, Jim, was extremely helpful and apologetic and advised us to call back if we didn't end up getting our order.

At 6:46, when we still hadn't received our order, my husband attempted to call the restaurant again and the phone went unanswered. He tried again from my phone and Shannon answered on the second ring. He asked about our order status and she replied "I already told you our system crashed and your FREE FOOD will be there soon" (very rudely). He replied that she had said our food was leaving the restaurant 20 minutes earlier (we live 5-7 minutes away) and she said "no I told you it was dispatched" (which was not at all what she had said).

While we understand that delays happen, having both worked in the service industry for years, we value communication when it does. The service (or lack thereof) that we received from Shannon tonight have ensured that we will never be ordering from this location again.

And by the way, our order finally...

I normally get food from the Stevenson/Laval location in Oshawa, but at the time we ordered food, they were out of chicken so we decided to order from the Bowmanville location. Big Mistake. The lady at the take-out desk was friendly, however it took quite a long time for us to even be helped. When we were finally helped everything went smoothly. We picked up our food and drove home. When we got home and cleaned up and everything we went to sit to eat, little did we know we wouldn’t be eating. We ordered 2 quarter chicken dinners (one white, one dark), one with a garden and one with caesar salad. We also ordered a chicken tenders meal also with a caesar salad, a side of stuffing and a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. The salad containers were only about 1/3 full and were wilty, brown and soggy and on top of that they gave us the wrong dressing and left out our croutons (didn’t eat, garbage). They forgot all of our rolls in our meals. The chicken in the quarter dinners was so disgusting we threw that out too. It was undercooked (pink), discolored (grey) and slimy. The chicken tenders were cooked perfectly fine although 3 of them looked like someone bit off half a chicken finger. The potatoes and stuffing were the only thing that was good about the meal as they were perfect. So for $55 we ate 2 chicken fingers, one side of mashed potato and gravy and one side of stuffing for 3 people. Couldn’t go back because the restaurant was closed. Extremely disappointing and the biggest waste of money. UPDATE: The manager at this location contacted me after reading my review and compensated for what happened the first time. She was friendly and lovely to talk to on the phone. We returned to this location and ordered the same thing except this time we got 3 quarter chicken dinners instead of 2 quarter dinners and chicken tenders. The service was much quicker this time and the chicken was much, much better, with a nice sized portion and delicious and cooked perfectly. The caesar salad was super fresh and the container was completely full, mashed potatoes, stuffing and rolls were delicious and fresh. I upgraded my review from a 1 star to a 3 star for that reason, to even the 2 reviews out. However the garden salad container was only a quarter of the way full and wilty again and they forgot our salad dressings. Overall it was much better the second...

Horrible horrible restaurant!! Never order from this location!

What has happened to the service industry? Does no one care about their customers anymore? I will never ever eat or order from Swiss Chalet ever again! Buyers beware this restaurant is run by scammers. They don’t send you all that you Ordered and they serve you old food that tastes like it’s been reheated.

I ordered from their delivery and they not only got my order wrong, charged me for a full meal but didn’t send the side, the dessert was cold and very stale like it was a week old! So disgusting.

I called to get a refund because I paid for a full meal but only received chicken wings on the wing dinner. I didn’t even ask for a refund on the pie even though we threw it in the garbage because it was not edible. They had the audacity to say, well mistakes happen sometimes. Not acceptable! it’s not hard to ensure the food matches the order before it’s packaged. That is the bare minimum of service I’m paying for. I work hard for my money and I will not pay for something that I didn’t receive. They wanted to offer me a store credit which I don’t want because I will never order from them ever again so I wanted a full refund and the very rude store manager said no she cannot do that. This is a scam; they can’t hold your money for a product they didn’t give you. I will be going after them not because of the money but because I work damn hard for my money and I won’t let a greedy store owner scam its customers.

I will take this to social media and the media to let customers know what a scamming company Swiss chalet has become. They keep your money even when they haven’t provided the product you paid for. Scam! I will be looking for a full refund on the entire meal now after I was belittled by the store manager and told that I am supposed to accept that mistakes happen. And they lied and said they have no way to refund but that is a lie I made a credit card transaction and every transaction can be refunded....