I’m sure you’ve all been on pins and needles waiting for this…

I received two letters from Subway today. One from corporate and one from the Rochester regional office. Seeing the envelopes made me think they had sent something. You know, coupons or a free sandwich or something. Otherwise, what idiotic company would spend the money to send a letter in response to an email? Not to mention that it’s generally considered bad form in the consumer support world to not reply in the same way the contact was made. Obviously the company’s profit margins are too damn high if they can afford this. But then, if they were that flush, they could have forked out a coupon, or maybe even invest in some deli meats.

So the bottom line is that both Subway groups are sorry to learn that my order was not what I had expected. The corporate group left it at that. The subtext was possibly that my expectations were unreasonable. The local group did confess that the “correct formula” for my sandwich would have been 6 slices of turkey and four half-slices of cheese. Curiously, they said they apologized for my negative experience and followed by stating that they pride themselves on consistency. I doubt they intended to assert that I should expect my next experience to be consistently negative as well, but that’s how it reads.

All in all, I’ll be doing my best to avoid Subway in the future. If the goal of consumer relations is cementing customer loyalty, they blew it.