Awful service, great recovery
There's a lot of complaining on chowhound, so I'd like to hear some good news. Anyone have a time when something terrible happened at a restaurant and they went far beyond the extra mile?
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The waiter:
-never refilled the coffee in spite of saying "I'll be right back with more coffee"
-never replenished the bread in spite of saying "I'll be right back with more bread, and more coffee"
-brought the Caesar-With-Chicken without chicken
-never brought the chicken breast on a separate plate like he promised
-brought the Belgian waffle with the wrong topping (after 25 minutes instead of the 4 it usually takes)-finally said "You know what? I have screwed up your lunch in every way possible. Please accept my apology. It's on the house." (He even offered a free dessert, but by that time we were afraid of what else might happen, so we declined.)
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RShea78
Jan 26, 2007 05:27 AM
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I recall as a youngster on vacation, Dad did not stop at this one town because of a big event was going on there, so he decided to stop in the next town. Well, a 12:00 lunch was missed so we arrived at our next town about 3:00. We were seated in what looked like a place where we could get our food fairly fast. They took our order right away, served the drinks, then, we waited, and waited, and waited. Dad lookes at his watch and it is 5:20!
Well, little was known about our order, as shift change according to the manager was at 4:30. Dad raised a stink having 6 hungry kids and the time frame would place us there oven night, because of this mess up. The manager was overwhelmed that this happened and immediately sent out a "something to eat" SOS order. I remember it well as it was something Dad could not let us have ($$), Roast beef, MP, and gravy platters.
The Manager took care of the meal and made arrangements to stay in a rather fancy hotel up the street. We got there and our jaws dropped as country folk doesn't expect rooms to take an entire floor. To top it off, each of us had our own room and woke up to breakfast in bed!
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Frosty Melon
Jan 22, 2007 11:02 PM
I had terrible service at a tapas restaurant, the meal took way too long. We politely complained to the hostess...and the entire meal, including drinks, was comped. I thought that was over and above.
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A couple of times that come to mind...
A few years ago four of us had a reservation at a local restaurant, we don't mind waiting in their comfy bar but this grew to a two hour wait. We were finally seated with profuse apologies (sorry I don't exactly remember the reason for the mixup), and the waiter said 'your dinners are on the house'. I was a bit snarky and said 'Can I see that in writing?'. He proceeded to pull out a pen and write on the paper table covering the linen tablecloth 'these four dinners are on the house' with his name and the date and time. Indeed they comped us to the tune of about $100.
Around this past Christmas, my hubby and I had been doing the rounds of four relatives/friends all in various hospitals at the same time. We were terribly tired and just wanted a simple meal instead of cooking. We went to a local pub type place, he had the chicken pot pie special and I had a pot roast special. His 'pie' was a bowl of chicken soup with a hard pastry disk floating in it. I expected pot roast to be chunky beef with perhaps veggys and potatoes, but got something that looked more like sandwich-sliced roast beef with some gravy and some mashed potato. The waitress (who did not serve the food herself) noticed our lack of interest immediately and offered to replace everything. We declined (not much appetite anyway), and she comped the entire bill including drinks (we gave her a 30% tip on what we thought the bill should have been). Because of her thoughfulness, we will try this place again.
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A few times. There have been a couple of times when I've been seated after my reservation time and been comped not only drinks but appetizers as well (one was after only a 20-25 minute wait). After a b-day dessert gone wrong, I've also received a $100 gift certificate to the same restaurant.
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My husband and I went to a local french restaurant for brunch last fall. We spoke to the host who told us there would be a 10 minute wait. We moved to the bar to wait (approximately 8 feet from the hostess stand and in plain view).
We waited, and waited. I observed a number of people arriving after us but being seated. The host continued to look up and appeared to take note of us waiting by smiling at us each time we made eye contact. We were the only people at the bar so it couldn't be that we were blended into a crowd.
After 25 minutes my husband and I get up, pay our drink bill at the bar (soda and a cocktail) and proceed to walk past the hostess stand and out the door. We start heading to another restaurant for brunch and as we reach the corner, the host comes up behind us. Now mind you, this is a guy dressed in a suit running down the sidewalk. As he gets within a reasonable distance, he asks if we are the party of two who gave the name "insert our name here". We reply that yes we are, he goes on to apologize profusely and asks that we come back to the restaurant. He explains that he didn't realize that was who we were. He had thought that we had been seated a while before. We decline and he requests that at least we come back to receive a gift certificate for a free brunch/lunch in the future.
I understand that hosts are busy but I didn't understand how he could take our name, watch us walk to the bar and see us sitting there and not remember who we were. However, I give him kudos for making the effort to make it up to us. I intend to use the gift certificate for a day out with my sisters as they both enjoyed their last meal there. I'm willing to give them another chance simply because of the effort that the host made in acknowledging his mistake and making amends.
