I would like to share with you a cautionary tale regarding a recent trip to the La Reserve, a Beefeater restaurant in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

I have recently left work after a long spell of ill health, and I decided to take a few close friends out for the evening to say thank you to them for their support over the last year.

I decided to go to The La Reserve, as we had been there last year to celebrate my birthday and had really enjoyed our evening.

I booked the table for eight o’clock for myself and 7 guests about a month ago. We got there early, let the staff know that we had arrived, bought drinks from the bar and sat down to await our call to the table. We missed one of the announcements at about 8.05pm so my partner went and asked if it was us who had just been called. He was told that we had not, but that we would be called in five minutes as they were ‘just changing the tablecloth’. This was an interesting remark in itself, as they don’t use tablecloths! Maybe my suspicions should have been aroused then ….

We were finally called to our table at 8.30pm, half an hour late, with no apology from anyone for the delay.

We were given menus and told that, Rachel, our waitress would be along to take our orders shortly. She duly came and took orders for starters, main courses and a round of drinks. She returned after about 25 minutes to apologise for the delay and to say that our drinks were on the way. After another five minutes she brought most of our drinks to the table, bringing the remaining two after yet another five minutes.

While we were waiting for our food to arrive we saw a couple at a neighbouring table get up and walk out as they were fed up with waiting for their meal. We did consider doing the same, but decided to continue to wait and see what happened. It was actually snowing quite hard by this time so we didn’t really want the inconvenience of finding somewhere else to eat.

At 9.20 my partner went to find the manager to complain, as we still had not received our first course. This did actually begin to arrive while he was away from the table. He returned and said that he had been told that the Service Manager would be coming to have a word with us.

The starters all eventually arrived, but there was such a time lag between them that the first people to be served had finished eating by the time the last were served.

The Service Manager, Michelle, came to our table just as my partner was eating his first course. She was very confrontational and just announced ‘Someone here wanted to speak to me?’ in a sharp voice. As she had already been made aware of the fact that we were not satisfied I would have thought that her approach should have been more along the lines of ‘Can I help you?’ or ‘What appears to be the problem?’

My partner explained to her about the delay and she told us that it was fault of the waitress and that she would have a word with her immediately. This was clearly NOT the case as our waitress was working very hard indeed and she, at least, kept us informed of the progress of our order and apologised for the delays, which were obviously not of her making.

The Service Manager then offered us a round of drinks. We pointed out that we already had our drinks so she offered to remove the cost of these from our bill. We agreed to this and expected our situation to show a marked improvement following this conversation. Sadly this was not the case.

Our main course arrived at 9.55pm and our sweet at 10.50pm, meaning that we finally finished our meal at about 11.20pm. There were two members of the party who had a considerable distance to travel home and had been expecting to be on their way by 10.30pm at the latest.

The waitress brought our bill, but as she looked at it she realised that there were still two glasses of wine charged which clearly should have been removed as per the Service Manager. As she had no authority to change it she had to go and find someone else who could.

The correct bill finally arrived at 11.35pm. The amount charged was £83.40, which included a reduction for the two Beefeater special offer vouchers that I had used.

We had intended to go back to the bar after the meal to sit and relax with a last drink but, as we finally got the receipted bill at 11.41pm, the bar had closed and we just left the restaurant feeling very disappointed.

What should have been a special night out for me was completely ruined and I ended the evening in floods of tears with my friends trying to console me.

I have now written a strong letter of complaint to the manager demanding a full refund of my £83.40 together with an amount of compensation for the distress caused to us all.

UPDATE
Just to let you all know that Beefeater have refunded the full amount of £83.40 admitedly the cheque was made payable to my partner, but that's not a problem.