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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

WIBU to be annoyed in this cafe?

582 replies

Hoppinggreen · 06/02/2023 18:42

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

OP posts:
Sunsetintheeast · 06/02/2023 22:15

SafeAsAHero · 06/02/2023 22:12

I know exactly what I’m talking about. I manage a restaurant and have had this exact situation happen.

I don’t know where you live but the police do come out in our area when people refuse to leave the premises or attempt
to steal.

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Then you should look at your policies. Penalising people for your error is not great business. A manger should be able to manage a win win.

If you’re running a big chain, you’ve fallen for the corporate mumbo jumbo and have no real power to manage anything.

justgettingthroughtheday · 06/02/2023 22:15

I'd be giving them a negative review tbh! That's shocking!
They should have just refunded the £10 on the-card and be done with it.
People always come out with a million excuses as to why something isn't possible. It is. Stop making things so bloody over complicated and get on with life!

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 22:15

Sunsetintheeast · 06/02/2023 22:05

Standard fuck up processing is to put things right. Standard refund process ain’t relevant here.

I used to be a department manger at JLP (nearly 30 years ago!) and I can tell you the customer was queen.

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I can assure you that things have moved on in 30 years and “the customer is queen” is definitely no longer the mantra of John Lewis who have some of the worst customer service I have ever seen. Makes this cafe look positively saintly.

Rosscameasdoody · 06/02/2023 22:16

SafeAsAHero · 06/02/2023 22:12

I know exactly what I’m talking about. I manage a restaurant and have had this exact situation happen.

I don’t know where you live but the police do come out in our area when people refuse to leave the premises or attempt
to steal.

Show quote history

So having fucked up and inconvenienced the customer by holding on to their refund and effectively making them pay twice, you would compound it by calling the police if they attempted to leave ? How are you still in business ?

Sunsetintheeast · 06/02/2023 22:17

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 22:15

I can assure you that things have moved on in 30 years and “the customer is queen” is definitely no longer the mantra of John Lewis who have some of the worst customer service I have ever seen. Makes this cafe look positively saintly.

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Oh I know that, but great service is still alive and well in many areas

My point is that the customer shouldn’t be paying for a fuck up ANYTHING is possible if they want to do it.

IamtheDevilsAvocado · 06/02/2023 22:17

AllOfThemWitches · 06/02/2023 18:46

You were told there was no way of getting your money back immediately. Fair enough to be annoyed about it but standing there hoping they'll come up with a magical solution?

Of course they could have done!!

All they needed to do was refund her a £10 note!

Write a note to say what they'd done for the till resolutions.

Ive refused to do this after i was once caught out and 3 months later the money was still not in my account.

I refuse now to pay twice wheb they've made a mistake!

magicthree · 06/02/2023 22:19

I'm not in the UK, but I'm pretty sure any refund I have received on a card here has gone through at the time it was processed. Why on earth is there a 10 day wait????

Rosscameasdoody · 06/02/2023 22:19

grumpycow1 · 06/02/2023 22:00

I agree with the £10 out the till solution and they could have sorted it at the end of the day. But I think you were a bit unreasonable in (albeit reluctantly) agreeing to the refund, they process it and then at that point get annoyed about paying again. What did you expect them to do after they had processed the refund? They couldn’t reverse it.

The OP wasn’t told how long it would take to process the refund until after she agreed. Ten days is unreasonable in an era when a bank transfer can be processed in a couple of minutes.

Snugglemonkey · 06/02/2023 22:19

I would not have been paying a second time, no way.

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:28

AllOfThemWitches · 06/02/2023 18:46

You were told there was no way of getting your money back immediately. Fair enough to be annoyed about it but standing there hoping they'll come up with a magical solution?

They don't have to come up with a magic solution, just a solution. This is hardly an impossible thing to rectify. If the café really has no way of refunding £10 to correct their own mistakes, they have a crap system. In the final analysis, if they didn't have £10 in the till and couldn't do a transfer to you, the manager/owner should have paid the money themselves and sorted out their own delayed repayment.

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:34

leithreas · 06/02/2023 19:10

What solution though? The only other solution if you are unwilling to pay is to get the food for free, is that what you would expect?

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Why on earth is it for free if they have £40 of OP's money? They expected OP to wait for a refund and trust them to arrange it; how about they wait for payment and trust the customer to make the payment once the refund has appeared in her account?

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:37

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 19:14

I thought it was pretty well known refunds take longer to be processed. They couldn’t just give it to you out of the till because the system records what’s done by card and by cash etc.

