Rotten Chicken from ChicKing – a Techie’s Complaint

TechnoparkToday.com >> We’ve got a mail from a techie working in technopark, about his unfortunate experience with one of the popular food chains. Lots of brands are coming in our city, but do they really care about their customers, or just thinking only about their profits ? we are publishing it here, to make everyone aware about some of the bad practices happening with big brands,  and your rights to question it, if you found anything faulty.

>>On 22/JUN/2012, I visited chicking Trivandrum (Vazhuthakkad Branch) with my wife and 8 year old kid. We ordered for two plates of royal snacks (2 pcs fried chicken each), three golden wraps, frenfries and a plate of nuggets. When we got served, and while started eating the wrap, I felt foul smell from somewhere. At first I thought, may‌ be it was due to the smell from nuggets (which from a distance I am felt bad ) and I tucked the plate aside. Later, when I started eating the fried chicken, I got that smell from the piece I was eating then. When I removed the top layer of fried batter, the meat was “STINKING”. In order to keep my family cool, I just said, I didn’t like the taste (may be its my fault. How can a brand like Chicking serve a rotten chicken). By then, my kid and wife had almost completed the chicken. Though it was late, when I checked their pieces they were good.

Then I called a standby serving boy and told him that the chicken is rotten and stinking. He immediately took that away and came back and served another and his supervisor apologized and stated that the chicken indeed was “Rotten”.  Not only that piece, there were several other pieces in their which had the kind of issue! I enquired from where they get the supply of chicken, they said from Vaikkom. I asked how they are going to manage the rotten pieces, he was clueless. Since all the pieces were batter coated and ready to fry (or already fried) mixed with other pieces, there were lot of other unfortunate customers who suffered the same fate or many other to suffer.

My ref no : IN2212013294,IN2212013315(WHICH THEY MARKED “TAKE AWAY” though we took the meal in the shop itself).  Though they deducted the price for the chicken in full, we insisted that we pay for what we consumed. I have my credit card payment reference as well.

Since I didn’t have enough time to make a voice out there to inform other customers, I did that injustice of silent walk away.

When I checked ChicKing Website, there is no way to send a customer complaint. The phone numbers provided in the site were unresponsive. I sent a complaint to the Commissioner of Food Safety, Kerala State and though couple of follow-ups happened for the same, the status is still unknown.

Later, when I found a page in Facebook for Chicking and its MD, I sent the complaint as a message. I got a call from Chicking head office, Dubai and they apologized for the inconvenience and said their MD instructed then to call me and do that.  They said, they are taking actions on the same.  Again I got another call from their operations head in Cochin and he confirmed there were issues of food contamination and they are action on it.  They also sent a personal message and conveyed that he is taking actions on it.

The so called “actions” are still unknown to me.  It is pathetic that, a food chain which has hundreds of outlets all over India and in more than 14 countries, doesn’t have any quality assurance mechanism or incident management mechanism (in case of food contamination) to assure good and healthy food to its customers.

I don’t say Fried Chicken/Broasted Chicken itself is healthy.  Now, with this incident, it is much worse. Before when I saw hoax emails abusing McDonald and KFC fried chicken, I never imagined that I will face such a real situation of eating a rotten piece of chicken.

Sethunath. U

Technopark

 

Update:

This techie registered a complaint with the food safety office in trivandrum, Kerala. and he’s got a positive reply from the authorities, and here is the content of the mail.

On Jul 4

Dear Sir,
As per your G-mail Complaint on 23/06/2012, the Squad inspected the “Chicking” on 25/06/2012. Notice has already been issued for rectifying the defects noted at the time of inspection. On the basis of your complaint, two samples have been taken for analysis. Further action in this regard will be taken on receipt of report on analysis. The Squad also inspected Godown of the “Chicking”, behind Taj Hotal at Vazhuthacaud. Approximately 60 Kg. of Chicken mixed with masala kept for Fried Chicken found unfit for human consumption have been destroyed. Necessary instruction have already been given,

Thank you for your complaint.

Yours faithfully,
Sd/-
CHIEF FOOD SAFETY OFFICER,
MVS, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM.