Dodge City: 5,000 bucks a day...

Well, I answered yesterday’s nastygram with a simple, short, and succinct reply:

I shall not respond to further email from you unless your mail specifically enumerates the errors you wish corrected and what you wish to see in the way of a correction.

Should be the end of it, right? Well, this is what just arrived in the email:

I would like to draw your attention to the following issues related to the posting of a negative review against Dodge City Waterfront on Food24 today :
1. You are regarded, in the balance of probability, to be either the party that posted the review or arranged such.
2. It is understood that the review has been fabricated. The wording thereof suggests deliberate intention to damage the reputation of the Waterfront outlet and to cause financial loss to the owner of the outlet.
3. The owner of the Dodge City Waterfront outlet is not the same party that owns the Canal Walk outlet.
4. The Dodge City franchise and the owner of the V&A outlet have suffered financial loss as a result of the fabricated service complaint that has been made in a public forum.
5. Damages are estimated to be R5,000 for every day that the review remains posted on the Food24 webpage.
6. You are invited to retract, or to arrange the retraction of, the fabricated service review immediately.
7. Should you fail to act in accordance with request recorded in para 7 [sic] above, a summons for damages suffered will be prepared and served against you once your place of residence, or employment, has been established.
I will argue in due course that I have done everything possible mitigate the damages now suffered by the Dodge City in the form of providing you with a written warning of the implications of making deliberately false and/or exaggerated claims aimed at causing unreasonable financial damage to the Dodge City brand and its outlets.

Well, I’m afraid I can’t take credit for this one. The odd coincidence here, however, is that before I wrote the original letter to my friendly correspondent, I actually went to Food24 to find the Dodge City for Canal Walk…I was planning to leave the message “Great burgers and shakes but the service is dismal. Go to the Waterfront diner instead.” But there wasn’t a Food24 entry for the Canal Walk store, so I wrote a letter to the email address listed on the Food24 site instead, expecting that if it didn’t go to the franchise owner, it would likely be forwarded to him by the recipient. Since the email address was simply dodgecity@mweb.co.za, however, I figured it would probably go right to Mr. Dodge City himself.

And no, I didn’t put anyone up to it. In fact, any rational person who reads what’s been going on over the last few days would have to conclude I wasn’t involved since I have made repeated efforts to get this guy to tell me what he wants, my plan being to correct any real errors and ignore the rest in the interest of peace. In yesterday’s mail to him I repeated no less than six times, directly or indirectly, my request to inform me what has his knickers in such a knot, pointing out that I can’t do anything to relieve his distress until I know what’s causing it. Well, unsurprisingly, he hasn’t come forth with anything…maybe because there isn’t anything? I am beginning to think this guy has a hidden agenda here, since he refuses to give me the information needed to satisfy his demands and escalates this thing every time I try to lay it to rest.

So, I answered him: “I didn’t post it.” Simple, succinct, to-the-point.

Which prompted him to reply yet again:

You are going to have to convince the Magistrate - not me. As far as I am concerned, the wording of the Food24 review suggests that you are, in the balance of probability, a party thereto. That is all that I will have to prove in due course and I have absolute confidence in my ability to do so. I attend to all Dodge City's legal affairs personally and represent the brand in court when necessary. I look forward to debating the merits of your conduct in court in due course should you not arrange the required retraction of the Food24 review and settlement of damages suffered by Dodge City and its franchisee up to the time of retraction.

The contents of your blog to date (including your prior reference to Food24 and your understanding of the damage that could be caused by a negative review on this webpage), and that of your latest blog bedfellow, are unlikely to assist your effort to claim innocence. I will argue that you are vindictive and intent upon maximising damage to the Dodge City brand for reasons that are not particularly clear at present.

My rights and those of my franchisees are reserved.

OK, so now I’m starting to smell a big fat rat. How do I know this guy was telling the truth about a videotape of our visit to the diner? Since I didn’t check the time, I only guessed (with my husband’s input) that we were there for half an hour. When Mr. Dodge City said his video tape showed 15 minutes I neither demanded to see the tape nor dug in my heels to defend my position: I just accepted his word, corrected my error, and dropped the whole thing. It was two days later that he resurrected the thing with the character assassination mail.

