Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Ridley Township

This review is a summary of the past 2 years of my experiences at this Sonic Drive-In.

I am an avid Sonic fan. Growing up, my grandparents would take me to their neighborhood Sonic as a treat when I visited them, and that began my love of this unique American chain. I remember being mystified by the "big red button" to place your order, and of course, the waiter/waitress delivering your food on roller skates.

Unfortunately, this Sonic is nothing like the Sonics I knew growing up. This location's first downfall is their unpredictable hours. At least four of the times I have traveled to this location, their store was closed, even though their website and google profile that I checked before my trip indicated they would be open. In addition, the hours posted on their door when I arrived indicated they should have been open. On one of these occasions, there were employees inside the store that talked to me through the glass and said that they had closed. On another occasion, they placed a traffic cone in front of the entrance to prevent cars from entering. In order to patronize a restaurant, or any business, the restaurant must indicate to the customers when they are open. The most common channels are their website, google, yelp, etc. Without this basic but critical information, it becomes difficult to justify making future trips here. Unfortunately, based on my experiences, this Sonic location has failed to post accurate/up to date hours regularly. Future trips now seem pointless, knowing there is a high probability that I will arrive to a closed store.

My most recent trip here was a mild success, in that the store was open. I chose to go here while driving home from another activity, so there was no potential lost time if the store ended up being closed. When I arrived, there were four cars ahead of me in the drive-thru, and nobody in the stalls or at the counter. The cars in front of me didn't move for a few minutes, so I put my car in park and started opening my mail, texting some friends, reading email etc. When I looked up due to the car in front of me moving, 20 minutes had gone by. My order was taken after approximately 35 minutes of waiting in the drive through line. I ordered one medium Oreo Chocolate Master Shake. I then pulled up past the drive-thru order kiosk and continued to wait. While I was waiting, I was approached by a staff member at my window to confirm my order. I replied I ordered a medium Oreo Chocolate Master Shake. The order was promptly brought out by another staff member, and given to the customer in the car in front of me. A few minutes later, the staff realized their mistake, and once again approached me at my window to confirm my order. I replied I ordered a medium Oreo Chocolate Master Shake, again. A few minutes later, a staff member brought out the order, took my payment, and off I went. I spent nearly one hour in the drive-thru lane waiting for my one Oreo Chocolate Master Shake. Upon arriving home, I sat down at my table to enjoy my shake and noticed it was quite thick. After closer inspection, it appeared I was given an Oreo ice cream, and not a sip-able shake. In addition, after scraping away the Oreo layer at the top, the ice cream was white (vanilla) and not brown (chocolate) like their menu shows. I was dissatisfied with the texture, and opted to freeze my treat for another day. I lifted the cup off the table and to my surprise, the bottom of the cup had a crack in it. I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning off my table, and backtracking to all the places in my vehicle that the ice cream had dripped.

In summary, I spent approximately one and a half hours attempting to buy and consume one Oreo Chocolate Master Shake from a fast food restaurant specializing in this type of dessert. They were unable to serve me fast, they were unable to serve me correctly, and they were unable to cleanly transfer their product from their kitchen to my vehicle. It seems they have failed at all the core components of...

We went to this sonic and waited over an hour just for them to tell us all the machines were broken rather than telling us this information when or right after we ordered. It had been 30 minutes of us waiting for us to finally get our food. We didn’t even receive all of our items, got an item we didn’t order, and the food was cold, tasted repulsive, and was terrible quality. After a few minutes we asked if our drinks were almost ready and they said yes they’d be out soon. After more time passed we asked how much longer our drinks would be since we’d been there for 50 minutes at that point. They said they were still working on the drinks. Again, a few minutes go by and we ask if our drinks are almost done and we were told “No”. We asked why since the answer we received was unhelpful much like the rest of the service. They said the machine was a bit slow. Since we were constantly being misled throughout the hour we had already spent there we had to ask how much progress they made and they said “the first drink is almost filled up”. We were confused and frustrated that we weren’t informed of this when we first ordered so we were asking why our experience was dragged out a ridiculous amount. We were told that it would take 20 minutes for each drink which would be completely inadequate and something we’d be extremely unwilling to endure. This information undoubtedly should have been shared with us after our order. We addressed the absolute absurdity of this situation. The response we received was "Well do you wanna come in here and fix the machine?". We asked for a refund since we had already wasted too much time there and we didn’t want to keep dealing with these issues for any longer. We were simply told that they didn’t know how to give refunds. We paid $50 to get a small fraction of what we ordered and zero refund, however we were just trying to give up since this obviously wasn’t getting anywhere and we didn’t want to waste any more of our time. Then we were offered ice cream instead as if that would make up for everything but we said sure because then at least we’d leave with something. We were told the ice cream would be right out. When more time passed we asked where our ice cream was and we were told that the ice cream machine was also slow. Once again, we were told this information way after the fact. Finally, after the place closed for the night, we were brought 3 ice creams which didn’t add up to the 9 drinks we actually ordered. We were kept in the dark the entire hour we spent waiting, misled when we had to resort to specific questions, spoken to with absolutely no customer service skills, ended up leaving with a couple items of our order, and no refund leaving...

I don’t usually do reviews unless service was really bad..& the service I received yesterday was beyond bad...I placed a order for a plain sonic cheeseburger w/bacon which was $4.99..& a frozen lemonade...I paid for my food received my drink and proceeded to wait 10-15mins for my burger...mind you I was hungry...I received my burger and drove about 4-5blocks before opening it and realizing that this wasn’t the burger I order and paid $4.99 for...the burger had no cheese, a larger sum of mayo an 2 burnt pieces of bacon on it...I instantly was mad...I went back to sonic b/c I refused to eat the burger...I told the gentleman that this wasn’t the burger I order an I was unpleased with the service especially after having to wait so long for the burger and then having to drive all the way back...& he took the burger back and in less than 5mins a heavy set African American lady with about 10 struggling blonde dreads on her head brought me a sloppy cold burger with a cold piece of cheese with burnt bacon...I told the lady it was completely disrespectful to serve somebody something like this after I paid my money and waited 10-15mins for this $4.99 cheeseburger...She told me that the cheese is suppose to be cold and I said how about the burger and she reach her hand out the window an said I can heat it up...I told her no and she was definitely going to be hearing from me again...I was blown away by the service I received from this sonic on MacDade..& I believe the lady with the dreads was the...