YANBU to be annoyed, but I am sure you have made mistakes in your working life. I would be interested to get the other side of this one. I think it’s unfair people are calling the woman a wet blanket, OP could have been a bit of an arse to her for all we know.

We all make mistakes. We don't necessarily expect other people to pay for our mistakes, though.

LegodOut · 06/02/2023 22:38

I think YANBU, but I can understand why the cafe assistants (presumably not having the authorisation to override the POS processes) had to do it that way....

The invoice (bill) which sits on the POS system gets irretrievably linked to the card payment used, unless the payment is subsequently cancelled, at which point the invoice is available again to be linked to someone else's payment. So the only way they could 'fix' their mistake is to cancel that £40 transaction. If they hadn't (and had refunded you £10 by card/cash/cakes) they wouldn't be able to associate the £40 invoice to the correct customer when they came to pay, as it would no longer be visible on the POS. Plus your £30 invoice wouldn't have any payment linked to it, so it would still be flagged as unpaid at cashing up time.

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 22:40

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:37

We all make mistakes. We don't necessarily expect other people to pay for our mistakes, though.

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Why are people acting like the OP isn’t getting her money back? It’s irritating to be without it for a few days but chances are she is getting it back, if she hasn’t already.

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:40

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 19:22

But you haven’t paid £70. You’ve paid £30 and annoying had to wait around for £40 to come back to you. It’s crap but you are acting like they’ve stolen from you.

As of today, OP has paid £70. With any luck £40 will come back sometime, but OP can't even be sure of that.

Onnabugeisha · 06/02/2023 22:44

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 22:40

Why are people acting like the OP isn’t getting her money back? It’s irritating to be without it for a few days but chances are she is getting it back, if she hasn’t already.

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I really don’t know why they are. It’s utterly baffling how people think it’s the same as it was 30yrs ago with a non smart cash register….card refunds don’t work and and cashiers can just hand out cash, restaurant orders are only on handwritten tickets - not electronically tracked as part of an accounting system and so on. I feel like it’s a time warp, as the depth of knowledge is antiquated.

UrsulaPandress · 06/02/2023 22:47

And yet op was incorrectly billed. With all that technology. Truly baffling 🙄

ChilliBandit · 06/02/2023 22:48

@LegodOut - thank you for explaining that to people. I started to type it out and just couldn’t be bothered.

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:49

MrsMikeDrop · 06/02/2023 20:00

You've obviously never worked in IT, you'd be surprised how complicated it can be depending on how something has been set up. Years ago I used to get angry at companies but now I understand how things work I have more sympathy. It's not like the workers purposely want to annoy customers do they.

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These things don't get set up in a vacuum. Someone has to agree to setting it all up that way. If they choose to set it up in a way that is likely to piss off customers, then they must resign themselves either to losing customers and potentially going out of business, or finding a way to avoid pissing off customers even if it means inconveniencing themselves.

IWonderWhyIBother · 06/02/2023 22:49

Option 1, they refund £10 to your card not the whole amount.

Option 2, leave a generous tip, £30 for lunch for two for a birthday treat is reasonable and your friend’s birthday isn’t soured by an argument at the end of a nice lunch.

magicthree · 06/02/2023 22:50

I feel like it’s a time warp, as the depth of knowledge is antiquated.

It's not the depth of knowledge which is antiquated!!! Your banking system however ......

IWonderWhyIBother · 06/02/2023 22:52

It’s late, I mean £40

Patineur · 06/02/2023 22:52

Sugarplumfairy65 · 06/02/2023 20:04

The refund has to be by the same method as the payment

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That's not actually a law, you know. It might be inconvenient for accounting purposes to refund cash for a card overpayment, but if it's the store's mistake then they will just have to suck up the inconvenience.

Blossomtoes · 06/02/2023 22:54

magicthree · 06/02/2023 22:50

I feel like it’s a time warp, as the depth of knowledge is antiquated.

It's not the depth of knowledge which is antiquated!!! Your banking system however ......

It looks to me as if the “antiquated” system was better. Tech’s supposed to make life simpler and it’s supposed to be the servant, not the master.

WomanStanleyWoman2 · 06/02/2023 22:55

SafeAsAHero · 06/02/2023 22:01

It’s nothing to do with “more work”. It’s breaking cash handling policy and is gross misconduct, which means they can get fired on the spot for it.

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Did you miss the part where the manager was standing right next to her? She could easily have authorised it! “Gross misconduct” indeed 🙄