Dining in ice...

One of the things I look forward to most in life is getting together with the girlies and having dinner and a good goss. We are all so busy juggling, work, studying and men/dating trying to organise our social calendars so we can meet up is at times near impossible, but with some perseverance we make the time. This time we agreed to meet on the Friday before Christmas, as this was only formally agreed on the Monday it meant trying to reserve a table took several phone calls, emails and an online booking to eventually get us a table at La Tasca.

So imagine our frustration when my friends and I spent the entire evening freezing! During our meal we had to put our coats on and while waiting for desserts we had to resort to had to put on our scarves and gloves! Utterly ridiculous. If we wanted to go to the "ice bar" we would have!
We complained continuously to our waitress and so did the table next to us. She pointed us in the direction of her manager, an incredibly rude and arrogant man with no customer service skills, Mario. In chorus with the table next to us we complained that it was ridiculously cold and he snidely shrugged from the other side of the bar. When we went to pay for our meal we asked to speak to him directly. By the time he came over to our table, we had paid, Mario continued to be rude by condescendingly saying he should have moved us to a table upstairs where it was warmer. When asked why that wasn't offered to us when we complained earlier he had no response, he simply tried to stare me down! Erm, during the "customer service" training I don't think that staring a customer down is ever a suggested response when complaint handling!

We then asked for a refund of some of the money we paid for the meal and he explained that "La Tasca don't do refunds". How pathetic is that?! I questioned Mario and said you must have a facility to issue refunds due to situations when you make an error in pricing, therefore there must be a way of refunding customers. He stared at me and patronisingly said "this isn't an error, and I'm not going to do a refund"! At this point I wanted to throw something at him, I have never encountered a 'manager' like this. We continued to complain and he finally offered to give us some vouchers for 'our next visit'. I bluntly told him there would not be a 'next visit'! But my friends reluctantly agreed to accept the offer of vouchers. But then, Mario said with a sly smile that we would have to come back on Monday to collect them! At this point I was ready to combust! Have you ever heard such rubbish? How utterly ridiculous is that?! We were told that the vouchers were in the safe and this was now closed, and Mario had no access to it. We found this hard to believe, as how was Mario going to cashing up at the end of the night? My friends and I had travelled from all over London and Hertfordshire to get to the restaurant so we had no intentions of trekking back there for some vouchers. However, fortunately one of the girls doesn't work too far from the restaurant so she agreed to come back on Monday. At this point I needed to leave, as I was soooo furious. However despite the bitter cold, and the pathetic snide manager - the girls and I still had a great time. It was lovely chatting and exchanging Christmas presssies. I'm already looking forward to catching up again in the New Year, but as you can imagine I will not be booking us a table at La Tasca!



Since then La Tasca have sent me a feedback form, as you can imagine I gave Mario a glowing report..... Feliz Navidad......