Josh P.
Yelp
I would give the Hillside location zero stars, if possible.
I placed a fundraiser order with the Hillside location on April 29, with a pickup date of May 8. In the email confirming my fundraiser order, it said someone would contact me from the location within 48 hours to confirm and finalize my order.
Fast forward to yesterday (May 7), and I hadn't heard from the location. I didn't know if they had my order, or even how much I owed them for my order. I attempted to call them approximately 20 times and didn't get through to a person once. At that point, I tried calling the Elk Grove Village location, just hoping to speak with someone and maybe get some information. I tried calling there 3-4 times, with no luck either.
I left work yesterday at 4pm and decided that I absolutely needed to get some information from this store. I needed to know if there were going to be doughnuts to pick up, because I have people that sold doughnuts to answer to, and how much our order was going to cost so that I could get a check from the bookkeeper. At that point, the only thing that I could think to do was to drive to the location, since they are supposed to be open until 10pm (according to the Krispy Kreme website and Google). I live 103 miles (one way) from this location.
When I arrived at the Hillside location, there was a sign on the door that said that they were under special hours and that that location closed at 4pm.
From there, the only thing that I could think to do was call the Elk Grove Village location again, and hopefully speak with a manager. I was able to get in contact with a manager at that location and he said that he would reach out to the regional manager, and that I should call back if I didn't hear back within a couple of hours. While I was sitting in the parking lot making this call, there were several cars lined up in the drive thru lane, waiting to be helped, not knowing the store was closed. There were also several people that walked up to the door, as well. So the location was pretty busy, considering they had been closed for almost a couple of hours at that point.
I drove home and didn't hear back, so I called the Elk Grove Village location again and spoke with the same manager. He said that he'd make a couple more calls and would call me back, either way. After a few minutes, he called back and said that he reached out to the regional manager and assistant regional manager but couldn't get in touch with either, and that my best bet would be to try to call the Hillside location again when they open in the morning. This person was super helpful and I appreciate their time and effort.
I woke up this morning when the location opened and started calling again. I put in 20 unanswered calls to this location this morning. In a last ditch effort, I called Elk Grove Village back, hoping to speak with a manager again. I spoke with a different manager this time. Their first suggestion was that I visit the location to speak to them. After explaining the whole situation to them, they agreed that that probably wasn't feasible at this point. They said that their location could fulfill our order, but it wouldn't be ready until the early afternoon, which didn't work for our work schedule. I straight up asked this manager if I should go to this location, expecting to pick up our order, without speaking with someone and they said "no." This manager also gave me a phone number for a customer service line, which I called after this conversation. This manager was also extremely helpful.
I then called the customer service number and explained this whole situation to the representative on the phone. They said they would forward this information on to the upper management of this region and that someone would probably be contacting me. As of this review, I'm still waiting to hear back from somebody.
We've done this fundraiser multiple years now and it has typically run really smoothly. We also typically do really well with this fundraiser because Krispy Kreme is not local for us. After my experience this year, I will be thinking long and hard about whether or not we use Krispy Kreme again. If we do, it certainly won't be the Hillside location.