I brought my family here for lunch and it was at first a nice experience, and the staff was very friendly. I ordered a salad to go, to have at work the next day for lunch. At work when I dressed the salad and shook it all up, I went to take a bite and there was a dead fly in the salad. I called the customer service line and the gentleman who answered told me I couldn’t go to the nearest chick fil a to get a refund or a replacement lunch (I work in a different state), that the ONLY way I could get any help was go back to the original store. The original store is 30min away from my home (50min away from my job), which is very inconvenient when there is a location 2min away from my work. He told me the store would call me within 24-48hrs to rectify this issue and confirmed my phone number. They never called. I had even told the customer service rep to have them leave a voicemail because I work all day and can’t always answer, and they didn’t call OR leave a message.

I was also told by customer service that I had to hold on to the nasty salad too, despite having photo proof of the fly which I’ve posted here, and that was very inconvenient. It started to rot in my fridge because they are closed on my day off (sunday) so I had to wait for a day I could leave work early just to deal with this. At first all I wanted was a replacement salad, but after a week of hassle and inconvenience I just wanted my $10 back. They very politely refused to refund me at the store, and wouldn’t even give me a gift card for the value. Instead they told me I could get a sandwich if I REALLY didn’t want another salad.

I just don’t understand why I had to jump through this many hoops to get food that was edible for the money I paid. Ridiculous. Panera has only ever one time made a mistake, and when I asked for the money back for an item I never received (even offered to go to the store) they told me not to inconvenience myself and even credited me $20 for another lunch! All I wanted was the $2 item that I didn’t get, and they REALLY went above and beyond. I didn’t even ask, they just did it. THAT is how you would expect a major chain to handle customer issues.

You would expect a loudly Christian company to prioritize customer care/service more than they do.