In all our lives, my wife and I have never experienced what we endured from the young staff in the East Kent in Whitstable tonight at 6/7pm. We left shaken and enraged.
We were out with our daughter, her friend and three grandchildren and spent...close to £200 in a couple of hours on food and drinks, but due to a mistake by the waitress over a £6 plate of chicken nuggets that we didn't order, were very quickly bullied by several members of staff (including the chef!) and then threatened with the police being called if we didn't agree to pay for them.
Incredible, disgusting and of course it completely ruined what should have been a lovely family meal that instead had descended into an insane confrontation and battle.
I have never known a company so aggressive in its pursuit of its customer's money and of course am determined to never return to what was once a familiar and admired local pub/restaurant.
Even when we requested a manager we were told none was available and we were forced to continue to negotiate with little more than front of house kids who seemed to be trained like attack dogs to get the chicken nuggets added to the bill.
We will never forget it, for all the wrong reasons, and I am obliged to share the experience with anyone who cares to read.
DON'T GO HERE, spend your money in any of the other deserving, professional eateries in town.
The worst of all is I know the manager, and the Aussie couple that now run it from afar and tried to explain that we were not just passing through 'nightmare clients' but locals who had no intention of duping staff etc and happy to spend well, but not for things we did not order. The kids running the place didn't care what we said, the attack just continued with yet another of them emerging from another door to aggressively press their case. It was only when I said we would pay for what we ate and no more and this would be a civil matter not a police one so in fact the police would not attend, was Dillon, the manager finally brought in to call off the hounds and resolve things.
SHAME ON THIS PUB FOR RUINING OUR RARE FAMILY MEAL TOGETHER - all for a plate of nuggets worth £6 and probably costing a fraction of that to them. They lose a customer, a family of customers, and if this review counts for anything perhaps more too. The meal part (excluding the two rounds of dinks we had before then - each approx £25) totalled £131. The nuggets would have been less than 5% of the final bill, likely to have been a third of the tip we, of course, never gave them!More
