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

I’m sure that the cafe gets lots of customers who are so short of cash they need £40 to last the week, yet don’t pay attention to how much they are paying for a £30 lunch and then on the odd occasion the cafe staff make a mistake, have to wait a few days for a refund which causes them untold anguish to the extent they will never visit the cafe again. Huge part of their customer base that.

Small businesses run on customer loyalty and reputation. Anyone who’s ever worked in customer service knows that people with bad experiences tell other people about them. Apparently every dissatisfied customer tells ten other people. Inflexible rude staff can bring a small business down very fast.

This is irrelevant. Do you think it's likely this is the only type of incident that brings to the fore the lack of training of the staff (not implying it's their fault) or general 'sod the customer' attitude of the cafe?

Apart from the OP who opted for 10,000

If someone wrote a review online that said the staff messed up my order but I only noticed after I’d paid. They refunded me but it’s going to take a few days to come back to me and they still expected me to pay for what I’d eaten.

I’d think annoying but that’s life and still go to the cafe. Which OP has rightly not named here.

OP had said it's not a chain ... it may well be some tiny rural village? And what of it to be honest? A failed business is a failed business large or small - and the basics of business relying on good customer relations SHOULD stay the same - 5 customers or 5 million.

Imagine assuming your customer base is so huge and secure that you can forget worrying about the basics of customer satisfaction ...

It’s not a chain and it’s in a fairly affluent village but it’s one of 4 cafes, and there is certainly not enough business for all of them. I won’t be writing a bad review and I do take some responsibility for not checking the amount before paying. I think my main annoyances were that I was getting glared at for upsetting someone I had actually told that it was just a mistake so they shouldn’t worry about it and the fact that I was treated as if I was unreasonable for calmly saying I wasn’t happy that I had to wait up to 10 days for my refund.
Luckily I can afford to but they had no way of knowing that

They're reasonable annoyances to be fair.

Did the person who told you you'd upset the other staff member hear the full conversation or was she just getting defensive? Maybe her friend was over-sensitive and she felt like she needed to stand up for her. Obviously not ok but you can understand why that might happen in the heat of the moment

The responsibility for getting the bill wrong lies with the restaurant.

The tenner is perfectly obvious. The correct price was £30, initially they charged OP £40. When they realised, they said they couldn't do the obvious thing of just refunding the surplus £10, and would have to deal with it as a refund of £40 and a new payment from OP of £30. When she'd done that, it emerged she wouldn't actually get the £40 for ages.

How can people talking about their own experience be clueless? The fact that it differs from yours doesn't make them wrong.

If I was in the queue watching that combination of cock-ups, running away and customer-blaming from the café staff, I'd definitely make a mental resolution never to come back.

I would too and I would tell others about it if they suggested that cafe as a meeting point.

Without customers, there is no business and for every bad experience, people tell an average of ten other people.
Service industries rely on having a good reputation (with the exception of budget airlines!).

A copy of the mistake, name and address of customer = trail.

ooh look I could be in charge. And I am.

Ok, £40 for lunch for two (as a treat, not a birthday though) is reasonable. I assume that had the service and lunch been unsatisfactory you would have referred to that in your post. Personally if I’d had a nice time with my friend I would have said don’t worry about it and to keep the £40 but then personally I check the bill and if it was £30 when I went to pay I would tell them to take £35 from my card and read the card machine before I swiped. Be grateful she only keyed in what she did and not an even bigger amount because although she made the mistake you aren’t blameless for not checking the amount you swiped, signed or keyed your pin in for to authorise that they could take the funds from your account..

And yet plenty of people on this thread who actually know what they are talking about are saying it is perfectly possibly for a business to rectify this sort of error on the spot without going through the contortions that this one did.

So why should she be inconvenienced because the café made a mistake and couldn't be bothered to put it right there and then? You can bang on as much as you like about the poor staff, the unreasonableness of customers etc, but the plain fact of the matter is that if you run your business this way all your staff will be out of a job when the business goes bust.

@Hoppinggreen - did you get your refund yet?

Lol. Depends on the business. If you knew anything about independent hospitality businesses, you'd know there isn't a one size fits all approach...

It computes perfectly well if you factor in that the situation is caused by the business's mistake. How can it possibly be the case that in that situation it is only the customer who has to suffer and it is only the customer who has to take the risk that the refund won't happen?

It's ridiculous for a business to take the attitude "If you don't like it, don't return". Because you have to be aware that it won't ever stay at that. The customers will tell their friends and relatives, who are likely to live locally which is VERY bad news when you depend on local custom. They may well leave a bad review. Before you know it, suddenly your café is strangely empty and you can't pay your bills and your rent, end of café.

So what happens if they know they have £70 today, but that vital payment of £40 is due to go out in 6 days' time and the refund hasn't got back into the account by then?

It's never going to be one occasional pissed off customer, though, is it? If they operate that way they will have a steady trail of pissed off customers spreading the word to friends, colleagues etc who in turn will spread word further. Having in place an inadequate system to prevent staff theft vs having your business close down, hmmm, what a difficult choice.

What sort of bubble are you living in? There are cafés all over the place, local businesses rely heavily on local trade which is certainly more than five people. If you start putting people off by this sort of stupidity word gets round very quickly, and you can see hundreds of customers disappear almost overnight as they vote with their feet and start patronising your more sensible rivals.

@Xol you appear to place the blame firmly with the business but isn’t the onus on us as customers to check the amount on the card machine before we agree to pay when we present our card to the merchant?

@Xol - You disagree with me, I get it.

This thread is really showing me what a hard time people working in hospitality and retail have and how little people understand financial controls.

So how about if the customer wrote a review saying they overcharged me, refused to refund me the amount of the overcharge there and then and insisted that I pay again and wait several days for the refund? I have to say I'd be thinking "Who wants to risk that, next time I meet my mates for lunch we'll go to Bloggs Café down the road instead".