Dinner ruined

[Kaftanqween]

I’m away with large family to celebrate a parent’s significant birthday. I booked a meal through a recommended catering company. Chef was due at 3 with meal served at 4.

At 3.15 the chef messaged to say I’m lost. Sorry. He sent me a pin to his location. He was 3 hours from me. I rang the company in a panic. They said he’d gone to the wrong place and they were weird and defensive demanding did I want to go ahead or not. It was awful. We’re in the middle of nowhere in a rented property we’d had a few drinks. I didn’t know what to do. So I said go ahead.

the chef turned his phone off and I really didn’t know if he would even arrive. The company were useless presumably unable to track the chef either. By this time I’d spent nearly 3 hours away from the celebrations.

Anyway at 6 he did arrive and served lacklustre, rushed food at 7. Half the table were missing as they were putting small kids to bed.

This morning I messaged the company and got a random response saying they’d investigate and get back to me in 7 days! I was flabbergasted and wrote a review on trustpilot and insta. Since then it’s been hell. Long, defensive messages, questioning what I’m saying. Also suggesting they won’t consider any recompense until I take my reviews down. Finally a response to my review online calling me abusive and saying I threatened to slander (sic) them all over social media unless I was immediately refunded. Also claiming they contacted me to resolve it early this morning. None of this Is true.

What the hell is wrong with them? why wouldn’t they just offer me a 50% refund or something and we can all move on. Should I take my reviews down? What recourse do I have? Just small claims? Hoping someone can advise.

Don't take it down. Send them a letter of intended prosecution and take them to the small claims court. They will see through their bluff and bluster and false accusations and get you the fee repaid in full.

It's actually a fairly simple process. I have done it twice and won twice.

You don't have to their harassing BS if you don't want to. Just sue them.

As a retailer it is really really common for people to post (unwarranted) bad reviews then ask for money back for taking them down, it annoys me immensely. I generally tell them I am going to take legal action against them rather than give them anything.

I've also has someone who had a full immediate refund for a returned item ask for £500 compensation as their "mental health was affected" - you can assume I am a handbag retailer as an example, who sent them a red bag but they returned as didn't like the colour, we refunded and yes.... the mental health request for an additional £500 and a negative review unless we paid the £500.....essentially blackmail.

Therefore I think if you have a genuine complaint, ditch the reviews and correspond with them directly. I can pretty much guarantee ALL our negative reviews are from scammers as anyone with a genuine complaint talks to us and we sort it.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

It reads fine to me.

For 18 people, for a special occasion?
I live in a rural area and our only option would be Dominos. I don’t think so.
And there were allergies.

I can’t get past the fact that the chef originally only planned an hour to prep and serve a meal for 18 people!!! That was never going to be good anyway

You wouldn’t be able to claim for travel and overnight stay for the cottage as this was booked as an entirely separate contract and was unaffected by the breach of contract by the chef. If OP doesn’t have a court near her home she might be able to claim petrol expenses to travel to the court hearing.

They weren't local, they might not have had much of an idea of what was out there (and what might have been able to cater for 18 people, including members of the party with some dietary restrictions, on that amount of notice - it could have taken some time to actually find anything suitable, if at all). It's not reasonable to criticise OP and the family on this point.

I think 50% is reasonable- to be honest I would have hung fire on my reviews until I'd banked my refund.
Businesses run so much on reviews these days if you box them into a corner they will say literally anything to make it seem not their fault.
I think the people saying you should go for a full refund are delusional-they turned up and produced food, you would not be supported legally in going for 100% and maybe not even 50%.They provided what they say they would, albeit a little late, taken to the small claims court I doubt if you would get more than 33% off.
It's poor customer service I admit- but pretty much all businesses have little or no customer service these days.
Small businesses never have allotted many resources to customer service, managing expectations is a large company thing.
In fairness to them, handling you as a customer is not there no.1 priority if your reviews meant they would get no business in the future.

Similarly named towns, maybe? Without getting into outing territory, let's say that I live in one town, and there's a town in another part of the country which is very similarly spelled, and people do make mistakes all the time (I can get work calls for my Other Town counterparts, and I've had a Christmas card for "123 Addendum Street, Other Town" when I live at "123 Address Street, My Town" and Royal Mail just pushed it through my door as the closest they could find). If this holiday accommodation had been in my county, (I'm not going to ask OP to confirm that) I'd have no problem picturing the chef setting off for Other Town in error - given the locations in question, he could have easily ended up 3 hours away. He wouldn't be the first.

I’d have wanted a 100% refund. It’s a really shame that you haven’t left a review but I understand why you’ve taken it down.

You need to work on your reading comprehension!

@HeddaGarbled are you the company owner? What a rude reply to @Kaftanqween

A whole group and nobody could think to order food in? Take some responsibility here you should have cancelled when 3 hours away.

How dare they bully you. And how wimpy of you to cave! Emails can be deleted, you dont have to deep read them!

