Papa Johns Pizza — Restaurant in London

Avoid! Ordered at 7:30pm - tracker stuck on "cutting and quality checking" for over 2.5 hours. Phone line consistently off the hook (a Twitter search reveals this is an ongoing problem) so no way to get any update on my order. Got so late that had to find an alternative for dinner.

At 10:40pm(!) the tracker updated to say that pizza was delivered... It absolutely was not delivered.

After attempting to contact someone about this, I received an automatic email back from Papa John's offering me "£5 off my next order" - not good enough considering that we spent nearly £40 for food that did not arrive.

This restaurant will take your money and run. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Edit 27th July:

Was finally able to contact the store after two days(!!). Was passed to a "manager" who immediately answered that my pizza would be there in 5-7 minutes - they are obviously used to answering this question, despite it not being my query at all.

I described the scenario and asked about a refund, only to be told that the manager (I thought I was speaking to the manager?) is on holiday for two weeks and that my refund cannot be processed before then. I advised I will be in touch with my bank in order to recover this money for goods I did not receive.

Edit 16th August:

It has taken 3 weeks (which in my opinion is 2 weeks too long) but I have finally been offered a refund, which is apparently being processed. I'm not holding out much hope for this refund to materialise based on my experience with this situation so far, but if anyone else is in this position, keep chasing them - hopefully they will respond to you. Do not let them...

DON'T ORDER. The delivery time here is TERRIBLE. The worst in London.

Don't expect your pizza in under an hour, full stop. I have ordered from here three separate times, months apart (so it wasn't a temporary issue), and EVERY time they have taken well over an hour to deliver. The first time took 1hr 40 and eventually they allegedly sent a "second order" - My guess is they forgot or didnt make the first order and then lied to us about it. The second time was marginally better, but still took an age to arrive and today it took 1hr 10 mins. Also, no email confirmation of receipt of the order and no ability to track the order online. Very, very poor. Why would you not send an email confirming the order??? - Worried about evidence of the slack delivery time?

The staff in store know they have an issue... its obvious when you call that they know you are unhappy with the order times before you even say a word.

Tip for the owner of the store: If you lack drivers, take less orders or hire more drivers. If you cant make enough pizzas, take less orders or hire more staff. If you cant run a pizza place, sell up and get out. Pizza is a fast moving commodity game. Orders in, pizzas out.

Apart from this store, Papa Johns is usually a great pizza company, but we really wont ever order again if you cant deliver in a reasonable period of time. Who wants to wait an hour for a pizza?? Dominos will have the pizza at your door in 20 minutes, 30 minutes if its busy. That is the competition that you face and unless you sort yourself out that is the competition that will run you...

Papa John’s Kennington is open to 2am on Saturday morning. I placed an order at 1:19am and the app told me it had been cooked and was being checked before delivery. I waited until 1;50 am and as it had been at checking for 20 minutes I called the store to see if there was a problem. The guy told me they hadn’t started cooking it yet, and hadn’t called any drivers to see if they could deliver. He initially said they hadn’t started cooking as there were no drivers, but he then admitted they hadn’t tried to contact a driver. This isn’t the first time that store has blatantly lied; and on top of that orders have turned up wrong, cold and massively late (2hrs plus in the daytime) on many occasions. These same people have been running the Kennington franchise for years and they have always been dreadful - but the lying is the worst thing. If it’s 1:19am and you don’t want to / can’t / insert excuse here cook a customers order, is it too much to ask that you call the customer and tell them? Don’t leave them waiting for the best part of an hour until they have to call the store and then tell them you’ve done nothing with their order! Abysmal. Sadly Papa Johns won’t let you change to another store (elephant and castle is just around the corner so it’s not like they aren’t local) which really sucks. Clearly they don’t want any customers! Appalling service, but the worst thing is the lies and excuses. Avoid Papa John’s Kennington...