Beltliner: April 2009

What follows herein is the text of a facsimile I transmitted earlier today to Paul House, the executive chairman of TDL Group Corp., the parent company of the Tim Hortons donut chain.

Thank you so much for the astonishing display of ineptitude and indifference to your customers that it was my dubious pleasure to experience today at your Tim Hortons outlet at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary.

My investment of five minutes’ queuing and $4.29 in a box of a half-dozen donuts will be my last at Tim Hortons. Although I must confess to some surprise at the absence from your outlet’s display case of the strawberry jelly donuts on which my wife had set her heart today, what I found particularly galling was the utter lack of interest your outlet’s counter staff demonstrated in identifying an alternative product offering, or even in investigating whether a refreshed supply of said donuts might be in the preparatory stages. Furthermore, when I subsequently informed your outlet’s counter staff that I would, against my better judgement, accept two plain old-fashioned donuts, two Boston Cream donuts, one maple dip donut, and one chocolate glazed donut, I was surprised and nonplussed, to say the least of it, to be offered a box of a half-dozen donuts with none of the selections I had requested. In addition, while I can accept on a conceptual level that Tim Hortons outlets generally and the Tim Hortons outlet at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary particularly might not accept the Visa card that I proffered to complete today’s transaction, I cannot and will not countenance the brusque, unpleasant, and perfunctory tone in which I was informed of this specific tenet of TDL Group Corp.’s company policy. When you compound these events with the domestic disappointment and discord that took place, and with the documentation of these proceedings that was of course the inevitable product of today’s experience, you will surely agree that the negative customer experience and the ultimate consequences of my decision to make a Tim Hortons purchase today far exceed the monetary and gustatory value that might be inherent to a Tim Hortons product.

Please rest assured that I have no intention of ever again darkening the doorways of a Tim Hortons outlet, whether at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary or elsewhere. The experience is simply not worth the time, the money, the strife, or the aggravation.