The Jian BBQ Story - Part III The Case of the Curious Consultant

As you may have read in my previous postings, I had a devil of a time trying to simply order food at Los Angeles hotspot Jian BBQ.

To continue our story, after getting nowhere with and being berated by Jian BBQ's waiter-cum-manager, we finally got a friendly server who attempted to address our issue. All the while, the "manager" hovered around us, arguing and trying to shout us down.

Finally, someone came over. At first, we thought it was the elusive owner. But we later learned this was the genius at Jian BBQ who came up with the tasting menu idea. He was a marketing consultant. He reiterated that the tasting menu was a "promotion" and thus not eligible for use with our coupon. We told him that there was nothing on it that said "Special" or "Limited Time Offer," and thus it was not clearly a "promotion" (remember, our whole disagreement with Jian BBQ is over the fact that our gift certificate said it wasn't valid with any other "promotions.") Here's where it gets really bizarre.

Turns out, Jian BBQ had this very same "tasting menu" before. But they used to call it the "Summer Special." "Aha!" I cried, "had you called it that, we wouldn't even try to use our gift certificate." The marketing consultant told us they changed it because it sounded low-class. I tried to explain to him that didn't matter -- we had no way of knowing whether it was a special or not. "Well," he exclaimed, "clearly you can tell it's a special because it's discounted from the regular menu price."

"Not so fast," I shot back. Obviously it's a tasting menu, so you don't get a full portion. So of course it's cheaper.

He tried a new tactic. Claiming that anything on a separate page outside of the regular Jian BBQ menu was a special. I picked up a separate page of cocktails. "Is this a page of specials?" "Yes! These drinks are for the summer only. And they're discounted." Well, could we use our gift certificate on the drinks? "Yes."

I was dumbfounded. Why could we use it on the drink "specials" but not the "promotional" tasting menu? He didn't have a good answer for that. Or any answer at all.

Being that my friend works in a law firm, she pointed out that gift certificates and coupons are legal contracts. And that they're obligated to honor the terms and conditions. I pointed out that if they didn't want to have gift certificates from Restaurant.com be used for the tasting menu, they could simply add that to the terms and conditions on the gift certificate and put a little asterisk*

*Not valid with Restaurant.com gift certificates

Like so on the tasting menu page. "That's a good suggestion," the marketing consultant replied.

So basically, the marketing consultant agreed with us. But he still wouldn't take our gift certificate.

As we had now been arguing for over half an hour and were extremely hungry, I asked one more time if we could use our gift certificate -- which did not say it wasn't valid with the tasting menu -- on the tasting menu. The marketing consultant told us no.

I said -- "Here's what's going to happen. We are going to leave. My friend will contact Restaurant.com and tell them you're not honoring their coupon. We will ask her boss what the legal ramifications are. I am a consultant, so I work from home. I have a lot of time. I will write a bad review on Yelp and Chowhound and everywhere else I can. And then see what else I can do to let people know about your horrid customer service."

"Don't threaten me!" the marketing consultant barked.

I tried to explain that I wasn't threatening. I was simply telling him what we would do. And we have since done all of that.

Here's the obvious customer service solution. Bearing in mind the maxim "the customer is always right..."

Whether or not Jian agreed with us, they should have said something like: "Sir/Ma'am, we understand your point about the gift certificate. We are going to change the coupon terms and conditions and add a disclaimer to our tasting menu page. We can't accept your gift certificate in the future, but we will take it towards the tasting menu this once." They would have had a happy pair of customers, $25 (plus tax and tip on $50) of our money, and probably our future business. I eat at restaurants I like all the time, some several times a week. In fact, after our poor showing at Jian BBQ that evening, we went down to Koreatown and ate at Road to Seoul, somewhere I'd had dinner just a couple of nights before (it was excellent again and the customer service was fantastic).

Instead, Jian BBQ got two angry customers, multiple bad Yelp reviews, a possible hassle with Restaurants.com and California authorities. And this blog. So, they won the battle but lost the war. Also, whatever they're paying their marketing consultant is clearly too much. Because the negative word of mouth this little stunt over $25 was clearly poor marketing.

Don't eat at Jian BBQ. They're obnoxious and overpriced. There's no shortage of good Korean food in Los Angeles. There's no need to patronize establishments that look down their noses at their customers -- or those that yell at and berate them.