Panera Bread — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

Came to the drive through after work to grab a quick dinner before an evening meeting. First of all, the parking lot is horrendously laid out. It's an accident waiting to happen and I saw almost 3 take place in the 20 minutes I spent in the drive through. But that's hardly my gripe.

I order my food and am given my total. For a half a quinoa salad (with no meat) and black bean soup (again no meat) it's going to be $9.61. I haven't been to Panera in a while, so I was a bit startled by the price. $10 for a small salad and soup? Ugh. Okay. The only saving grace was that I had a gift card to use up.

So I get up to the window to pay and give the cashier my gift card, one my mom purchased online. It takes her a few seconds to even realize it's a valid gift card. Then she puts it in and tells me my new total $2.00 something. I give her my debit card and she tells me that my card has been declined. I have a moment of panic as I know that I have plenty of money in my account. I hand over my credit card and check my bank account. Phew, no hack all my money is still in my account. The cashier tries running my credit card about 10 times and then tells me she's going to get the manager because the card isn't going through and now the gift card isn't either.

The manager comes through and the two whisper to each other behind the glass window. Finally the manager opens the window and tells me that the gift card reflects a balance of $7 but is saying "frozen" when she tries to run it. So with that said, she can't accept it at this time and that I can call the 1-800 number on the back of the gift card so "they can figure out what's happening." Then she proceeds to tell me that their kiosks and registers have been giving them issues accepting gift cards so "maybe the problems are related..." Uh, yeah. You think?

I mean complete lack of customer service...

Needless to say, I will call the 1-800 number and I will complain about this experience but I will not be eating at this panera again...

I am giving at least 2 stars because of a good experience in the past at this location as well as I do love the food options at Panera restaurants in general. However, I couldn't go past the 2 stars in rating this time with a recent experience I had at the drive thru at this location (Fordham Dr.) and believe me it takes a lot for me to complain (I'm not one of those ultimate complainers who cry bad customer experience at the slightest things. Have always tried to be patient). But today I just couldn't! Got off from a hard day at work, thought of just passing by the drive thru of Pamera since I still had to get lunch for my kids. Too tired to make something, so I thought, why not. Paid and got my orders of which I took pains of stating clearly one by one (and sure enough they were accurate on my receipt). Went home, ready to relax and enjoy a meal with my kids. Only to find out that one of the orders was missing. Sure, I should have looked at my orders before I went (like I do other fast food places of which I wouldn't mention but you know what I mean, lesser quality places where order accuracy is always suspect). Had to drive back, as one of my kids don't have her order, bringing everything with me only to find out that the drive thru line had become too long. So I had to park and go in lugging all my orders. Then I was asked if I want a pastry for my inconvenience! I was thinking - Excuse me, I had to go back for a cookie or cinnamon bun? The least they could have done was to offer to make fresh new orders or even just give me that missing order free. Order accuracy at the drive thru should always be very important especially when the customer has a lot of orders. At the drive thru, the customer will have a hard time digging into that big brown bag and counting orders. Let me tell you this too, I never had to do that at this Panera before! So what happened? I would now have to give my best drive thru experience record to Chic fil-a for fastness...

My sandwich was a mess there weren't hardly any meat on it more avocado then meat corssant was so small. So I went back through the drive thru and told the young lady the problem she apologize and fix another one I ask about the pickle and was told I would get one. No pickle. When they finish making the new sandwich they put it on a different counter a young man named Noah pick it up and threw it back down on the counter and the young lady Lauren that was to bag it just stood there. I blew my horn to get their attention to give me my sandwich they ignore me and the young lady that help me when I came back to let them know the food wasn't right came back to the window and apologize for their behavior. I ask to speak a manager. She came and apologize for their behavior as well and say she would speak them. I was upset because if the sandwich was fix right I would not had to complain It appears that these people are not being trained to understand without customers you would not have a job so treat the customers the way you want to be treated if something isn't right than do the right thing it's not personal it's your job to satisfied the customers so we will come back and spend our money so you can have a job. I misspelled the name...