Today I attempted to close it again with my two sentence reply that I would not be responding unless his mail specifically enumerated his complaints and desired corrections. I had not anticipated a further escalation on his part and his latest salvo required response:

I know nothing about this, either directly or indirectly: If you really want this removed, contact Food24 and have them check their records as to who posted it. If you fail to take this action, it can be construed that you do not want it removed, you are just seeking ways to further harass me. How do I know that YOU didn’t post it in an attempt to extract money from me?

I have attempted on two occasions to lay this to rest: once after your apology, and then again today when I said I was not going to respond further. You are the one who keeps resurrecting and escalating.

I’d like to help you, but I am unable to compel or cause Food24 to retract a review with which I had nothing to do.

At the time of this writing, the poll has had only six votes, but so far the response has been unanimous: #3 has it. If anyone has damaged the franchise’s good will, it has been the franchise owner himself. I let it go after his apology…why couldn’t he?

So far, he hasn’t replied to my latest response…nor has he had the courtesy to acknowledge respond to Hubby’s email of two days ago. I will keep you posted…

Dodge City: Can anybody figure out what this guy wants from me?

Yesterday I received this email:

I would strongly advise that you confine your blog to facts that you will be able to prove in due course if necessary.

You are not entitled to try and make a name for yourself as a writer via internet exposure at the expense of the reputation of a largely innocent party. I regard you to be impossible to please and, with respect, it is likely that an average person reading your rantings, eg about a cappuccino that took 6 minutes to deliver, would conclude similarly. I would honestly suggest that that you either stick to fiction writing or do something about improving your memory recall.

My rights and the rights of the Canal Walk franchisee are reserved.

In the event of you persisting with the disclosure of false, grossly exaggerated, or in some cases, trumped up facts about Dodge City, I will have no option other than to enforce the full extent of my right to relief against you without further notice.

I replied, trying to absolutely stick to the issue: the service was bad, he acknowledged the service was bad, but he wants me to “amend” my blog in some way but won’t respond to my multiple requests to tell me where he believes my blog is in error and in need of amendment:

On 08/09/08 I received the following from you: Video footage of the event shows that you entered the store at 9.44am and left 15 minutes later at 9.59am - not 30 minutes as you suggest.

On 09/09/08, in my very next blog entry, I corrected the error: I was incorrect about the time…it was 15 minutes, not 30, and I also emailed my acceptance of your service time: Since we paid in cash and did not have a time-stamped credit-card receipt, we could but guess at the length of time we spent at the store. I will accept your video time of fifteen minutes,

Later that same day you responded: The 6 minutes it took to get the coffee to you was slower than standard time allowed. Problem was that the milk had not been foamed in advance. Re the Canderel - they did have the product in the store but could not find it. No excuses - staff should no[sic] known where it was kept. Your waitress did not leave the store to get the Canderel - one of the managers did….The Franchisee has been advised of your grievance and has assured me that remedial action will be taken to get product delivery times back to Franchise standard… On behalf of Dodge City Diner, please accept my apologies

I did not respond to this mail as I considered the matter closed at this point: you acknowledged at least some of the problems and apologized for our unfortunate experience. My husband and I discussed it and decided that we would not return.

On 10/09/08, two days later, you sent me this email: “I would like to ask that you please consider the merits of amending your blogg [sic] regarding Dodge City. The justification behind my request for amendment is as follows: 1. Video footage suggests that your blogg [sic] does not reasonably represent the facts or sequence of events surrounding your service experience. 2. It is reasonable to suggest that the blogg [sic], in its current form, would do unreasonable damage to the goodwill of the Dodge City brand and the investment of the Canal Walk franchisee.

There was nothing in this mail, however, to indicate what you thought needed to be amended. Up to this point, in fact, you had been in agreement that the service was, based on your own observations via your own video footage, below your own corporate standard...and the one error you had pointed out to me had already been corrected.

I replied the same day saying: “Yesterday I posted a follow up blog entry in which I corrected the time difference, acceding to your time of 15 minutes for our entire visit and 6 minutes for delivery of our drinks. In what way do “the facts or sequence of events” differ in your video as compared to my blog? Assuming that I am willing to make an amendment, I cannot do so without knowing the points of contention…” Later in the mail I reiterated the point: “To the best of [my] knowledge and recollection, my blog is correct. If you can demonstrate where it is not, I will take amendment under consideration.”

