This ’30 Minutes Guarantee’ is a very famous claim from the leading pizza chain Dominos. It’s not a bad bargain either specially when you are a hungry customer. But I hardly believed in such claims, as they are all marketing gimmicks, until the day I experienced it myself.
I and my ever so hungry (for good food) friends in PG had a typical routine for the weekends when we excused ourselves from the kitchen. Both me and my roomy being complete shopaholics mostly used to be out somewhere for our ‘retail therapy’ on weekends. One fine evening after a tiring shopping spree we thought of treating ourselves with our very favorite cheese burst. Being a regular with the pizza joint we just had to order and everything else was taken care of.
While we eagerly waited for the pizza and enjoyed some dance reality show in TV I just glanced over the flier and my eyes caught the small 30 Minutes Guarantee claim at the corner. I looked at the time and there came a naughty grin on my face – it was over some 45 minutes. When I shared the news with my friends we all had one question- Is it possible? [Who would mind a delicious pizza for free! But somehow I felt there will be some conditions applied somewhere.]
Finally when the delivery boy came around 50 minutes later, after placing the order, there was a little confusion within us on who will ask him for the free pizza clause! I being ever ready to open my big mouth went ahead. The poor fellow looked at our faces, then the bill to check the order time and said “Okay mam, you get the order for free, Enjoy your pizza!” I looked at him with a straight face and thought ‘really?’ I felt probably we were among the lucky few customers to get such a deal!
But as soon as he left, my friend uttered “they actually gave it for free!” to that I replied “good that they stick to their claim, how does it matter we got it for free, we should enjoy!” Right after that the three of us started having the same thought in mind – what if Dominos penalized the delivery boy for this? What if they deduct the money from his salary? Suddenly a guilt feeling sunk in all of us. I stared at the pizza box and felt we should call the delivery guy back and pay him. But when we opened the gate to look for him he was already gone.
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To be very frank it became little difficult to enjoy the pizza with this guilt of having someone else getting penalized for it. We decided on calling up Dominos customer care to find out if they deducted the amount from their salaries for such incidents. Only after their assurance we could finally enjoy our pizza that night.
I know that there are many more customers, who must have enjoyed this freebie. A month back when I ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut, [I have changed my house and so has the proximity to Dominos], I noticed that the hot dot was missing from the box [for those who don’t know – Pizza Hut also has a similar claim, if the hot dot promise mark on the box is missing you can claim the pizza for free]. I could have claimed that pizza for free, but I dint mention it to the delivery boy. I didn’t want to spend time later feeling guilty.
The marketing gimmicks at times come to life. How we wait for such a thing to happen, but when it actually takes place sometimes you face a bigger question – How do they give something for free so easily? Is it at someone else’s cost? Thankfully this time it wasn’t at the cost of anyone innocent.
2 comments
Thats something even I am worried about though its mentioned in their websites that they dont do such things. These days I have stopped asking 🙂
But then, I have actually heard that they do deduct from the salary of the delivery boys. Now, this is not to make you feel guilty again… and I doubt they will admit it to a customer, since there's something called goodwill of the company to preserve.