IHOP — Restaurant in Virginia

Although the food is fine and served in a friendly fashion, we will not be returning. On 4 separate visits to this location, we learned, the hard way, that the special offers are not communicated well and quite misleading. Often, one discovers their "special offer" policy innuendos after the check arrives. The employees are strict to these rules. Read carefully and be educated:

The Wednesday, senior citizen 50% discount does not mean all day, so do not come even an hour early; they will not bend on this.

The Wednesday, senior citizen 50% discount does not apply to the permanent, senior citizen's OR children's portion of the menu, AND you must purchase a full price drink with each meal ordered with this particular offer.

You cannot use more than one birthday, $10 certificate on the same check, no exceptions. My husband and I both got a birthday certificate in the mail, and we could not use them together. We found this out after we finished our meals.

Your birthday $10 certificate, that you received in the mail, does not include the senior citizen portion of the menu, even if your waiter tells you it does before you order! We specifically asked if it would apply to the senior citizen meals, and the waiter said "Yes, $10 would be taken off ANYTHING we ordered on the menu." We were surprised after our check came that the higher priced meals were charged, and we questioned our waiter. He took the check back and went to speak privately with his manager. She then came to our table, explained the offer policy with us, and finally agreed, after some discussion, that we were misinformed. The permanent, senior citizen portion of the menu is considered an "offer" and you cannot double up on offers. Unfortunately for us, she still required us to pay the full price of the meals, not the senior price, in order to use the certificate. Again, there was no mercy, even with THEIR own admitted mistake. We were so disappointed in this unkind, customer service delivered to us apologetically with a smile. Obviously the waiter made an error as he was not trained correctly in the offer policy. Most businesses would have made an exception in this case and not penalized the customer. We only paid several dollars more, but we were not planning on that. It's the principle of it all that is unsettling.

Hopefully this will help any future patrons to be clear and well informed of how offers really work at IHOP....

Have never been to an ihop before. All we wanted was some good breakfast so we decided this might be the place. Well we were wrong! The waitress was very slow when it came to anything. We ordered coffee and there was no real sugar at the table, so we asked for it. It took over ten minutes from the time we asked (mind you this was after we got our coffee) till we actually got the sugar. I noticed that the waitress had no sense of quickness whatsoever. She would walk slowly and barely checked in on us at all! I’m not partial to drinking cold coffee unless I order an iced one. I should not have to wait nearly ten minutes for sugar that should already be at the table. Needless to say that was the least of the problems we dealt with. After over thirty minutes later after we put in our order, we finally received our food. All we ordered was two “quick” two egg breakfasts and a kids pancake meal. There is absolutely no reason that it should take over thirty minutes for 3 easy, and even as the menus say, “quick” meals. Well while we waited we noticed that we were seated in the, I guess you would call it, the employees break area. We watched at least 6 employees walk by with fresh food to eat and finish their meals before we even got ours (no I’m not joking)! When our food FINALLY came it was stone cold! My husband refused to eat it, by that time I was so hungry I didn’t care and ate it anyway. This place needs much better staff and I guess obviously needs an employee room where they can eat separate from the customers. Also, the customers should get their food in a timely manner! I won’t be going back. I most likely won’t try any other ihop just because of...

If Ihop today did not want to honor the anniversary/pancake special, then they would have done better just not participating. By the end of the day from 5-7pm, the service was so slow that only a small percentage of folks that arrived were able to truly participate. On top of that only 50% of the restaurant was seated due to lack of help. I understand that good help is hard to find, but this was a day that this company knew was coming and they know that it is a high volume day. I feel bad because many of our stafford residents had an overall bad experience. My kids really wanted pancakes but did not get that opportunity. We waited 35 minutes and missed the 7pm deadline. Whether a pancake special was $.59 or $4.00 - no one wants to wait 30 minutes for a drink or a food order and then wait another 30 minutes for food. I walked out while waiting and watching the 5th customer at the register come out fuming due to slow service. This was a great disappointment. I also understand servers may not enjoy serving customers low cost food due and getting smaller than average tips on top of working harder than normal but it was 1 day, I know that other Ihops presented a different experience for their customers and likely made a decent profit due to turn over and folks that come for more than just...