Dominos Pizza -- avoid Bad Andy and bring back the Noid!
Written: Jun 06 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of on-line ordering, hot pizza delivered as ordered, great taste.
Cons: Stupid and annoying commercials.
The Bottom Line: On-line ordering done right, pizza delivered hot and fresh and is an excellent value. I'd definitely recommend Dominos Pizza.
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| poseidon's Full Review: Domino's Pizza |
There I was, home again at dinnertime and starving. The cravings began…
You see, every so often my body starts screaming for a certain kind of food. Sometimes it is Chinese, most of the time it is Italian, and the rest of the time it is pizza (which I classify as American, not Italian). If I were to hazard a guess, I’d assume that many of us suffer from similar cravings. I tend to follow mine.
My normal routine when it comes to ordering pizza is to check out the various pizza deals around town and pick the best. That usually involves my scanning for Blackjack Pizza (reviewed on August 15, 2000), Pizza Hut (reviewed on July 21, 2000), Papa John (reviewed on May 16, 2000) and Dominos.
For some reason, it’s been years since Dominos has been in the ballpark when it came to low price. Most of the time, they had been up there in price with Pizza Hut. The few times their coupons brought down the price of pizza was when you could get a smaller pizza with one topping, or I’d get some deal on wings, cheese sticks, etc. that I really didn’t want. So, needless to say, it’s been probably three or four years since I’ve had a pizza from Dominos.
I stumbled upon what I considered to be a good deal. It wasn’t the best deal around (Blackjack still had them beat by two bucks), but it was low enough where I could give them a chance. The coupon that captivated my saliva glands was $10.99 for a three-topping large pizza.
Order On-Line
Dominos web address is http://www.dominos.com. As I was looking for the location closest to me, the little button screamed out from my screen. It said, order on-line.
Now, for those of you who have been reading my articles for a long time, you may recall my Papa John pizza review. In that, I explained the horror story of my experience with on-line ordering of pizza. It was a disaster. What was worse is that it happened the only two times that I used the service, so it wasn’t a hit-and-miss situation.
But there I sat, staring at my screen, and started contemplating the notion of ordering on-line. It seriously took me about five minutes before I decided to give Dominos a chance and I clicked on that little order on-line button.
My experience when calling Dominos just to find out what their specials are meant a guaranteed wait on the telephone, sometimes up to five minutes, listening to their annoying commercial stating Bad Andy, Good Pizza. I much preferred Avoid the Noid when I was in college. However, I digress…
As I was saying, I clicked the order on-line button. It then took me to a user profile page and asked me to fill out some very basic information: my name, address and telephone number. There was a space for special instructions, such as if my place would be hard to find, etc. I then had to give them a user name and a password.
Then, it took me right to the menu for the store that would be handling my address. The neat thing about this was that not only did I get to look at the advertised specials, but I also could view the my-store-only specials. This gave me an additional three choices that didn’t really affect my order, but was nice to see.
With the menu, I was given a choice of crusts: hand-tossed, thin and pan. I went ahead and chose pan. I then got to view all the various toppings.
This is where it became impressive. Unlike Papa John, I could dictate to Dominos my topping preference. I could tell Dominos if I wanted a certain topping on the entire pizza, or just half the pizza. If you are ordering more than one topping, you can dictate which half of the pizza you want the toppings on. So, as an example, let’s say that I want on my half of the pizza mushrooms, pepperoni and pineapple. However, I’ve got a friend over who doesn’t like pineapple but prefers anchovies (ewwww). Let’s say that I don’t want them on my half of the pizza, because in my opinion, eating an anchovy is like licking your armpit on a hot, muggy day.
My order would look like this:
Pan crust
Mushroom (whole pizza)
Pepperoni (whole pizza)
Pineapple (half-pizza, left side)
Anchovies (half-pizza, right side)
The pizza would come exactly like that. No confusion, no accidents with putting the wrong topping on the wrong side. No nasty anchovies on my pizza. Everyone is happy!
Then, the menu gives me a choice of every side order that is available. I simply mark off which items I want, and if I don’t want any, I don’t mark any. The same thing goes for drinks.
The next choice is method of payment. You can choose either a check or cash (they only take credit cards for pick-up, not delivery). When you choose to pay by check, the computer tells you that it will cost an additional $0.20. However, my location apparently doesn’t charge the surcharge, so it was zeroed back out of the total.
The final choice is to tell the computer when and how you want to get your pizza. You have the choice between pick-up and delivery. You can then choose a time to have the pizza cooked, or the default is to make it and get it ready as soon as possible.
The computer then tells you what your order total is, and then submits your order to your store location. A window pops up and tells you when your pizza was ordered and the approximate delivery time. Mine said twenty to forty minutes, and if I had a problem, it gave me the direct number to my store location.
Delivery
For those of you who have read my Papa John article, you know how annoyed, aggravated and disappointed I was with the delivery. They promised me a short time and it took well over an hour to deliver my pizza. I was, needless to say, expecting the same service from this on-line ordering experience.
However, in exactly 38 minutes my doorbell rang and there was a smiling deliveryman who handed me my pizza in exchange for a check (and of course, some cash for a tip).
My pizza was piping hot. Apparently that special heater in the delivery bag did as the Bad Andy, Good Pizza commercials promised.
Taste and Value
YUM! I didn’t see where Dominos skimped on the toppings. The one thing I’ll knock Blackjack Pizza for is that most of the time, they don’t give you any more topping than is absolutely necessary. However, Dominos gave me a ton of mushrooms, pepperoni and pineapple. The pizza was doused with cheese. The crust was light and flaky. Sometimes pan crusts can come out a bit burnt or overly buttered. This was not the case. I would state that as far as pan crust pizza goes, this is about as good as it gets.
The pizza was delicious. In a most gluttonous fashion and showing a total disregard for manners or my stomach’s well-being, I managed to put away the entire pizza in one sitting. Usually I have enough left over for lunch or (blush) breakfast the next day. I was enjoying the pizza so much (and eating in front of the television – big mistake when you’re eating and not planning to eat the entire pizza, box of Oreos, bag of chips, etc.) that I wasn’t interested in saving any for the following day.
I also don’t think that $10.99 for a large three-topping pizza is a bad value at all. While it is a few bucks more than I would normally pay, the quality is there and I definitely think I get a lot of bang for my buck.
Final Recommendations
Finally! A pizza-joint that gets on-line ordering right! That’s worth its weight in gold. The food is good, I was impressed with the promptness, and it was delivered hot and fresh. I definitely recommend Dominos Pizza and will be using them more often.
Now, if Dominos can just bring back the funny Noid and get rid of that annoying Bad Andy, I will be thrilled.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
poseidon
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 - Top 200 |
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Member: Jeffrey Schwartz
Location: Sunrise, FL, USA
Reviews written: 511
Trusted by: 1098 members
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