Your reply on 10/09/08 acknowledges my correction: Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog. The remainder of your reply, however, does not address my requests for you to indicate where my blog and your video tape diverge. Your email, however, does request that I amend my blog to include certain inflammatory accusations that were included in your email, and I have complied with that request. A new entry was made to the blog with your mail quoted in its entirety, thereby precluding the possibility of a misquote or fault with my memory leading to something incorrect being published.

On 11/9/08, I responded to your email, again pointing out that I had asked you where our versions of the events diverged: I asked you to provide me with examples of how your video footage differs substantively from my blog, since amendment is impossible if I don’t know what needs to be amended. And I furthermore indicated a willingness to comply with your request (as I had already done twice by correcting the time and by publishing your statement as requested): Instead of providing the information I need in order to comply with your request, however, you respond with an ad hominem attack and gratuitous insults.

On the morning of 11/9/08, my husband also responded to your email of 10/09/08, providing correction to erroneous information supplied to you by your staff. To date, he has not received a reply or even an acknowledgment of receipt from you.

Which brings us to your missive of yesterday afternoon: You state: I would strongly advise that you confine your blog to facts that you will be able to prove in due course if necessary.

You see, therein lies the problem: we both are in possession of a set of “facts” which we each believe to be true. You, however, are the only person in possession of both sets of “facts,” and you aren’t sharing. Since I don’t have possession of the video footage and I cannot read your mind, I can’t change anything on the blog without input from you. Since I don’t know what you are taking issue with, I cannot amend that which so distresses you.

Since you have agreed in writing that the service was below your own standard and I have corrected the time error, I don’t know what other “facts” remain in dispute. I have asked more than once for you to give me the information and you have not been forthcoming. I am therefore unable to make amendments to satisfy you without knowing what is in dispute.

You further state: In the event of you persisting with the disclosure of false, grossly exaggerated, or in some cases, trumped up facts about Dodge City… Please indicate which facts I have disclosed that are false, grossly exaggerated, or trumped up. I do not have the option of retracting, correcting, amending, or otherwise changing statements with which you take issue until and unless you reveal to me what they are.

Well, you’d think this would be sufficient to bring the man to the realization that I’m not unwilling to correct errors, but since I don’t see any remaining errors, he’s just going to have to rub my myopic little nose in them.

Here’s what I got in response:
You have a legal obligation to ensure that any disclosure by yourself, that negatively impacts on Dodge City's reputation in the marketplace, fairly represents the true state of affairs.

I have no obligation to convince you that my account of events correct. My obligation is limited to drawing your attention to the fact that your disclosures on the internet are regarded to be unreasonably damaging to Dodge City's reputation, that the Brand is likely to be suffering damages as a result thereof, and to advise you that you are legally liable for any damages suffered after your receipt of the said notice.

Dodge City's conduct in dealing with your initial email complaint to me was in line with international best practice ie I accepted your version of events without question and made a geuine effort to make amends - in your case, thanking you for taking the trouble to draw the matter to my attention, and offering 3 times the value of purchase as compensation. Dodge City seldom receives customer complaints, but when received they are dealt with consistently, urgently and responsibly - as was done in your case. In this regard, your attention is drawn to the following facts:
1. I attempted to email a response within hours of receipt of email - albeit being a Sunday afternoon. The mail was returned undelivered..
2. I came across your complaint on the web during a regular search to review customer feedback that evening. The nature and wording of your complaint was outside of the norm, suggesting that it was backed by a motive that extended beyond simply wanting to raise a genuine grievance. It is likely that an average reader of your blog would conclude that you derived a degree of pleasure from the process of complaining and relished the prospect of doing unreasonable damage to the Dodge City brand.
3. Your response to my efforts to make good, and to appease you in general, was contemptious. I am not sure what you were expecting by way of compensation but 99,999% of complainants would have been more than happy with the genuine apology and the R50 voucher.
4. Dodge City welcomes customer feedback - regardless of whether positive or negative. We do not victimise complainants as you suggest may happen to you.

