BC Ferries is finding itself in a bit of a public relations pickle.
William Fraser and his family like to visit Vancouver Island and the 12-year-old loves to get a traditional White Spot burger on board.
“Legendary burger, no tomatoes, no cheese, extra pickle and fries with honey mustard for the fries,” William said.
The family was on the Queen of Cowichan on April 6. William ordered his usual, but the kitchen mixed up his order.
“So I opened the burger and I’m just like, ‘OK, well this has happened before. This is kind of annoying,’” William said.
“Like literally the last time I went on the ferry, this happened to me. And so I go back, I asked for some pickles.”
He said the staff apologized and gave him some apology pickles on a plate that he could take back to his table.
“As I’m walking past the cashier, the pay, I didn’t think I had to pay, because it’s just pickles. And they forgot to put pickles on my burger,” William said.
“So I go there, and the person’s like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you need to pay for those. And I’m so confused, because the last time this happened, I didn’t have to pay for the pickles. You shouldn’t have to pay for the pickles if they forgot the pickles on your burger.
“She said nobody gets free pickles on BC Ferries.”
Dad Greg Fraser said he came up to help his son and ended up paying $2.19 for the pickles.
“Mistakes happen,” Fraser said. “Not a problem. And I expected, you know, the outcome would be we’d get the pickle that he was looking for. He didn’t even make a big deal about the tomatoes. He just picked it off the burger. But really, you know, making sure that that first bite tastes the way it needs to.”
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He said there was no discussion or debate and the cashier was really rigid in her stance.
“She literally just kind of stared at me and repeated the fact that nobody gets free pickles,” he added.
“You have to pay for these pickles. And I said, well, we don’t even need the full plate of it. Can we just take a pickle? No, it’s $2.19. And again, it would seem to be common sense, but nobody wants to argue over a pickle.”
Fraser ended up posting about the incident on social media, which exploded with thousands of views and hundreds of comments.
“I think it’s more of a commentary on a greater focus to customer service that they need to do so that they can do better next time,” he said.
Fraser said he did send BC Ferries an email first, explaining the situation, but immediately received an auto response asking him to write a letter and mail it to their Victoria office.
But now he said his inbox has been blowing up with people messaging him from across North America.
“Most people seem to just want to share their experience as a commiseration or feeling like, ‘Hey, I know what you’re going through,’” Fraser said.
“It’s been really surprising. And you know, almost a validation that as a passenger on BC Ferries, people want to be heard about what their experience is and be recognized that it didn’t go well and, you know, maybe they’ll do better next time.”
Fraser said BC Ferries has now reached out about the situation.
Jeff Groot, executive director of communications at BC Ferries, told Global News that it is unfortunate that the family had the situation they did.
“I think BC Ferries has a good place in the culture of British Columbia and White Spot is another one of those companies,” he said.
“We obviously place great value on being able to offer White Spot products on board and the pickles are a core part of the burger experience. And so I’m not surprised that it elicited a reaction that people had some feelings about it.”
Groot said they have reached out to the family to make it right.
“Whenever we have these kinds of questions come up about process and policy, we do follow-ups and make sure that the teams are all aware of standard process and policy and how they should be communicating there,” he said. “And so that’s not unusual for us to follow up in this case. And that’s what we’ve done.”
Groot said there are also many ways to contact BC Ferries, not just by physical mail, and that includes a callback or calling customer service directly.
Fraser said that while this story may seem frivolous, it clearly struck a nerve with people.
“This isn’t about the pickle,” he said.
“You know, it’s about a consistent experience that they’re delivering or rather failing to deliver.”
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