IHOP — Restaurant in West Milwaukee

I have been a loyal customer of IHOP for many years having gone to many locations and received great customer service but this location is by far the worst location ever I have gone to and I will never go back to this location. The prices of many items used to be reasonable but were jacked up to “RIP OFF” prices on purpose to push the specials and the management here is RUDE and unaccomodating to customers who want to substitute the cheesecake part of the special for something of even lesser value because they have allergies to cheese and lactose. The build your own breakfast combo is $9.99 for just 2 pieces of bacon, hash browns, 2 eggs, and your choice of pancakes which is ridicoulous and highly overpriced for what you are getting. Down in Chicago, where it is more expensive to live than Milwaukee, the same meal is $7.99. Why is the same meal priced $2.00 more up here? The Breakfast Sampler priced at $10.99 that costs $8.99 in Chicago is another meal priced too high for what it is worth and when you look at the actual value you get it is the same amount as the Ultimate Bacon & Sausage Combo priced $2.00 less. All of the other IHOP restaurants I have gone to realize that are not losing any money by trying to make the customer happy and allowing them to substitute for something of lesser value. However, the manager at this location was rude and argumentative over my request to substitute arguing the price difference between the 2 items is due to the special but that still does not justify setting prices unreasonably high on everything else and I have been around the block to know what prices are reasonable and what prices are not. If there was a problem with getting people to buy into the special in the first place it means people are not buying it because the special sucks and it should be changed to be more appealing. Jacking up the price on everything else is not attracting people to want to come back and has the opposite effect on revenue. I’ve had it with incompetent managers and restaurant franchises who want to screw the customer with unreasonable pricing on non special items to force them to buy the specially. Then to be flat out rude and unaccommodating to the customer is the icing on the cake. This location gets the negative review of 1 star that it deserves. If 0 Stars was even an option, I would rate this...

I wish I had the option not to give stars in a review (I don’t mean zero stars – I mean just not provide any star rating at all) because this review is not a critique but a lament. Walking into this place after a couple years was like seeing an old friend on life support. The parking lot was littered with trash. Inside, the chairs were stacked on tables in every section. The restaurant looked like it hadn’t been swept in days. I was the only customer until right before I left.

The pancakes, which used to be large and fluffy, were small and dry. Only one syrup option (maple) when there used to be three or four on the table. The eggs were overcooked and the hash was undercooked. The coffee mugs were children’s tea party sized. The coffee itself tasted as if it had percolated inside a rubber factory. The price appears to be the same (or perhaps only slightly higher). The service (it looked like only three employees in the place) was fast and polite, but I did have to listen to the servers complain loudly – and in colorful language – about horrible customers on a previous day. (I don’t blame them. Most people are pretty dreadful.) Luckily, their conversation was mostly drowned out by ridiculously loud music blasting through the speakers.

I wasn’t upset or much surprised. Just sad. This location has given up. I will say that the employees are not to blame. In fact, the service was the only bright spot. Even if this location is short on employees to clean, if I were the manager (or franchise owner), I would take 20-30 minutes every few days – or even once a week? – to just grab a broom and sweep the blocked-off areas and pick up the litter around the parking lot. If the manager and owner don’t even have the pride to do that, then their business is not long for this world. Time to pull the plug on...

Always extremely busy. Customers are allowed to blast music from their phones on the tables when dining in. When ordering Curbside Pickup, both Curbside Pick-up parkings are mostly always in use by dine-inners. Today I was waiting for 25 minutes parked in a regular parking spot since the Curbside Pickup ones were occupied with no one in their vehicles, called several times to notify them I was there and no one would answer the phone. In the past, I would get out and pickup my food inside, but it is unfair to offer a service they can’t fulfill. Otherwise I would have ordered To-Go. When they finally answered, the employee was arguing that she looks at the Curbside parking spots and if I’m not parked there specifically then she doesn’t know I’m there and that she was just calling me at the moment and got sent to voicemail (I had no missed calls nor voicemails). If she really was paying attention to those parking spots then she would notice the same cars had been there for quite a while even before I arrived, unattended. She went out and gave me my food, literally only my food, with no cutlery, napkins, syrup, NOTHING. I had given them the benefit of the doubt several times but have been let down 99% of the time. Terrible Customer Service! I rather drive further and have a more pleasant and accurate service than go...