Poor experience and Dissatisfactory resolution.

We are very disappointed in the service received at Mconald's on the Bluff in Durban. My family and I decided that we wanted to go out for ice-cream this evening and my daughter suggested McDonalds as she wanted a McFlurry. We proceeded to order 3 ice-creams and a ****in at 8:20pm.

Once the order was ready I sent my daughter to the counter to get it as we were sitting right in front of the counter so I had full view of her. When she got to the counter, I noticed the employee was not friendly or communicative and handed the order over. (She was not rude but the interaction caught my attention as the staff are usually more pleasant.) When my daughter arrived with the ice-cream, it was melted. I asked why the ice-cream was so soft and the employee proceeded to come over to us to advise t6hat it usually is like that and both my husband and I explained that that is not the case as we have had ice-cream there before.

She then tried to explain to me that I ordered an Oreo Affogato which is like coffee and that is why it is runny. I showed her the Chocolate Sundae that my husband ordered and I told her it is never like that, but she kept insisting that the reason the Sundae was soft was because the chocolate sauce was hot so we asked why would you pour hot chocolate sauce on the ice-cream? And then told her that we did not order milkshakes as if we wanted milkshakes we would have ordered milkshakes.

She then said that she would go and check if she could redo it, we said thank you and she proceed to the back. When she came back I showed her that even the McFlurry was extremely soft. At that point she said that there was a problem with the ice-cream machine and asked if we could wait for the ice-cream to get hard. We said no we cannot do that as you knew there was a problem with the machine but you were pretending like there was a valid reason for it being soft. When then requested a refund so we could go somewhere else to get ice-cream, she said okay she will go ask for one.

We waited, she popped her head out then went back in. My husband got tired of waiting as it was now getting close to 9pm and the other ice-cream places were going to close. He went to the counter to ask for her and the other employee asked who I assume was the manager to come out and speak to him. She proceeded to tell us that McDonald's does not give refunds and that we need to do an exchange to which my husband was refusing to accept and said we came for ice-cream nothing else, I do not want an exchange, I want my R60 so that I can go buy my ice-cream somewhere else. The lady said we cant refund you even if it was R5 and asked for his banking details and he refused saying he wants his money.

She kept repeating the same line and saying she needs his banking details and she will email head office.

Now, this is not the first bad experience we have had at Bluff McDonald's however the other times we overlooked whatever issues we had as we found ways to mitigate the situation, this time around I felt it necessary to come on this platform as we had no choice to leave McDonald's without our ice-creams as well as without our money. So we essentially paid for a product that we did not receive.

The ultimate issue, is that McDonald's Bluff knew all too well there was a problem with the product as seen from the unease from the initial employee handing the ice-cream over to my daughter but instead of owing up to it and admitting that there is a problem, she took the approach of feigning innocence and digging her heels in that the ice-cream was right. Only when challenged with the fact that we know it is not suppose to be like that, did she back down and ultimately admit it was a problem and then hide in the back thereafter.

Had they just admitted from the word go that there was an issue and displayed the no refund policy, we probably would have had a different experience and met halfway for a resolution like we have in the past. But instead we are the ones having to accept the loss of R60. It might seem like a small amount however that is our money that we have worked for and it is not simply easy to say, we accept the loss especially after such deception.