ATROCIOUS ATTITUDE and APPALLING CUSTOMER SERVICE
ATROCIOUS ATTITUDE and APPALLING CUSTOMER SERVICE
This is particularly relevant if you telephone to make a booking and are wishing to use a dining discount card of some kind.
On 16th April we telephoned Dimitris to book a table for the 19th April, and followed the booking procedure in order to use a City Scene Card. This would give us 50% discount on the food bill. During the telephone conversation, the person taking the booking said to me 'OK sir, I've noted you are using your City Scene card. Be aware please some dishes are not included and be sure to show your card on arrival'. Nothing could be simpler or clearer than that I am sure you will agree.
So we duly arrived on the 19th - City Scene Card in hand - and were met by a Dimitris staff member. We gave him our name and told him we had booked a table using the City Scene Card, and I had the card in my hand.
The first thing he said was that he'd go to see if there was anywhere for us to sit. This seemed odd to begin - surely they should have had a table reserved for our booking?
After a couple of minutes he reappeared to say he'd found a table, but said in a rather sarcastic fashion that there was nothing on the booking system to show that we were using a City Scene card!!
I repeated that I had clearly made the booking to use my City Scene card and what their staff member who'd taken the booking had said to me about it.
And, when I asked him politely if he was going to honour the booking, he kept saying 'NO' and he was now becoming quite rude and aggressive. I asked if it was really a problem that the booking didn't show the City Scene Card, as surely he should realise that the omission will simply have been an error on the part of his colleague whilst taking the booking. ‘NO we won't honour your card as it isn't on the booking' he snapped loudly.
We had followed all the steps required to obtain the discount by pre-booking by telephone and by now were disgusted by the rude and arrogant attitude of the staff member. Within a very few moments he had become so aggressively adamant that he was not going to honour the City Scene Card booking. It makes me wonder if this had been a deliberate ploy on their part, accept the City Scene Card booking on the phone then deny all knowledge of it in the expectation that we would just stay, have a meal and pay the full amount.
Based on how disrespectfully we were being treated, though, we simply left and took our business elsewhere.
The following day (20th April) I sent an email to them to complain about how we had been dealt with, and also pointing out that it wasn’t the first time we had had trouble using the card with them. A couple of years earlier, despite having the City Scene membership book with us showing the discount at 50%, they tried to argue it was only 40% when we came to pay the bill!! I followed the email up with a phone call on 23rd April to ask if they were going to reply to me. I was told ‘We answer every email sir, good or bad’. Now, almost two weeks after I sent it, I have not received a reply. I can’t say that I am surprised by this as it is consistent with the dreadful way we were treated when we were at the restaurant. Needless to say, after giving them the benefit from our experience two years earlier, this latest episode means we’ll certainly not be visiting Dimitris again.
4 May 2018
Unprompted review
