george s.
Yelp
Notice: This is only a review of the service at this carryout only location. If you have lived in Chicago for any length of time I assume you've eaten at a Giordano's restaurant before. Personally, I eat pizza at least once a week. There are half a dozen pizza joints I regularly order from (depending on the style of pizza I'm in the mood for.) I hadn't ordered from Giordano's in over a decade - though my office frequently orders from the downtown location, so I'm familiar with the taste. Not one of my top ten Chicago pizzas, but when this new carryout location opened near me and sent me a coupon for $5 off, I was willing to give it a try.
Unfortunately when I walked in with the coupon they said it was only good for internet orders. After a couple weeks, the opportunity arose for me to order online. Again unfortunately their online system would not accept the coupon. I naively assumed that when I arrived to pick up the $30+ pizza they would just apply the $5 credit since they had just sent the coupon out to homes throughout Lincolnwood & Skokie in order to draw customers to their new location. Instead the girl at the counter asked if I had brought the coupon with me. I said no, I did that last time when they wouldn't take it, but now I was coming from work so didn't have it with me. She said "aw, that's too bad" and that without the coupon I was out of luck. "Maybe next time" she added. (I guess she thought I was lying that I had one of the thousands of coupons they mailed out or that I was lying that their system wouldn't accept it????? At least that's how she made me feel.) So I turned around and walked out, leaving the unpaid pizza for them to eat.
When I got home, I tore up and threw away the coupon so I wouldn't be tempted to try a third time. In the end, they not only wasted the money spent printing and mailing the coupons, but they lost a cooked order and a potentially frequent customer. I've said this before on Yelp, but there are easily a dozen pizza alternatives within five miles of my house. Why spend my dollars anywhere that doesn't want me as a customer or treats me like a chump? With Malnatti's literally next door to them - where the pizza is better (their butter crust is easily one of my top five), cheaper, and they treat customers properly (no surprise why they've been in the same location over 40 years), I give this drive-thru Giordano's location no more than a year before it's gone like the last carryout in that spot.