Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Austin

A woman took our order around noon on 8/1/22, it was a strange experience. I told my husband what I wanted before we even pressed the button. When he relayed to the woman that I wanted the Original Cold Brew Coffee with my meal, (with "Original" being the flavor), she proceeded to ask what flavor I wanted. I was confused by this so when husband was done putting his order in, I attempted to clarify with her my drink order to avoid an issue after the fact. I leaned over my husband and thought I was speaking loudly enough as I began to speak "hi, yes ma'am, I just wanted to clarify something with my order..." and I waited for her to acknowledge me speaking to her...silence, "ma'am?"...silence...so I just proceeded to speak as I then assumed she was just waiting for me to speak...I explained to her that the menu shows two flavors, Original and French Vanilla and that I wanted the Original. (I had never ordered this from Sonic before but I assumed the Original was sweetened with cream.) After I finished speaking, there was a very brief pause and then she said "is she saying something to me?" to my husband. 😳. My husband finally had to speak for me because either the music was too loud outside or the woman taking my order assumed my intent was to be aggressive with her from the get-go and this was never the case, so he then repeated to her what I said and she interrupted and said no the Original doesn't have a flavor (i'm thinking "besides coffee?") But I knew she meant it had no syrup flavoring and I am just fine with that otherwise I would've ordered a flavored coffee. So I had him just ensure and ask "is it sweetened?" And she said "mmm, it's not sweet to me" or something along those lines so I just had about had enough and just told my husband to relay to her to get the French Vanilla Cold Brew. After we were done ordering, I went to the Sonic menu online to get some clarification on the Original Cold Brew Coffee and it literally says "sweetened with cream". Oh boy...so I think she just doesn't know the menu well enough and leads customers to believe they are ordering the wrong drinks etc. I should've trusted my gut. But I also believe she was intentionally ignoring me because she thought I was going to be rude to her. I really just wanted to make sure she understood what I wanted and the situation turned into me ordering the wrong drink and being overlooked. 😔

Also, no receipt was ever given to know the order number or cashier who rung us up or any other details that might be pertinent.

To the franchise owner, or whomever is replying to the reviews, please don't let this be a place where reviews go to die. Customers shouldn't have to keep repeating themselves through several avenues to get their experience heard. Our reviews should be relayed to the person in charge of remedying the situations with staff to ensure better communication and experiences from that point on instead of just being given a phone number and link if we would like to escalate our concerns. This location clearly has lots of communication, service, and quality issues, from the numerous negative reviews that have already been left, that should...

I made the mistake of visiting this sonic on Jan 30, 2021 (at approx. 2:15pm) despite my vow not to do so again given my experience there last year. This time was worst.

My son had received a $10 gift card as a gift. We placed his order first and paid $9.84, the full amount, using the gift card at the drive up card reader. The display said "Thank You" and displayed the balance of $0.16 left on the card.

I then placed a second $12.34 order for me and my wife and I explained to the person taking the order over the intercom, that this was a separate order. I paid for the 2nd order with my personal credit card.

When he received my son’s order (paid for on the gift card), the car-hop said that we had not paid for it. We told her that we had paid for the that order. We told her that the machine had already accepted payment, had said “Thank you” and showed the balance on the card at the bottom of the screen. But did not believe us. She insisted that we had not paid and punched in the order and processed the card a second time which took the $0.16 balance remaining on the card. Now the card has zero balance. We tried explaining again what had happened but she left and sent the manager out.

We tried again to explain the situation to the “manager”. But she did not listen to the facts despite my very vocal request asking her to listen. I asked her again and again to listen but she finally said that "I'm not listening to you." By this time I was shouting at her trying to get her to listen to me. I could never get past one sentence before she would interrupt me telling me I owed her money. What happened to customer service. She did not want to know the facts and was too closed minded or did not know how to go check the transactions on that drive-in slot by looking at her own records. Instead she was too busy assuming that we were trying to cheat her.

She finally told us to "Get off my property", took the license plate on my car and started calling the police on her cell phone We never received the 2nd meal. We left the property.

After returning home, we called the Sonic Card customer care number on the card and we were able to verify and validate the two charges made on the gift card all of which were made at that Sonic.

What should have been a pleasant trip to eat out, turned into a near death experience, given all of the problems the African American people have had with casual and encounters with the police. She could have had us killed by the police for something that was her fault. We left traumatized, my son and everyone in the car fearing for their lives. Sonic customer service has turned into to threats to call the police and get you killed, rather than listening to the customer and verifying the facts. My entire family is still shaken by the experience 6 hours after it happened.

We are contacting upper management on this issue. And I will NEVER AGAIN visit ...

At around 2pm this afternoon my family went to Sonic so that my son could use the $10 gift card I bought him. His order came up to $9.84 and when he ran the card a message appeared on the screen indicating that the card was being charged for $9.84 and that the remaining balance was $0.16. My Husband also placed another order for lunch for the two of us which he charged to his credit card for $12.35. The server brought our son's order first and said that we owed her $9.84. We told her that we had already paid that amount with the gift card. The server said that it must not have gone through and asked for the card. She brought up the order and swiped the card again. It removed the remaining $0.16 from the gift card, leaving the balance of the card at 0. She then told us that we owed her $9.68 . We told her that we had already paid with the card. She disputed this and went and got the manager. I tried to explain the situation to her. She did not believe that their drive up terminal had charged our car for $9.84. I asked her to run a report of the transactions on the card. The only one she had was the $0.16 and insisted that we did not see the terminal charge the gift card for $9.84. She demanded that we return the food. My husband got frustrated with her and raised his voice. the manager ordered us to leave and twice threatened to call the police and then the second time she took out her phone and started dialing them. We left rather than have an altercation with the police over a ten dollar hamburger. She wrote down our license plate number as we were We never go the part of the order we had paid for by credit card. When we got home I called the phone number on the back of the gift card and was able to get a history of the transactions for the gift card. It was exactly as we said. The original balance on the card was $10.00. A charge for $9.84 was made to the card and another charge of $0.16 which left the card balance at 0 . The manager was in the wrong. Rather than do her job to solve the issue and provide customer service she decided to use the threat of police against an African American family knowing that we could possibly get killed. I am angry and disgusted at her behavior. My family was humiliated and my son was traumatized. I will never ever eat at...