KFC Customers Get Fried

Ever wondered what takes to get a crowd of Beijingers really fired up? Seems KFC have found the right formula.

When we read initial reports about “incidents” in certain Chinese KFC branches after the chain refused to honor a promotion deal, it appeared to be a Shanghai-based story. It seems the deal was in fact national, however, and the disturbances took place in several cities, including Beijing.

The Global Times reported this morning: “Customers stormed the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the China World Tower in Beijing on Tuesday evening, flipping chairs and tables and refusing to leave after their coupons were denied, the branch's manager said Wednesday.”

China Daily reported, “Some customers in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai had bitter quarrels with KFC staff, resulting in police rushing to the scene to maintain order.”

For those interested in the nuances of the incident, ChinaSMACK has the best account of what triggered the dispute. Basically is boils down to this: “A coupon that was available online offered KFC’s normal RMB 64 Family Bucket meal for half price (RMB 32). The coupon was valid throughout the country and on Tuesday. Many Shanghai residents printed this coupon and brought it to their local KFC where they were eventually rejected. KFC staff in different stores offered different excuses and handled upset customers differently.”

This same sequence of events played out in several other cities around China.

KFC later stated they halted the promotion due to the appearance of fake coupons on various websites (who could have seen that coming?), but as the ChinaSMACK post points out, “For most people, the important point was not the savings but the principle of KFC not honoring their own promotion and handling customers in a dishonest and inconsistent way.”

The whole thing seems to be a classic example of China's tradition of chronically bad customer relations. Rather than attempting to resolve problems or disputes to customers’ satisfaction, all too often the standard response here is evasion, outright lies or simply pretending the problem doesn’t exist. The Chinese language blog Sinoglot has a post on this issue, following on from the KFC incident.

The heated reaction of consumers is also an indication that locals are increasingly angry about the way they are treated in these kinds of situations – and the fact that they are not longer willing to take things lying down.

It reminds me of an incident I witnessed last year during a "one-hour" stopover in Shanghai during an international flight. My fellow passengers and I were simply abandoned by Air China at a deserted Pudong Airport in the middle of the night, after the onward flight to Beijing was suddenly canceled. Not that we were told it was canceled. The aircrew simply locked up the plane and walked off as we watched from the boarding area. It was only after irate passengers started getting physical with the terminal fixtures that Air China finally bothered to take us to a hotel - three hours later.