They fd up, you didn't and now you will get nothing. But you could throw another c£100 at it and go to a small claims court to get compensation and court fees back... I would def have not removed my reviews...

Pissed by 3pm. Who the hell was looking after the babies?

If Op wA sober enough to spend 3 hours complained then she had 3 hours to come up with another plan.

Sorry OP sounds like a terrible time. A 90th birthday is a significant celebration and it just sounded dreadful with how the catering went.

Not in the food industry but a while ago, DH and I booked at a hotel on a very popular beach resort. It became clear that the only reason this place has customers is because we all are so taken with the location to the beach. They took no pride in their rooms. Years later DH and I still read the reviews, seeing many customers like us, shocked at how yuck the rooms are (like a rubbish tip and that is being kind). I also dislike when paying customers are given the run around and little accountability from the business.

I think taking the reviews down was correct. I know it galls, but it's also a bit of an "either/or" situation. Either they "make it right" by giving you the refund, or they get a bad review. And technically, they are correct in that you did actually eat the food, so a full refund isn't indicated. Once again, I'm sorry that your event was spoiled, but I'm not sure I would waste much more energy on it. Doing that often hurts you more than them.

I appreciate that you had elderly guests and young children at the party but 4pm is quite early to eat so your decision to go ahead with the meal perhaps was seen by the company as still eating at a normal time for dinner.
I think, given you agreed to and ate the meal that a 50% discount and £150 on account is fair recompense.
Once you posted your 1star reviews you had already done your worst so the onus on the company placating you had gone. I really don’t understand why people who are looking to negotiate do this. Far better to keep your powder dry re reviews until the end of negotiations. The company will be v aware you could leave a bad review and will try to find a solution you are happy with. After they have left the review there is no incentive to do anything, especially if they’ve made an offer or you’ve been overly harsh.
It was obviously a big mess but there were things you could have done to mitigate the situation. Deciding you were too mortified to join the party for two hours and phoning every 30 mins must have really ramped up the tension and made everyone feel awkward.
Why not just break out the nibbles, pour some drinks and play some games? By the time the chef reached you, they had been driving for more than three hours. It will have been a nightmare for them too. The atmosphere must have been dreadful. They must have wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Disappointment would already have been baked in.
I’m not saying you were wrong to be disappointed that the party was derailed. It must have felt devastating at the time and so disappointing. But mistakes happen and if there is a big group, everyone can rally round to try and salvage things. I’m sure the chef didn’t want to be driving for three hours either. Maybe it was their fault. Maybe they were given the wrong address by the office. But if your prime focus was rescuing the event, I’m not sure you went about it in the right way.
I’d take the 50% refund and explain that as you won’t be using the £150 voucher for catering, could they give you something you could use - perhaps get them to make a really special cake and have an fancy afternoon tea for the birthday person with all the family at a different date.

I'd be inclined to still leave a review, keeping it neutral and factual along with info about the company's response and compensation.

As I said before you cannot press for 100% refund- they turned up and provided food. Morally and legally you can't expect 100% refund.
No wonder so many businesses struggle- this company is potentially being sent to the wall for a genuine mistake.
I am so happy I decided not to set up a business in the pandemic because customers like the posters above are unreasoningly entitled- imagine if it was your business.

Thanks to all the helpful people. Obviously I’ve had an offer and am negotiating it, so it’s not to correct to suggest my review means I’ll get nothing. It’s sorted.

I’m not sure why people are saying I should take some responsibility. It’s been explained over and over why we couldn’t get food in and that the company literally gave me 10 seconds to decide on the spot was I going ahead or not. It was all they cared about.

Of course we weren’t all pissed at 3pm. No one was pissed. Some of us had had a glass of champagne or two many weren’t drinking at all.

Congratulations to @auderesperare. In a thread where some people have been pretty horrible (in legal for god sake!) you win! The poor chef, what a nightmare for him to drive to the wrong place and then go incommunicado. You describe tension, the dreadful atmosphere and how everyone felt awkward all because of me and what I did wrong. Your post has actually helped me feel better because you’re so wide of the mark. You don’t need to write some fantasy scenario you know nothing about. The misery was pretty much absorbed by me as the organiser. Fortunately, we’re a really loving family of four generations who holiday at home and abroad most years. My mum and dad are wonderful people and everyone else just got on with it. Dad in particular didn’t care about the food. My dad and the grandchildren gave speeches and the whole week has been an amazing celebration. This was a tiny blip but now or less resolved and becoming a distant memory.

Thanks to the lovely posters sympathising and suggesting ways forward, which is why I posted in legal. I took on advice and have a resolution. Now the people who are suggesting I go back in time and do it differently have arrived, I’ll leave it here.

I've just read the whole thread. What an awful experience for you ☹️ I was thinking of booking something similar for later this year and this has really made me think again. I really don't think you did anything wrong and am surprised at some of the responses.

Have the company explained how on earth the chef ended up 3 hours away? Did he go somewhere with the same name? Hard to see how this could be a genuine mistake.

This.