Sunday, April 13, 2008

This failure's not quite 'epic'...

..but it’s still fail nonetheless!

We visited Taco Bell #24343 today for lunch. We placed our order, for two of us this time. Things were looking up; the order preview screen at the drive-thru board showed our order correct in full.


So far, so good! As you can see, our order was for:

1- Taco Salad
1- Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco
1- Crunchy Taco
2- 7-Layer Burritos
2- Large Drinks
  • They dialed up two Large Pepsis, though our order was for a large Dr. Pepper and a large Fruit Punch. We'll see how that works out...
1- Chicken Club Chalupa
1- Soft Taco (beef)

We pulled up to the second window and paid for the food. They had our drinks waiting at the window. Cool, they got them right, even though they were wrong on the order! The ringer-upper must just have hit Pepsi twice for speed or something. Cool with us, just as long as they're right!


Here's the two bags comprising our order. Still looking good; I'm psyched to see the Taco Salad in one bag and several items in the other. This may be our first 100% correct order!



Regardless of whether or not they'll get our order right, the food WAS good, I can't fault them for that. This taco salad in particular was nice and full of ingredients; the shell's broken because we couldn't wait to sample that floury-shell goodness before snapping this pic. Also, the new Chicken Club Chalupa was excellent; I highly recommend it! Real bacon bits and ranch, mmm. And, no nasty, rock-hard old chicken this time, cool!


Alas, all good expectations must come to an end. The last picture showed our Taco Salad, which was complete and yummy. In the other bag, the suspense is lifted. In the picture, from top to bottom, are the Chicken Club Chalupa, the two 7-Layer Burritos, the Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco, and the regular Crunchy Taco. The missing item? The regular beef Soft Taco.

As usual, we didn't order any specially-made items of any kind, every single item is completely "stock", ordered as it normally comes with nothing added or left off.


Here's the image of our receipt, showing we paid $18.61 for all items, including the missing Soft Taco.

Not too bad! With only a single item missing, and a relatively minor one at that, this order is just barely wrong. As they say, though, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades; we're going to chalk this order up as less than 100% correct, putting us at 0 out of 2 orders correct total. Our missing soft taco cost us $0.89 before tax, which just goes to show you that, as 4chan knows, nothing is pretty expensive these days.

Once again, it's time for our Epic Fail Tacos Statistic Wrap-Up:

Total orders wrong: 2/2
Total value of missing items (before tax): $2.58


That's it for this visit! Thanks for reading, and come back soon to see the further misadventures of Taco Bell #24343 here at Epic Fail Tacos!

-The Epic Fail Tacos Team

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

FIRST P0ST!!!

Welcome to Epic Fail Tacos!

Our aim is to alert others to the fact that Taco Bell #24343, the new one around town, has a very, very poor accuracy record. They have failed to deliver a correct, complete order to us the last eight out of ten times we ate there, which is what piqued our interest!

Now, fast food restaurants are somewhat notorious for shoddy service. Slow orders, pull-ups, and forgetting items are considered pretty standard fare when you make dinner arrangements by drive-thru. THIS fast-food restaurant stands out, though, as a more consistent source of fail than any surrounding establishment!

When we get dinner at a fast food restaurant, we need our order to be as correct as possible, for a very good reason. Before we leave the house, we make arrangements, each person deciding on their entire order. Once we've picked out each meal, one or two of us make the drive to the restaurant, order the entire order, pick it up and return home, where we begin seperating the food out. If the restaurant "forgets" an item or two, that means that at least one of us does not get the entire meal they ordered, which can really put that person out. When they don't deliver an accurate order, it means someone is missing part of their dinner for the night. We don't order more than we're going to eat; we find that wasteful. Also, why should we be responsible for their mistakes? Why should we consciously order (and pay for) more food than we want, in anticipation of a mistake they shouldn't be making?

When this happens, usually we can call the restaurant in question, who pledges to make the missing item and hold it for us for pickup. This doesn't really work for us, because we aren't eating it in the parking lot; most of the time, we check it once we get home. Since it's about a ten-minute drive from any restaurant to our house, that means that if someone's missing something, it takes ten minutes to discover the error. Once we find it, if we call the restaurant and decide to get back out, it will take at least 20 minutes (and usually more like 30) to drive back to the restaurant, pick up the missing item and get home, after which we can actually eat together, for a total of some 30-40 minutes between when the food is made and when we can begin eating it. Unless the person driving happens to be missing their entire order, this means that all the food will always get cold if we choose to go back and pick up the missing items, waiting to start eating until all the food arrives. All of this is usually not a big deal, because it happens so infrequently--unless the restaurant we go to is Taco Bell #24343.

Have you had this kind of experience before? It's seriously rediculous how many times this particular Taco Bell has failed to deliver a correct order; I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say that the last eight out of ten times, the order has been missing at least one item. This is unacceptable! And, even though we continue to protest, even though we've let them know exactly how large this problem has become, their service refuses to improve. This is why we decided to let the Internet know.

Every time we eat at this Taco Bell, we'll tell you what we ordered, what we paid for (with pictures of the food we got and the receipt), and what's missing. Then, you can be the judge!

This week, we ordered the following items.

1 Number 6 Combo. This included:
2 Supreme Chalupas with Chicken
1 Soft taco
1 Large Sierra Mist
1 Crunchy Taco
1 Soft Taco Supreme
1 Taco Salad
1 Chicken Supreme Chalupa
1 Beef Nacho Cheese Chalupa
1 Nachos Supreme
1 Large Dr. Pepper

This is what we got:

3 Chicken Supreme Chalupas
1 Soft taco
1 Large Sierra Mist
1 Crunchy Taco
1 Taco Salad
1 Nachos Supreme
1 Large Dr. Pepper

MISSING: 1 Beef Nacho Cheese Chalupa

Unfortunately, we didn't decide to start this blog until AFTER we'd eaten! For this first week, and this week only, we will not have pictures to prove the food items we did and didn't receive. Here is an image of our receipt, though:



As you can see, the missing Beef Nacho Cheese Chalupa is on there, where it says 1-C-BFNC, meaning we paid $1.69 for food we didn't receive.

Here, it's interesting to note that we used a favor owed us. Last time our order was wrong, we called the restaurant and talked to the manager, letting her know the streak was at 6 out of 7 orders wrong. She apologized and wrote our name down in The Book for a free combo. This week, we asked that that free combo discount be applied to the Combo #6 we ordered. Not to be outdone, Taco Bell #24343 found a way to bilk us WHILE giving us a free Combo: by forgetting an item not included in the discount!

That's it for this week! Here's the Epic Fail Tacos Statistic Wrap-Up:

Total orders wrong: 1 / 1
Total value of missing items (before tax): $1.69

Thanks for reading! Come back, or subscribe to our RSS Feed, to witness the continuing saga of Epic Fail Tacos!

-The Epic Fail Tacos Team