ok ...

I'm waiting to hear about this posted on [www.topclassactions.com]

Nobody forced you to stay, to leave, or to cough up money to buy extra crispy instead.

I got to KFC to a long 25 minute wait. It was our day off, and we had nothing else to do, so why the hell not. The staff was friendly, frustrated, and the entire crowd blamed Oprah and everyone had a laugh and were understanding.

When the chicken was finally done and started getting passed out, a resounding "yay" was heard. I think normal people were understanding. Anyone else is a freakin' jerk to think that they are privileged to receive FREE chicken, and then to bitch and moan and ask for MONEY when the restaurants were overwhelmed for, what was it now, SIXTEEN DAYS STRAIGHT, if I recall right? May 1st through the 16th or something like that? For free food?!

C'mon now.

Leave KFC alone, Sue Oprah!
Shes the one who started this promotion...

And she has more money to give.

She went and redeemed the coupon. She got her free meal. 1 of 4 coupons redeemed. I should be more upset. But I am not. She said the chicken was disgusting-- dry on the outside and tough on the inside. Though, the sides-- as always were great.

Seriously? People are suing over some bland grilled chicken? I mean, its not really that good.

They were sold out, give'em a break.

Really now.

I mean, how stupid of a company do you have to be to not realize that "free food" + "recession" = "crazy-high demand"? Each location should have had far more grilled chicken ready for people to try, and on the off chance that a location actually did run out, they should have had a sign up saying what the approximate wait time for a new batch would have been.

It is real chicken though, ever so technically. But they can't take a breast from a barrel and then decide to either batter or grill it - they take a battered, frozen breast from a bag in a freezer and bake it. (The frozen batter thoughtfully includes all the grease you need.) The grilled chicken is microwaved and heatlamped.

The more you know!

That said, any lawsuit here should be between the franchises and corporate over this imposed cost and lost sales that resulted. Customer suits seem a bit frivolous.

@CumaeanSibyl: +1. I've said it before, but it all boils down to the 6P's.

Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

"Yes, they scammed us.
No. Leave KFC alone!"

Where's "They're amateurs who didn't know what they were getting themselves into"
I don't think they actively "scammed" with malice, but their actions did cause some to experience unexpected and undesired costs.

@plustax: The word "fried" isn't in their name anymore.. Thats why they changed their name to KFC. "Fried" drew too many negative health connotations.

Using the lack of chicken as an opportunity to SELL someone some OTHER chicken sure smells like fried bait-and-switch to me...

HOWEVER - without these "ambulance chasers" taking on these cases, your kids would be eating more lead in their toys, you'd still be choking through the secondhand smoke of teenagers while you try enjoying your meal, and your electronics and other purchases would be nowhere near as safe and reliable.

Take away the lawyer "sharks" that serve as a disincentive to Corporations screwing customers and running wild against the general public, and you can bet the Corporate-owned politicians won't save you. Trial lawyers are a necessary protector of our democracy, regardless if you don't end up with your "free chicken meal" in the end.

Boy, I'll bet KFC was really shocked when people turned out to LIKE "free" food in a wrecked economy. Shocking.

More like another example of corporate fraud. They're a big, grown up company. They manage to get their franchises all over the world including within dictatorial regime countries.

And yet they accidentally-on-purpose printed a bunch of newspaper coupons and also promoted this through viral marketing on the web and were "shocked" that people would actually clip the coupon and bring it in? Gimme a friggin' break!

KFC has clearly done a "bait and switch" by setting up this promotion as they did. Hope a jury looks at store-by-store increases in sales during the promotion and decides that KFC benefited by this fraud.

@Daniel Beahn: I'm assuming the fried and grilled chicken are different cuts/seasoned differently/whatever. That's how it is at McD's. Still doesn't excuse them for not stocking up.

@pwillow1: EXACTLY!

I know some people like it, but I just can't stand the chicken there in any form.

Why are you so sure they don't realize that?

I saw an interview with their CEO or Prez, the guy with the Australian accent, and when he was asked about the bad publicity from all the problems they had with the promotion, he *completely* blew it off because, "Now there's not a person in America who doesn't know that KFC has grilled chicken."

Press for the promotion, press for the snafu, it's all very valuable attention. And it sounds like the hoops they made people jump through to get what they were promised are a large enough detriment that a lot won't even bother.

I'm sick of phony lawsuits as much as the next person, but I'd love to see some discovery in this case showing that KFC knew this was going to happen, and they just went ahead with it anyway because they felt the attention would be worth screwing everybody.

Let's sue Oprah instead! She was footing the bill anyway...it might not be the right thing to do but who cares...it's Oprah, her fatass can afford it.

If you are going to let everyone in america print out, you need to honor it. Hell after stores were already denying the coupons you could still print the coupon.

This is about issuing coupons and honoring them. I fail to see how anyone could be opposed to it.

But, still, I might dislike her a little.

We should just move to a loser-pays system like they have in the UK. That would get rid of some of these frivolous lawsuits and make these assholes pay for them.

Well if that's the case... Walmart owes me a lot of money. How many times have I went to buy milk and come out of there with excercise equipment, popcorn poppers, DVD's I'll never watch, and tampons! Too many I tell you... TOO DAMN MANY!

Because they don't care. And when you don't care and you therefore inconvenience others, you need to be made to pay.

