To think this is terrible service at a restaurant?

Some chain pub/restaurants or Nando's etc often require payment at the point of ordering. I don't see that OP is telling porkies, just was over it by the time you resurrected the thread. Not quite a zombie thread, but no longer current.

Yeah...bit of porkie telling going down methinks

Of course I can..however this thread was 10 days old when Iasked this particular question.. let's go back to it. Why would you pay for a meal in a restaurant before finishing...is someone telling porkies? Were you in McDonald's? 🤣🤣🤣

I’m so confused, didn’t you start this thread last week?

Something similar happened to DH and me a while back, at a good restaurant in our nearest city.

On our second visit we had booked a table for two and they seated us at a table for four. During our first course a staff member came up and moved us to a table for two. No compensation offered. Incredibly, the same thing happened two visits later.

After that we never went back. I was not at all sorry when the place went out of business shortly afterwards.

We were stretched too thin at the time to complain. The whole thing is sad because the place was otherwise excellent.

Why would you have paid before finishing? Did you pay up front?

Oh, I didn't realised you'd paid upfront. Must read thread again (properly this time)

With an apology and some offer of compensation fine, bit if rude then wouldn't be happy. Going out for a meal is quite rare for many people ao service is important.

At the Ivy busy chatting and eating our way through a huge shared bowl of delicious courgette fries as a starter. Suddenly the waiter appears, looking anxious, apologises, apparently our mains order hadn’t gone through the system which was why it was delayed, but was on the way and would be there in minutes ! We hadn’t even noticed 🙂 Free cocktails and they took the price of one of the meals off the bill. As Mr Punch says “That’s the way to do it.”

Yes exactly, most people are appeased quite easily when they feel heard. This does sound like some customer service training is in order. Always the odd one who will kick off regardless but if you get it right most of the time the good reviews and reputation speak for themselves. I actually left them a good review citing the manager by name and how good she was. I think I’ve only ever left one bad review in my life and that was after weeks of trying to resolve an issue and being completely ignored via several communication channels including social media! Just wanted a replacement for a faulty item, it wasn’t like I was asking the earth 😂

@Sophabulous and you were also probably less likely to leave a bad review? I had an awful dish served to me once, it was literally a soggy, watery pizza base which was turning to mush. The waitress got the manager who apologised, asked me what I wanted instead. I said not another pizza as I’d been put off and asked could I just have chips. She brought me the biggest plate of chips I’ve ever seen (was only on the menu as a side) and didn’t charge for the pizza or the chips. Without her doing that I probably would have left a bad review but she handled it well.

This is exactly it, I’ve done hospitality work (kitchen and waiting on) before uni and it’s not easy but it’s also not that difficult to resolve an issue with the right attitude.

I had a terrible experience in Feb when I took my mum out to The Alchemist before we were going to see a show. They kept us waiting a fair while for the table, messed up and remade a cocktail 3 times, we ordered the same meal and hers was ok but mine was stone cold and had obviously been sat out. The wait staff kept taking drinks before we had finished them, not asking if we wanted another or returning when I tried to say I wasn’t done with that. We weren’t checked on once our food arrived. Eventually managed to flag down a waitress and explained and my food was genuinely untouched while Mum had nearly finished hers. She said they’d remake it but there wasn’t enough time after all the delays.

I just wanted them to take my meal off the bill as it hadn’t been eaten, they sent over the general manager who explained they’d had call-outs and a lot of staff were new and still in training. She comped the entire meal and drinks “in the hopes that we will come back on a better day and have a good experience” and apologised sincerely. Acknowledged it was a catalogue of errors. And I will go back there because she handled it beautifully and I genuinely didn’t expect that nor for the entire thing to be free.

By that token then (and admittedly extrapolating) if I threaten to punch someone in the face but then don't actually then no harm done? Words have meaning and effect.

But then Hawksmoor is a class joint. Expensive, but classy.
(I know there's more than one of them.)

It’s awful customer service, if course they should have either found you another table whilst apologising and maybe a free drink or found another table for the people who had reserved yours. They could have told the people who reserved it that there was a slight delay and given them a free drink while they waited. If you were already eating then it’s likely they wouldn’t have had that long of a wait. Eating out is expensive and you deserve good service.

When they initially asked you to move I would have just said: “no”.

Both the gastro-pub (waitress service, wait to be seated) I worked in, the manager would have absolutely murdered us for asking a customer to move once we'd seated them, in that fashion.

The appropriate approach would be to apologise profusely for the error - offer another table thats already been secured and cleaned - comp a glass of something nice or a dessert in apology for the mix up.

Thats what you do to get people on side and keep them coming back.

Ordering them off the table with no apology is the way to lose customers.

You must have more money than sense (or taste) if you think that's acceptable. I bet shit restaurant staff love people like you.

No thats not acceptable

Well, you will never give them your custom again I should think?

You’re not being unreasonable. They seated you, they served you, so you shouldn’t have been asked to move. That’s just bad management...