The Wacky Wednesday R10 burger special. Brand fail?
Cape Town -
Fast Food company Steers have been left red-faced after a R10 'Wacky Wednesday'
Rib Burger promotion which consumers have described as a farce.
With no
limit on the number of R10 Rib Burgers per order, and no restriction on phone
orders, Steers stores around the country quickly sold out of stock.
Angry
customers took to Twitter, Facebook and HelloPeter to complain about false
advertising and a time-wasting exercise, with reports of telephonic orders of
160 burgers at a time, and queues stretching around blocks.
According
to social media representatives, many Steers outlets had run out of stock by
mid-morning.
By mid-day
on Wednesday, Steers had issued the following apology on its Facebook page:
"We never intended to mislead anyone - and have had to face some serious
lessons this morning! We're very sorry we can't feed everyone, but hopefully we
can make it up to you in the near future."
"The
demand today has been nothing short of stratospheric. Companies have literally
been ordering 100's at a time, customers 50 at a time, and some stores have had
to bypass the 'no limit per person' and some stores have cancelled phone orders
- it's just been kinda crazy."
An hour
later, under the title of 'Breaking News', Steers announced via Facebook and
Twitter a new R10 special on a different burger variety, but the damage to the
brand's reputation online had already suffered.
Over 100
complaints relating to the R10 special have been posted to reputation website
HelloPeter.com alone.
On Twitter,
#Steers and #Rib Burger have trended for all the wrong reasons, with some South
Africans complaining of "queuing for hours" due to "inadequate
planning by SA's most overpriced burger joint".
Image by: Steers
