WIBU to be annoyed in this cafe?

[Hoppinggreen]

Went for lunch today at a local cafe. I was paying as a treat for my friend. Bill was about £30.
When I went to pay the person on the till made a mistake and over charged me by £10. It was actually a lot more complicated as she mixed up my bill with someone else then tried to add on someone’s takeaway but that was basically it.
After a lot of discussion between 2 staff members they said the only thing they could do was refund and charge me again. No problem I said.
So they did the refund and I said it hadn’t appeared back on my banking app to be told that I had to wait up to 10 days to get it. I was then expected to pay again.
I (calmly) said that I wasn’t happy about that as I would have paid £70 for a £30 lunch until the refund arrived. I was told there was no other alternative. I said again that I didn’t think this was reasonable. The staff member who made the mistake kept apologising and I said that it was a simple mistake and everyone made them so she really didn’t need to be upset about it. The other staff member said that I just needed to pay again and if I hadn’t received it in 10 days to call in.
There was a queue at this point so I said fine but I wasn’t happy about it. The staff member then told me that I had “upset” her colleague and was very short with me. I said again that I didn’t blame her for a simple mistake, it was the lack of resolution I was annoyed at. I did not raise my voice at any point and was very calm and measured. We left and I could hear the staff member telling her colleague she could come out now (she had vanished into the back as apparently she was too upset to deal with me) since I had gone. I left feeling as if I had done something wrong, honestly happy to be told I did
Was I unreasonable being annoyed at this? It won’t cause me any issue financially but I’m a bit miffed at being £40 out of pocket due to their mistake for up to 10 days. It might come earlier I know

According to you, an awful lot of the contributors to this thread are hermits in caves, then.

Businesses fail because making stupid mistakes and expecting the customer to suffer the consequences results in that customer not coming back again, spreading word amongst their friends about how crap the business is, and writing poor reviews. Businesses succeed where, even when they make a mistake, the customer can see that they have put it right quickly and efficiently without penalising the customer. Customer goes away feeling good, spreads the word, leaves a good review, business is able to use that good review in advertising and generate more business. It's basic good business practice which even hermits in caves can work out.

YANBU. There are lots of ways to work around their mistake without leaving you out of pocket.

The easiest one is for them to “cash off” your table on the till with the higher amount they charged you (they enter you’ve paid £40 paid for £30 bill = the till tells them to give you £10 change). They could’ve then given you a tenner out the till so their till still balanced but you were not charged again and then waiting to get refunded. The shift manager should’ve stepped in and done this, it’s a simple solution to an issue like this (seriously happens all the time).

if it was a card only cafe, the situation gets difficult.

I used to work in hospitality for years. Would never have made you pay twice.

It's reasonable to blame the cafe for not having anything in place to help their customer get round the delay. Like, um, refunding in cash or in kind.

In which case you are accepting that the café could put in place a system to ensure that it is they who suffer the consequences of delay, not the customer.

No, as the responses of other posters have demonstrated, it is you who are either not expressing yourself clearly or backtracking on what you have said. And, in this particular case, you have made so little effort to explain yourself that you have ended up with gibberish.

This 💯
I'm guessing all these angry 'it should have been sorted instantly' comments are written by someone who hasn't worked in retail/IT/auditing/a bank ... 🤷‍♀️
I also wonder how many of the angry people are the ones who want a cashless society ... this is what will happen much more when we are totally reliant on computers 🤔

They admitted a £10 overcharge. OP has not received any refund, so they have not refunded anything.

This is a discussion forum, not a banking symposium, and it is you who has admitted more than once to failing to convey what you intended to say.

I think you'll find they're made by people who have both worked in businesses which have set up sensible systems, or who are the customers of such businesses. They really do exist, you know. And it is people who set up computer systems and who can set them up to offer a customer-focussed service.

@Blossomtoes if people pay cash they get a cash refund and it can be done there and then.

Most people who pay card, their transaction is done through a 3rd party website (sorry I'm not going to disclose what/where i work as i deliberately keep my account here anonymous). The customer will have to tick a box agreeing to their T&Cs which includes their refund policy. Refunds are simple for me and my colleagues to process, but the 3rd party website takes up to 30 days. It's frustrating for both customer and staff.

I don't think that at all judging by the majority of the comments, most people sound completely clueless. Also, this is a Cafe which probably didn't have a budget for a fancy system or didn't work out all the scenarios. There may have been a better way but the waitress did what she could under pressure and probably didn't think through the right option. I'm sure we've all made mistakes at work too.

There was a supervisor right next to her who also seems to have been utterly clueless. Sure, it may be a café that, for whatever reason, put in place a crap system and didn't bother to train its staff. On that basis, this isn't likely to be a problem for long as customers won't be coming back.

They probably both needed training
When I used to work retail years ago the young teens (me and others) were more clued up than the older supervisors (ironically probably my age now!). Those days they were fancier tills, I guess pretty basic systems to what we have now. I'm sure everything is more complicated, and people are even more clueless. From what I've seen often anyway. It just doesn't surprise me at all so I wouldn't be getting all stressed and angry about it 🙃

So you didn't check your bill, because you were busy 'talking to your friend', you paid it, then questioned it, and they have said they will refund you. What exactly are you bitching abut?

