A friend of mine recently had a baby, and people from our church volunteered for various nights to take them food. My night turned out to be right after a particularly crazy day, so I didn’t have time to make anything (and I’m not that good of a cook anyway).
I decided to send them a couple of pizzas instead, and called Pizza Hut to place the order. I explained that the number I was calling from wasn’t the house to which I needed the food delivered, even expounding on the fact that I was calling to deliver food to someone else and why. I got all the way through the order, gave the operator my credit card number, and then, even after all of my explanations, was told to have that credit card ready when the delivery person arrived.
I again reemphasized that I was delivering to someone else, and that neither I nor my credit card would be at the house to which the pizzas were being delivered. So she transferred me to someone else, who explained that I couldn’t place an order on a credit card that wouldn’t be at the house when the pizzas arrived.
I’m sure there must be a good reason for this. I haven’t called Pizza Hut to find out what it is. But it’s extremely frustrating to call a delivery restaurant and be told I can’t pay for food delivered to a new mom who can barely see straight because she’s not getting any sleep — all because my credit card won’t be there when the delivery person shows up.
Turns out, Papa John’s gave me no problems. And I don’t know about the policies of other pizza chains or delivery restaurants.
I do remember a high school prank in which the prankster called a pizza delivery restaurant acting as someone else, ordered about 20 pizzas, and had them delivered to an unsuspecting victim. I’m sure pizza places lost tons of money over that, and that’s why they began instituting the policy of tracing the number from which people were calling to a house, that way they didn’t get scammed.
But these days, we can place all kinds of orders over the phone with credit cards, so why not pizza?
