File photo: The sign of a Domino's Pizza restaurant is seen in Paris, France, October 27, 2016. (REUTERS/Charles Platiau)
A growing number of Domino’s delivery customers are casting a critical eye at the company’s online pizza-tracking app. More specifically, they think it’s a bunch of crap.
Domino’s originally launched its pizza-tracking technology in 2008, allowing customers to monitor the progress of their pies via an animated status bar on the Domino’s website. “Pizza Tracker will allow customers to know when their order is being prepared, when it's out of the oven, and when it's out the door and on its way. It even includes the first name of the person delivering the order," boasted Domino’s at the time of its release. Furthermore, the company later imported its pizza-tracking technology into their mobile app in 2011.
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In recent months, however, fault-finding app users — or “app truthers,” as The Wall Street Journal calls them — are subscribing to the notion that the Domino’s pizza tracker is nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
One user who spoke with the Journal claims his app told him that “Melinda” would be arriving shortly with his order, but when he opened the door, a delivery man he already knew handed him the pizza.
“Ever since then, I knew everything they said, I felt, was made up,” he said.
Another man claims the tracker told him his pizza was en route, even though he could see the Domino’s restaurant from his house, and there was no sign of the pizza being out for delivery.
Others claim the pizza app told them their food had been delivered when it hadn’t, or that there were huge discrepancies between when their pies were supposed to be delivered and when they actually arrived. A whole thread on Reddit suggests that the app is just an automated timer disguised to look like a real-time tracker.
In a statement obtained by Fox News, Jenny Fouracre-Petko, a spokesman for Domino's, refutes these allegations, and blames any mistakes on "human interaction."
"Pizza Tracker is real and is based on actual store operations," said Fouracre-Petko. "It has been an extremely popular digital interaction with customers and has tracked millions of orders seamlessly for nearly a decade. The issue is that it does require some human interaction and sometimes humans make mistakes. We are sorry about those instances, and we will always work to correct those operational issues. Those instances are notable because they are unusual. The vast majority of the time Pizza Tracker works as designed."
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A person who claimed to be a Domino’s employee also said nearly as much in a 2015 Reddit thread. He/she added that the name of the person preparing the pizza — as far as the app is concerned — is usually the manager. The name of the delivery person is whomever is on the clock, which means the “Melinda” debacle might be explained by employees switching shifts.
Then again, another Reddit user claims to have called his local restaurant to complain about the app’s inaccuracy, only to be told that the tracker “is based on a 30-minute regular schedule and has no connection or direct correlation" to the pizza-making process.
“This is an outrage,” he wrote. “I feel as though I have been duped.
Pizza Hut and Papa John’s, meanwhile, have since released similar apps in the last year, but both spoke to the accuracy and popularity of their respective apps with the Wall Street Journal. Even still, Pizza Hut’s delivery tracker and the Papa John’s “Papa Track” features aren’t without their own skeptics.