So £30 or £70?

And of course they can't just give you a tenner out of the till. The person operating it would be done for theft.

Why would they give you a tenner if the difference is £30?

You’re wrong. I have worked in the sector and of course it could have been sorted out instantly.

• Firstly, by the staff member not making the mistake in the first place.
• Secondly by the supervisor actually using their brain so OP didn’t have to drop £70 on a £30 meal (yes, she is getting the money back but that’s beside the point when it’s a week away).
• Thirdly, the supervisor not telling OP off for the mistake of their staff member who’s ran off to cry out the back. This is instead of them just apologising, stepping aside and continuing on with their job as soon as their manager took over. Ie meaning the queue wasn’t half way down the street and pissing everyone else off in the meantime.
• And finally, a receipt should have been given to OP regardless for her refund incase there were any issues.

Mistakes happen but OP shouldn’t be bearing the brunt of a shit POS system/an undertrained manager/an undertrained cashier. When you have new staff you have eyes and ears on them. Doesn’t matter what level they’re at. And if you’re in management, you should be ringing for help from your manager if you don’t know how to fix an issue correctly. Not making a hash of it, telling OP off and making her wait 10 days for her money.

That’s just lazy. When you’re on shift, you run your shift properly. You don’t fuck off your customers and take two payments (regardless of refund) when your customer didn’t buy two table’s worth of food!

Sure and OP could've checked her receipt before paying, and also not not paid the extra (I wouldn't have done this, unless they explained properly why it was necessary and it possibly wasn't), and I would have also taken a receipt myself. Obviously not the OPs fault, but lots of things could've happened differently. They're just people who have a low paid, thankless job so there's no need for everyone to be so outraged that's all. And yes, they should've handled it better, I'm sure the person felt terrible about it afterwards, maybe she was new. Mistakes happen.

Yes, she “should” have checked. But I can see exactly why she ran out of there without taking a receipt- are people missing the part where the supervisor scolded her? Totally inappropriate.

Mistakes happen but you can’t just put this onto a customer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cafe or, I don’t know, buying a Ferrari; could you imagine saying to someone “oh I’m sorry I charged you £150000 for that car but it’s actually £125000, I’ll refund you but you have to pay again and be out £275000 until 10 days has passed and then £150,000 will be back in your account. Sorry! I mean you can afford a Ferrari so you’ll be fine, right?”

I mean in that scenario you obviously aren’t going to hand over cash. But you’d issue a refund of £25,000 and do some sort of good will gesture to apologise for your mistake, and sort it out properly later with your manager/audit team/accountants. You wouldn’t have business if you made your customer pay twice and wait.

At the end of the day, the cafe lost custom today. OP and her friend, and probably a few folk in the queue who saw what happened and were fed up. Times are tough for everyone right now; no one is going to want to eat somewhere that won’t sort a refund out without doing it the most arse-about-face way that impacts me entirely and no one else, for someone else’s mistake.

Was I unreasonable being annoyed at this? It won’t cause me any issue financially but I’m a bit miffed at being £40 out of pocket due to their mistake for up to 10 days. It might come earlier I know
YABU it’s not going to cause you any issue so what is the point in being miffed about it? You should have checked the bill before you paid it. The waitress made an error but ultimately the onus is on you to check the amount on the display before you enter your pin or tap your card. It doesn’t matter about what if it was her last £40/£30 because that’s not the scenario we’re dealing with here.

Settle down, such an extreme reaction, I'm sure OP wouldn't go back and fair enough if they were rude to her, I wouldn't either.

If it was a nice place, I'd go back, I'm sure they've learnt what to do for next time and given it was a mistake in the first place it's unlikely to happen again. I'm sure the people in the queue didn't care hardly like they're going to boycott the place! 🙄🤣

I can assure you 30 years ago we had EPOS systems, it was the 90’s not the 70’s!

@Onnabugeisha what some of us find baffling is that ‘computer says no’ was taken so willingly by the staff. Perhaps those of us that grew up without electronics in charge (although JLP certainly had them by the 90’s) expect the pension to take control and not be quite so passive and defeatist. How if OP had gone overdrawn were they going to deal with it? Accepting the til is the boss is baffling to me.

*person

Given the fact that that's not this situation that I've commented on, the OP said money wasn't an issue it was just an inconvenience. Had the OP have said she had no more money in her account then its a no brainer that she couldn't have paid again but she would have surely told them this before they refunded and wanted to take the money again. Because everyone knows a refund takes a few days, it's not instant.

This thread descended into chaos! It's very very possible to rectify this on the spot and fix the banking records. My god why comment if you have zero experience in this.this is funny as fook

Yep. This hermit wrote a damning review on a local cafe with a snotty owner (terrible service, overpriced and a "computer says no" attitude) turns out a lot of people agreed and did the same.
Snotty owner no longer has to worry about ignoring and belittling her customers because the cafe ended up closing down.
You bend over backwards to put things right, or you fail.

This is a ridiculous way of resolving the error. What if you didn't have the extra money in your account?