I reiterate that in the event of you persisting with the disclosure of false, grossly exaggerated, or in some cases, trumped up facts about Dodge City, I will have no option other than to enforce the full extent of my right to relief against you without further notice.

I'm going to have to ponder my response to this one, since I'm getting the strong smell of paternalism here. Correct me if I am wrong, but is he no longer focussing on alleged misstatements of fact and has gone on to try to tell me (and by extension, every other blogger in the world) not only what I can say but how I can say it? I'm open to suggestions, opinions, and insights.

Lekker weekend, you guys!

Dodge City: Hubby enters the tiltyard

So, night before last I received the nastygram below from the Dodge City owner:

Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog.

Dodge City staff mentioned that you were engaged in a loud verbal altercation with your husband outside the store before entering. Their impression was that you were being unreasonably abusive towards him. I would have thought that, as an objective and balanced critic of human performance, you would have added this snippet of information to your account of events - or is that you take pleasure in finding fault in everyone around you but are blind to you own deficiencies.

I would appreciate you amending the blog to add the objective opinion expressed above.

My response was:

Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog.
You are welcome.

Dodge City staff mentioned that you were engaged in a loud verbal altercation with your husband outside the store before entering. Dodge City staff is incorrect. My husband and I seldom quarrel and when we do, it is always in the utmost privacy. Their impression was that you were being unreasonably abusive towards him. There is such a thing as “reasonably abusive”? Has it occurred to you that the staff is trying to shift focus from their dismal performance by casting me as a querulous and abusive individual whose complaints therefore need not be taken seriously? Do you doubt the evidence of your own video footage?

I would have thought that, as an objective and balanced critic of human performance, you would have added this snippet of information to your account of events- Even if this slander was correct, exactly what bearing would it have on your staff’s appalling performance? The topic here is the performance of your staff, not my behaviour, particularly behaviour not directed to the staff. or is that you take pleasure in finding fault in everyone around you but are blind to you own deficiencies. Are you now saying that your staff’s performance was above reproach, that there was no fault in their service delivery? Or it is only people who are, themselves, above reproach who have the right to complain about substandard service? I asked you to provide me with examples of how your video footage differs substantively from my blog, since amendment is impossible if I don’t know what needs to be amended. Instead of providing the information I need in order to comply with your request, however, you respond with an ad hominem attack and gratuitous insults.

I would appreciate you amending the blog to add the objective opinion expressed above.
The opinion expressed above is far from objective and is, in fact, based in slander. I would appreciate your forwarding to me the names and contact information of the persons who have so egregiously misinformed you so that I may explore my options with regard to a defamation suit against whoever made these statements.

Hubby is out of town, but he does have email, so I forwarded the nasty email to him for comment. This morning I received the following message from my husband, a copy of the email he sent to the restaurant owner in response to the nastygram:

Dear Mr A________

I must profess to being quite astonished by your email…to my wife. A few things are clear from your message…:

1. Not only are your staff bad at delivering good service, but they are obviously hard of hearing and lacking in visual acuity to boot. I experienced no "verbal altercation" nor was my wife "unreasonably abusive" towards me. As an aside, I'd love to hear your definition of "reasonable abuse" - perhaps it’s what you subject your employees to to make them surly and unresponsive to customers? Or maybe it’s just the kak* service that you deliver to your customers? Or maybe it’s the sort of nonsensical email you have written below?

2. Your inference below is that one has to be an "objective and balanced" critic of human performance in order to have a valid complaint about service and that my wife's alleged "abuse" had some sort of bearing on your bad service. This is grade A bulldust. It’s quite obvious that you have no intention of taking note of the feedback, let alone acting on it. In other words, STOP avoiding the crux of the issue, which is that you need to improve your service!

3. I fail to see what my wife's deficiencies, whatever they may be, have to do with the basic facts of the issue which is that the service you delivered was sub-standard.

Thank you for confirming our decision not to patronize your establishment ever again. The memory of your bad service (including your missive below) is going to last far longer than the good taste of your hamburgers and milkshakes.


