Papa Rich refusing to honor a perfectly valid voucher

Hi,
I went to Papa Rich (Canberra), yesterday and lunched with a friend. Food was nice, and service is decent, everything's great until when the time came to pay the bill.
I had a digital trial membership until July 18th. When the time came to pay the bill, I showed the staff the voucher on my phone. She tapped "redeem". However, for some reason it didn't go through. She tried it 3 times and I tried it once. Each time, it goes back to the original screen, as though it didn't redeem.

So she asked me to pay the full price, and I obliged. After I left the restaurant, I checked my phone again, and noticed that the voucher had actually been successfully redeemed. So I went back to show the staff. However, that's when she refused to acknowledge the discount, and would not cancel the previous charge to re-enter the discounted value.
She asked me to sort it out by calling Entertainment Book.

So I rang EB, and the lady said that the restaurant manager should be able to offer me the discounted value, since the voucher was already redeemed. So I went back to Papa Rich, showed her my phone, where the time of the voucher redemption matched the time on the receipt. However, she started making excuses, and kept on saying "sorry, I cannot accept that voucher."
Her excuses were:
"It had been redeemed 4 times, and it's a bug in the EB software. Maybe you redeemed it today and I didn't know about it."
"When you redeem a voucher, it shows up in my system accounting as redeemed, so I can't honor your discount"
"I'm not in charge of refunds, the main store in Melbourne is in charge"

I was very angry, because she pressed the redeem button on my phone several times. When I came back to show her that the voucher has been redeemed, she still refused to honor the voucher, and made up a lot of lame excuses. Personally, I think the staff (who also happens to be the owner), is just greedy, and couldn't even honor a voucher and ripped me off by $16.

I took photos of the receipt as well as a screen shot of my phone where I redeeemd the voucher, and I emailed entertainment book. Their accounts manager is looking at this as we speak.

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm so angry at Papa Rich for their dishonesty and greediness, that I don't think I will ever want to go back again, even though I enjoyed their food.

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Comments

  • Contact the melb store , ask to speak with Will. Judging from previous unpleasant experience, he'll fix it for you.

    There is only 1 store in Canberra, that's the only place you can redeem it.

    • Thanks. I will contact him and see if he can sort it out

  • +3

    From your story, it seems the EB book option really is better than the app option.

  • +2

    Problems with EB at Papa Rich seem to be common.
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/144663

    • +1

      These two forum posts are the only time I've heard of Papa Rich. I doubt I'll be going there.

      • Haha, me too. :)

    • oh wow! this is just as bad >.<

  • +1

    In general the service is quite good at PappaRich, servers come quickly for the order once the button is pushed and are more than happy to do some customised meals.

    It is only when something goes alightly wrong that the attitude goes from good to really atrocious to protect their profitability. Should really learn how to perform service recovery

    • Totally agree. The staff there are clueless with damage control. Sorry to hear that. I used it two weeks ago with no problems. Hopefully most ozbargainers will have no problems.

  • -1

    This is pretty different to the epic "can bread be a main" saga. I'm not suggesting for a moment you did anything wrong diners (except perhaps getting angry; life is too short), but if someone showed me an image on their device and I pushed the button I was supposed to press and it didn't work how the genuine app/digital-voucher is supposed to, and they paid and left, I'd consider that the end of it.
    If they came back later and showed me some other image on their device that supposedly proved I owed them $16, I'd probably invite them to take it up with PR main-management and/or the EB as well. Sounds like the app/digital-voucher-system (and/or your device?) failed here; not Pappa-Rich.
    That's just my humble opinion; maybe if I was in "customer service" or something I would feel differently.

    As an aside/a bit off-topic/ not relevant to this particular case, when I saw the "trial offer" thingy I wondered whether the participating businesses were actually given fair warning that anyone that wanted one would be offered a free voucher at some point, when they agreed to be in the E-book. No doubt it was in some fine-print somewhere in the agreement, but I'm guessing the EB didn't go out of their way to ensure that participating businesses know about the "free trial" plan when they signed on…

  • -1

    Sounds like Papa Rich ripping off again, this time at another location. Happened not long after the big dispute at Broadway NSW which ended up in the customer's favour https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/144663

    How can you really enjoy a Papa Rich meal when you have the consciousness of a sickening disagreement that could crop up at the till? T think the EB should struck the Papa Rich off as it's clear that the latter is inclining more to the opposite of fundraising contribution.

  • There is apparently a glitch in there system, but the staff should certainly honor the deal as she/he did press the redeem button. I'll contact the EB as their head quarter is in Phillip. This is not the first time it happened.

  • +1

    THanks for the comments and suggestions. I ended up emailing entertainment book, and they gave me the choice of either:
    1) get another Pappa Rich voucher (which of course I refused), OR
    2) get any other 3 vouchers in the entertainment book.

    I chose the 2nd option and they are mailing the vouchers to me now.

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