After my little rant Friday about Burger King I decided to do something about it. I called their customer relations department for answers. The customer service rep I spoke with was very nice, and her reaction to the stickers saying no cameras was one of shock. She honestly didn’t know what I was talking about and thought it was absurd. She immediately put me on hold and started trying to contact someone who could give her an answer as to why there is this no camera policy now.
After 20 minutes she gave up trying to find the answer internally and asked for the location of one of the stores where I’d seen the stickers. I gave her the location, and she tried to contact the owner. With no luck she called the store only to be told no manager was in. She even said “Mam, I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to file a complaint about this because this is a franchise store, and we need to know if it makes a policy change”. I was told franchise stores can make their own policies, but they have to notify corporate when they do so.
I explained to her this wasn’t the only store I’ve “heard” of this happening at. I’ve seen numerous photos on flickr from other patrons along with stories of them being hassled for taking photos. I explained that I am a blogger writing a story on this, and I asked if it was possible to email my findings, and it was. I sent in a list of all the links I’ve found with stories from other people regarding the no camera stickers and their experiences. She added that to the complaint, tried contacting the owner of our local BK one more time, then took down my information. She promised to have someone call me back within 2 business days, and I got her information as well including her extension so if my call isn’t returned I can call back to her directly.
Fast forward to today. I found Hubby rummaging through the kitchen without any luck, so I asked if he wanted to ride to town to grab a bite to eat. I so wasn’t in the mood to cook, plus I wanted to ride by Burger King to snap a photo of the stickers on the door to add to my previous post.
We hit up the Burger King drive through again, and pulled up to the window. I immediately noticed the sticker was gone. It had been located in the lower right hand corner of the drive through window, and all that was left was the sticky goo where it had been removed, but the window hadn’t been cleaned. The manager just happened to be running the window, so I asked him about it. I made mention that I’d seen the sign a few days ago, and he said “yeah, we took it down because we’re having too many complaints. We had 2 birthday parties canceled because the parent’s couldn’t take photos of the party.”
I told him I thought the policy was absurd to begin with, and I myself had called corporate to ask why no cameras were allowed without ever getting a straight answer. He said he didn’t know why the stickers were put up in the first place, but it was a request straight from Burger King, not the franchise owner. All he knew was they put the stickers up last weekend and were asked to remove them this weekend.
Sounds to me like they’ve got an awful lot of complaints about a policy they couldn’t justify.