Kind Regards
N G________ ([Sweet Violet]’s un-abused Husband)

P.S: Please feel free to tear up your R50 "courtesy voucher". A free meal is too high a price to pay for your "reasonable abuse"

P.P.S: I will be recommending to my wife that she publish your response… and my reply thereto on her blog. I think it’s in the interest of diners to know what they can expect if they complain about service levels at Dodge City diners.

* “kak”: Afrikaans word for “shit” or “crap”

Whew! Like me, Hubby has a long, long fuse. He’s much more laid back than I am and it takes a lot to rile him up….but this did it.

I wonder if the restaurant owner gave any consideration to the subtext of his insulting little missive. Hubby and I each caught the “unreasonably abusive” comment: does the man really mean to imply that there is both reasonable and unreasonable abuse? Having already assassinated my character, what of his insinuations regarding Hubby’s? My sweet, reserved, good-tempered, well-mannered husband has been cast as a boorish lout who engages in loud public squabbles with his harridan of a wife rather than the man he is: one who would bite off his own tongue rather than publicly humiliate himself in such a manner. Paradoxically, he is concurrently portrayed as a pitiable character, a hapless wimp subject to public browbeating from the quarrelsome shrew to whom he is married.

The further subtext is that only those who are without personality defects of any kind are entitled to complain about poor or neglectful treatment: only those who are “objective and balanced critic[s] of human performance,” it seems, are entitled to take exception to less-than-perfect service. This, of course, is nonsense…as one of the comments on an earlier blog entry on this topic says: “Even if you and your husband had had a full on physical altercation outside their restaurant, what does that have to do with their service?”

The commenter, Kerryn, further observes: “It seems that demanding reasonable service, and getting annoyed when your waitron is inept is 'over reacting' and being 'unreasonable'.” It is interesting that she should bring this up…the next instalment of this saga (yes, there is more!) veers in that direction.

Insults and lies: Dodge City yet again

I spent a number of years as admin to the head of legal departments back in Silicon Valley. One of the things you learn in that kind of environment is to be careful what you put down in writing, especially if it can be perceived as unflattering (or worse) to another. It was with this knowledge that I undertook to write the management of Dodge City to express my dismay and displeasure at the abysmal service we received Sunday morning. (Copy of letter below, two entries down.)

My personal recollection is that we left the restaurant at about 10:20. I have this impression because my husband is diabetic, he was very late eating that morning, and as we left the restaurant, I was concerned about finding another one in the mall that was still serving breakfast, thinking we needed to find a place by 10:30 and feeling pressured as a result. The manager informed me, via email, that his videotape of the incident shows we arrived at 9:44 and left at 9:59, putting us in the restaurant for 15 minutes rather than the 30 that Hubby and I had estimated. With no reason to not take his word for it, I adjusted the time frame in my second blog entry on the topic (immediately below this one).

A subsequent email from the manager said “The 6 minutes it took to get the coffee to you was slower than standard time allowed. Problem was that the milk had not been foamed in advance. Re the Canderel - they did have the product in the store but could not find it. No excuses - staff should no known [sic] where it was kept… The Franchisee has been advised of your grievance and has assured me that remedial action will be taken to get product delivery times back to Franchise standard.” The email closed with a voucher for a return visit and an apology.

Silly me, I thought this was the end of it. We estimated a time incorrectly, we were corrected, I published a correction. So, imagine my surprise when I received the following email this morning:

“I would like to ask that you please consider the merits of amending your blogg [sic] regarding Dodge City.

The justification behind my request for amendment is as follows:
1) Video footage suggests that your blogg [sic] does not reasonably represent the facts or sequence of events surrounding your service experience.
2) It is reasonable to suggest that the blogg [sic], in its current form, would do unreasonable damage to the goodwill of the Dodge City brand and the investment of the Canal Walk franchisee.
I would really appreciate your understanding and co-operation in this regard.”

I replied:

“Yesterday I posted a follow up blog entry in which I corrected the time difference, acceding to your time of 15 minutes for our entire visit and 6 minutes for delivery of our drinks.

“In what way do “the facts or sequence of events” differ in your video as compared to my blog? Assuming that I am willing to make an amendment, I cannot do so without knowing the points of contention.