"It's because of people who take advantage of the system and ruin it for everyone."

Nevermind that she had photocopied her coupon 15 times.

Technically, consumers who spent time and money and energy driving to stores for the sucker-punch promotion should be compensated gas money too, therefore, lawsuit warranted. Not that they'll get that out of the lawsuit. That's a whole nother topic.

KFC, Do your damn job, plan the promotion right and make sure you are ready before wasting everyone's time with "Sorry, we are a chicken business and we are out of chicken, have a nice day". Retardiculous, and they deserve to be a laughing stock and ridiculed for it.

Stop doing things Colonel Sanders would be ashamed of and want to beat you with his cane for, or stop showing his picture everywhere.

Oprah should sue them too for any damage to her reputation out of it.

Wow close. I do not for a minute believe that this was an intentional scam. Ill concieved to be sure but save the CA suits for something important

Ridiculous.

I admit that I was a glutton, and don't expect the free coupon to be mailed. But overall, I was really happy by the promo after I got the coupons to print (which was a nightmare, especially on my Mac).

I'm sorry for all those that didn't get hot, juicy, fresh chicken and sides. Our NYC 14th Street store has been consistently good.

@sanjsrik: mmmmmmmmm...zombie chickens.

I guess if there are still people that haven't gotten their chicken, that is a different story. I was lead to believe they would fulfill their agreement before the promotion was over.

I went down with my coupon and was turned away. They I had to go back and get a form. Then fill out the form and wait for a new coupon. So what should have been "go down for my free meal" turned into "make 3 separate trips to KFC to only get free food on the third trip".

I'm sure lots and lots of people made purchases there when they were expecting to be able to use their coupon. Seems like there was still plenty of fried chicken, so why wasn't that chicken grilled instead? Hmmmmmmm.

In the end, it became too much work and I never got my free chicken.

@Saboth: Everyone eventually got their free chicken.

Nope - never got my chicken. So, not everyone did.

This is an example of how a promotion can go very well and be done right.

A company that doesn't know that people will actually want free stuff is... a very moronic company (and probably not a company that I want to do business with). Someone up in marketing doesn't know what they are doing.

Of course this is only fast food so its very trivial in the general scheme of things. I personally don't even eat fast food unless its a very big emergency that I have not planned for. If it was a company that myself or my company that I work for was doing big business with and they did a promotion similar to this and were completely unprepared, I might reconsider where I take my business.

It's not about somebody not getting free chicken, it's about a Corporations lack of regard for the law and advertising anything they dam well please. The whole franchises not honoring parent corporations advertisements is getting out of hand and does need to get reigned in.

This is probably an appropriate suit at an appropriate time. Might help the overall franchises business.

Not cool.

Over the years, I have received dozens of notifications asking me to join one or another class action lawsuit, usually for products I have purchased years before, and I have always refused because I don't want to unjustly enrich lawyers in this form of legal extortion.

Oh and "cost incurred from travel" ? Uhm.. what? KFC is responsible for the costs of their customers driving to KFC?

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

@ezacharyk: Same here, more or less. If you got there early enough, you got your free chicken.

Whether you enjoyed it or not (I didn't) is another matter entirely.

@CumaeanSibyl: They should also learn about this thing called the "Internets". You put out a free offer and everybody finds out about it! There were Pakistanis angry because they couldn't get free chicken in Islamabad.

Oh, and Cloud Computing. Companies that do this online should learn about using the cloud to handle these deals.

@Cruc: +1

I think they more than made up for it by offering extended coupons to those that weren't able to get their meal.

I just received my chicken coupon in the mail this morning. The problem is I never signed up for one as I don't eat chicken. I have a feeling a greedy friend will be following up with me about it in the near future though.

IT'S FREE STUFF. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL WANT IT. I mean, if they don't want it, you should really start worrying, because obviously your product is horrible.

If you're going to have a giveaway, here's what you need:

1) Backup servers for your backup servers
2) A supply of the free thing that's at least ten times what you think you need
3) All the employees you can fit into your stores

And you're still going to get slammed, but at least you'll be halfway prepared, unlike all these flaming morons.

I don't think it was purposeful at the store level, but if corporate didn't inform and prepare their individual stores, I can see where some might consider it fraud. Shame people are wasting their time with this suit, though.

Maybe health care reform activists just need to give away more free greasy food...

I tried the grilled chicked a few days after it came out and I was not impressed. It was dry and didn't taste like good ole grilled chicken. The word fried is in their name for a reason folks.

But what really annoyed me was I had a hankering for some original recipe chicken that afternoon and had to wait in a very long line of people who were seriously pissed when they were told they could not use their coupons to get the dried out grilled chicken. The whole thing was a bad idea and probably did not create new customers but rather brought out the worst in people looking for a free meal.

@Saboth: Actually, they haven't sent out the promised meal coupons yet, so they haven't held up their end of the deal.

The cost of printing the coupon was marginal and not worth getting upset about.

I was also pleased as I was able to get a breast since they ran out of thighs when I got there.

The only thing that I was upset over was the fact that the grilled chicken was underwhelming.

Welcome to Entitlement America; someone wants to get paid because they didn't receive something for free.

@frank64:

What a waist of outrage!

Hey! Is that a fat joke?