Original Vadai apologises for late delivery, manager's messages 'may not have been totally professional'
The boss has apologised on TikTok.
The Original Vadai director Stephen Suriyah took to the video platform on March 13 to respond to a March 12 Stomp article about a customer's unhappy experience with Original Vadai.
"There's always two sides of a story," said Mr Suriyah in the 23-second video. "You see my vadai. On one side, you got the prawn. On the other side, without the prawn."
The customer had ordered $200 worth of food for 25 guests at a product launch on Feb 25 and asked for the food to be delivered before 3pm, but it was late.
As 3pm approached, the customer tried calling the company several times.
"When the call finally got through, the lady who took my call just kept stressing she was on her break," recounted the customer.
After the customer complained about the "rubbish service", Original Vadai messaged that the delivery person was from Lalamove.
"She's not even our staff," said Original Vadai.
The customer told Stomp: "Thanks to Original Vadai, my VIPs left without food."
In the video, Mr Suriyah said: "I truly apologise. It was our sincere mistake. Sorry that your VIP guests couldn't enjoy our delicious vadai.
"It has been very challenging this whole month, finding drivers to send out all this delivery items. We don't have our own drivers as of now. We are using those third-party platforms to send these delivery orders. These are the challenges we have right now. So that caused the delay."
He added that Original Vadai even paid a priority fee for the delivery to no avail.
"We actually paid $32.50 for this particular delivery to be sent out. Customer paid $16. We topped up $16.50 extra to get this delivered as soon as possible, but we still reached 20 minutes late." said Mr Suriyah.
"As for the messages by my manager... the messages she sent may not have been totally professional. I also apologise for that.
"So sometimes lapse like this happens and that's when we do service recovery. We actually did service recovery for this customer.
"We actually offered to waive off the delivery fee that she paid. My manager was also apologetic.
"Actually,. I have messages of this, but I don't want to post this and that, you know, create another scene because it's Ramadan, guys. It's fasting month. We want to run our business peacefully and we also want peace in the heart of our customer."
Asked about the waiver of the delivery charge, the customer replied sarcastically: "Wow, what generosity."
Towards the end of the video, Mr Suriyah added that he did not believe Stomp reached out to The Original Vadai for more info.
Stomp had written an email to support@theoriginalvadai.sg on Feb 26 and completed the form on the "contact us" page of The Original Vadai website as well.
Stomp did not receive a response.
At the end of the video, The Original Vadai also posted text that read: "Dear valued customer, we sincerely apologise if you have experienced delays in receiving your delivery orders during this peak season of Ramadan. We understand the importance of timely service and deeply regret any inconvenience caused."
It should be noted the customer's order was for Feb 25, which was a few days before Ramadan.