“It is not reasonable to suggest that my blog, in its current form, will do any kind of damage whatsoever to the Dodge City brand. The blog is not a restaurant review site nor does it have a high search-engine page rank. A negative review appearing on such sites as Food24 or What2night, both of which allow patron reviews, could potentially be very damaging as they target the South African diner and also appear on the first page of a Google search for Dodge City (restricted to South Africa), whereas my blog doesn’t even show up on any of the first ten pages. If a negative review appears on Food24, which is much more likely to influence a diner’s decision about eating at a Dodge City location, will you suggest that they amend the review to cast your establishment in a more favourable light?

“You have concurred that your staff’s actions were below your own standard and you have further concurred that your staff could not find the sweetener: should I amend my blog to imply something else? The service was poor…so poor that we left rather than endure more slow service en route to getting our meal. Are you expecting me to amend my blog to indicate that the service was swift, positive, and without flaw?

“Part of being in the restaurant business is getting reviews, both formal and informal. Our experience was negative…should I have blogged positively anyway? (You may want to note that I remarked favourably about the food…the burgers and shakes are among the best in town.)

“We had a bad experience. I blogged about it. To the best of knowledge and recollection, my blog is correct. If you can demonstrate where it is not, I will take amendment under consideration.”

Frankly, I expected the whole thing to drop right there, since he had to be bluffing. I hadn’t stated anything untrue and I had corrected our error in the estimation of the time, so there couldn’t be anything wonky about either the facts or sequence of events in the blog.

I have to admit that I was rather taken aback at the suggestion that my little blog, which does not draw a readership of people looking for restaurant recommendations and which has a very low search engine page ranking, could do any kind of damage to the franchise, unreasonable or otherwise. The thinly veiled threat…praise us or get sued…left a bad taste in my mouth. How dare he try to hijack my blog and demand that I publish untruths!

But I am a reasonable person and, if he could demonstrate to me where my facts or sequence of events were contradicted by his video footage, then I am just as interested in correcting the errors as he is.

Unfortunately, his most recent email did not supply me with any discrepancies between his videotaped “facts and sequence of events” and those in my blog. In fact, that next email didn’t address the correction of errors at all:

“Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog.

“Dodge City staff mentioned that you were engaged in a loud verbal altercation with your husband outside the store before entering. Their impression was that you were being unreasonably abusive towards him.

“I would have thought that, as an objective and balanced critic of human performance, you would have added this snippet of information to your account of events - or is that you take pleasure in finding fault in everyone around you but are blind to you own deficiencies.

“I would appreciate you amending the blog to add the objective opinion expressed above.”

First of all, this is an ad hominem attack and has no bearing whatsoever on the issue at hand, the dismal service we received on Sunday morning. “Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves insulting or belittling one's opponent, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensibly damning character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem The ad hominem attack is usually employed by the losing party in an argument to change the subject and put the opponent on the defensive.

Secondly, the assertion is a complete and total fabrication, an unmitigated fiction, a bald-faced lie. My husband and I seldom quarrel and when we do it is always in privacy. We won’t even argue with each other if another person is in the same house with us! My husband is a reserved man who would eat glass before he would engage in a public quarrel, and I was raised in the Fifties, when little girls were imbued with the belief that one did not do such things as making public scenes. I may be many things, but I am not a drama queen and I simply would not embarrass myself or my husband in such a manner.

The truth is, my husband and I were walking together and we were either holding hands or my hand was tucked into his arm, and we were discussing the relative merits of one chain restaurant over another with respect to breakfast. We stepped into Dodge City and, once seated, resumed our conversation. It was no more and no less than that.

I haven’t responded to this latest salvo. I haven’t decided what I want to say. I cannot allow it to go unchallenged, however, because silence is tacit consent, even in the law. I’d like to say I was open to revisiting the location and give them another chance, but after this last email, I’m not so sure that would be a good idea.

One thing, though…considering that the information in that last email was a series of whoppers, I am now calling into question this alleged video footage. I haven’t seen it, after all, and I accepted the 15 minute service time from the manager, thinking there was no reason to lie to me about it and Hubby and I had simply not correctly estimated the time. In light of the lies and insulting personal attack to which I have just been subjected, however, the truth of that 15 minutes versus my original estimate of 30 must now be called into question.