If you haven’t heard yet, the news is out that Taco Bell’s “Taco Meat Filling” isn’t 100% beef and there’s a class action lawsuit about it.  The lawsuit claims that this so-called “meat” is actually only 36% beef plus a bunch of other stuff.

So Taco Bell gets upset and decides to launch their own countersuit for false statements (no surprise there of course).

This part of  Taco Bell’s response worries me a bit though: “We start with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture.”

What do you mean you “start with”?  What I want to know is what you end with. Even if it turns out to be 60% or even 70% beef, that’s still a whole lot of filler.

Regardless of the outcome of all of this I can say without a doubt, IN MY OPINION, that Taco Bell’s “ground beef” is not that great, and a good 50% of the time it as returned in the form of diarrhea  an hour or so later (I wish I was kidding).  Thus when I do go I normally get a chicken burrito (please, oh, please, I do hope there isn’t a “chicken” lawsuit in the works…if there is, don’t tell me about it).

But food content & quality aside, I think Taco Bell has two much bigger issues at hand: employee competence & customer service.

At the Taco Bell’s in my area they are consistently slow, out of items (especially in the dual & triple branded stores with Pizza Hut & KFC) & it’s truly a crap shot if they get your order correct, especially in the drive thru.

In regards to customer service, I have put up numerous tweets over the past few years and wrote some blog posts in the past. No response.

Sure, I could take the time to go to their website to file a complaint (which I have before), but it’s not worth it if I have to do it every other time. That means the issues are not being addressed and corrected. I don’t complain to get attention or a $5 gift card. I complain to try to get things fixed because I actually want to be a customer.

If I send out a tweet about McDonald’s I get a response back. If I put up a blog post about an issue I had at Cheeseburger in Paradise, I get an email from them and a call from the district manager.  These guys get it and I wish there were more out there like them.

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