Nearly from the moment someone in this world invented money, people began to stratify according to its quantity. And, accordingly, different opinions about what is expensive and what is cheap. Especially when it comes to cafes and restaurants, which often leave ordinary customers in awe with their prices.
Another similar story came from Lytham in the UK, where one cafe visitor considered the price of £9 (~$11) for extra slices of toasted sourdough bread for soup to be excessively high, wrote an angry review on Google Maps, and the owner did not remain silent. So please feel free to read this whole story and try to conclude for yourself who is right here and who is wrong.
The Shambles cafe in Lytham, UK, once got a 1-star review from a local customer
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
The average rating of the cafe is pretty high, both on Google Maps and TripAdvisor
So, let's now move to Lancashire, in the west of England, where the small town of Lytham with a population of around 42 thousand people is located. Here, in Lytham, in one of the most respectable parts of the town, is the Shambles cafe, where this story unfolded.
As of today, The Shambles has an average rating of 4.5 on Google Maps, based on 183 reviews. In general, most of the reviews were very positive. Customers praised the meals served here, they liked the cozy atmosphere, and several reviews with a negative connotation concerned mainly the prices (some believed that they were unreasonably high) and the level of service (sometimes the servers were not that fast).
On TripAdvisor, the range of user opinions is much more significant - from admiring reviews to the sarcastic opinion that the name 'The Shambles' fully characterizes the very level of the establishment, but here, too, the average rating of the cafe is 3.5 based on 39 reviews.
Image credits: Sara Clare
The customer claimed that she had to pay £9 (~$11) for extra slices of sourdough bread to go with her soup
And so, a few days ago, a user named Sara Clare left a 1-star review on the cafe’s pages on Google Maps and TripAdvisor, claiming that going to the cafe was an extremely bad experience. According to the user, they ordered 2 soups and asked for an extra roll with each - but the soup came with only a few thin toasted slices of sourdough bread, and when she asked for more, it turned out that additional toast came at an additional cost.
The total for the bill, as it turned out, was 4 extra slices of toast costing £9 (~$11), and when Sara tried to clarify the situation with the owner, he said that he could not give out bread for free, and that he did not care if she wrote a bad review or not.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
The photo of the bill posted by the author on Facebook shows there was toast with butter and jam
Well, we found Sara Clare on Facebook, and there she posts a photo of that very ill-fated bill. As you can see, the order here looks a little larger, but below you can notice just two portions of toast with butter and jam for £9 in total.
According to Sara's post on Facebook, she's a carer for adults with special needs, and that day they took three of their charges with them to the cafe, so the experience was doubly negative and disappointing for the whole company.
As often happens, Sara's angry post went nearly viral (652 reactions and 1.1K shares as of today), and the cafe began to receive poor reviews, even from users who hadn't been there at all. This practice happens when the owners of an establishment do something reprehensible, in the opinion of netizens.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
The cafe owner hit back in the comment to the review, claiming that Sara threatened him with a 1-star review while demanding a refund
Apparently, today the service administration has already deleted all irrelevant reviews and comments, since the most recent review on Google Maps dates back to a week ago. However, the internet cache, as always, remembers everything. Like, for example, the owner’s response to Sara’s review, written literally the next day.
According to the owner himself, he personally served Sara, and checked up on her twice. The menu states that the soup is served with two pieces of toast, and information about additional toast for a fee is given in the breakfast section. In addition, as the owner claims, if customers are not satisfied with the price level, they can always choose not to visit the cafe.
The businessman also stated that in the morning, on the eve of the publication of the post, Sara got in touch with him by phone and demanded a refund, literally threatening to leave a 1-star review otherwise. In any case, as the cafe owner claims, she "seemed very happy yesterday" when he served her.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
Well, the vast majority of comments from ordinary users, both on Google Maps and TripAdvisor, largely agree with Sara, arguing that for this amount you can buy an entire loaf of sourdough bread in the store, and criticizing the cafe for its high prices. However, local natives also say that in the area where The Shambles is located, prices are generally quite high.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
It turns out the cafe's menus have information on extra fees in another section, and it's not that nice at all
“I don’t know exactly who served the customers in this situation, but in any case, the waiter or owner should have warned that they would have to pay for additional toast, and not retroactively refer to another section of the menu,” says Vlad Ostrometsky, the administrator of the UNIT Cafe in Odessa, Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. “However, owners sometimes resort to such tricks in order to unwittingly increase the amount in the bill; this, alas, is far from a secret...”
“On the other hand, threatening to write a bad review, demanding a refund, is also not entirely correct. If you didn’t like the service, prices or food in an establishment, just honestly write about it, share your opinion, and that’s all. Not to mention fake reviews from people who may not have been to the cafe at all. I understand the sincere indignation and desire to support the author of the post, but a fake review is a deliberate misleading of people, which is also not good,” Vlad believes.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
As of today all the negative reviews have been deleted, but people in the comments mostly sided with Sara in her indignation
However, today, all the reviews from people who obviously did not visit The Shambles cafe at all have already been deleted - both on Google Maps and on TripAdvisor, so, probably, the owner was still able to find some kind of compromise with Sara. We have written to both sides of the conflict, and will try to shed light on the outcome of this tale as soon as they answer us, but for now we're also looking forward to your own points of view about this particular story in the comments below.
Image credits: The Shambles Lytham
