RM5 Off Next Pizza

I was at the Pizza Hut over lunch time, and decided to purchase the Lunch Combo Special. It was clearly stated on their pamplet that if the pizza was not served by 15 minutes, they would give a RM5 off voucher for the next visit.

I started counting down right from the time the bill reached my desk; it was printed 13:40 and I started waiting eagerly for the pizza. The clock started ticking away and there was no sign of my pizza. 1:49pm... 1:54pm... then 1:56pm!! Yesss, the pizza wansn't on my table yet, and I could see the waiters and waitresses were walking around, not busy at all! (I would have given them more grace period if they were busy at that time, but they weren't!)

And so I waved at one of the waitresses and demanded my RM5 off voucher. To my surprise, she passed on to her colleague (possibly a more senior one) and the waiter tried to brush me off by saying he wasn't aware of such thing (although it was CLEARLY printed on their advertisement all over the tables and walls).... I pointed at my iPaq rw6828 on the table, with the Resco Audio Recorder running, and told him,"Sir, u better watch out what u r saying, as i am recording down whatever u r saying right from the beginning..."

I could see his face suddenly turned pale, and with a smile, he told me he would get his supervisor. The pizza came at 2:01pm, and while eating, I could see the whole bunch of waiters and waitresses gathering around the cashier counter, whispering to each other.

Few minutes later, the supervisor came, and politely she apologised to me (meanwhile, I could sense that she knew my gadget was still recording the whole conversation) and she explained to me why the pizza was late -- I told her I was not interested to know how the pizza came late, but just wanted to know if she would honor Pizza Hut's claim about the RM5 off voucher.

She smiled and said,"Of course!" And there she handed over to me a RM5 off voucher.

I think if I hadn't got my PDA doing the magic of turning the waiter's face pale, I wouldn't have possibly got my RM5 voucher (knowing Malaysian mentality -- they would have given me all sorts of excuses!)

I think I have to use my PDA recording feature more often in the future for potential legal actions and to protect myself. I even plan to use it during my conversation with my patients especially sensitive issues are being discussed.

Addendum:
I came across this comment by the public in The Star dated 6/7/2006, whereby the Pizza Hut refused to compensate the RM5 voucher.