My letters of complaint

Yes yes I know, 2 blog posts in the space of 24 hours, calm down.... breathe deeply into a brown paper bag and get reading!

Now I might shock you with this admission, but I quite like complaining, moaning, whining, bitching, pissing and sniping.

Through the year I have sent my fair share of letters to various companies, I don't complain about products/services for no good reason, but I do expect a good service for my hard earned money.

Below are a couple of examples of why I feel the need to remind people of why they are viewed by the working world as massive shitcunts.

To whom it may concern,

I felt compelled to write to you after 2 bad experiences in your restaurants.

First I will address the issues at the Golden Hind pub on Milton road in Cambridge. I decided to go out for dinner with my family and a friend, we sat down at the table and picked through the menu for something to eat. One of our party was a vegetarian and ordered the MUSHROOM DIPPERS. 35 minutes later the mushrooms turned up along with some form of mixed starter. Phil (the person that ordered the mushroom starter) was enjoying his food until he bit into what he thought was a breaded mushroom only to find he was chewing on a piece of chicken! I can’t begin to imagine how this mix up occurred, Needless to say it put him off the rest of his meal (which took 40 minutes from the end of our starters to arrive) It’s not even as though the restaurant was busy either, I counted only 2 other small groups dining there.

Stupidly after vowing never to set foot back in a two for one restaurant again I was out with my family today and we stumbled across the Hartford Mill pub and restaurant. I was pleased to see the fact a new menu was being advertised just inside the main doors and decided to give two for one a second chance. We ordered and awaited our food patiently. Fantastic!!! The food arrived within about 10 minutes, extremely impressively (or so I thought) Sadly that was where the disappointment began. My wife ordered southern fried chicken chunks/bites, well what arrived can only be described as southern fried chicken dust or particles. The pieces of chicken were so small people wouldn’t even need to chew them. 7 or 8 of these ‘bits’ were classed as a starter and they were £3.69 for their sins.

For my main course I had ordered a 16oz rump steak and paid £2.00 extra for my meal to be ‘upgraded’ to a surf ‘n’ turf meal. When it arrived it looked promising, Until I looked under the food that is. I used 3 napkins to soak up the liquids that were sloshing around on my plate. As i am sure you will appreciate soggy chips, scampi and peas dripping with brown juice do nothing to fill you with confidence of a wholesome and tasty meal.

Thankfully I was given a knife that wouldn’t have been out of place in the hands of a samurai warrior, Because it needed something with razor sharp precision and cutting ability to help me pick approximately 4oz of meat from the 12oz of gristle that accompanied it. With the skills of a neuro surgeon I carefully dissected my dinner and picked off the edible parts. Without doubt it was the worst piece of meat that I have ever been served in my 31 years as a carnivore, I have seen better meat in a Donner kebab served off the back of Ali’s kebab van near my local pub. I suppose to top it off my grilled tomato was absent from my plate too.

When i challenged the waiter in regards to my steak he came out with the most ingenious reply i have ever heard, it was a cross between a grunt and a whine that i can only describe as... eeerroohggghh. Sadly I don’t speak idiot and was expecting the comments to be passed on to someone who hadn’t received a full frontal lobotomy that very same morning. However a visit from the restaurant manager was not forthcoming and to be honest by this point I was all in favour of leaving before the roof fell in on me to finish off dismal dining experience.

My mother ordered a vegetarian option, An asparagus and brie tartlet, She really liked the tartlet but on the menu it clearly stated it was served with new potatoes, Well these new potatoes were cunningly disguised as chips. At least it now seems my daughter eats new potatoes in McDonalds!!

If you are going to change a key component of a meal from a brand new menu would it not be advisable to at least inform people of the fact when they come to the bar to order their food?

Well after all this my daughter decided she wanted dessert, I was in favour of bolting for the door before anything else was wrong or sub standard but children can be so persuasive. For my daughter I ordered a children’s portion of ice cream, with chocolate chunks and sauce. For myself and my partner I ordered a ‘Mega’ sundae for 2 people! And finally an ice cream sundae for my mum.

30 minutes later our ice cream arrived, Well when I say ice cream i mean melted ice cream, My daughter could have drank her dessert through a straw! The ‘Mega’ sundae should be investigated by trading standards. It was a drab affair with a few scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, some dodgy squirty cream from a can and a few chocolate bits on top. Might i go as far as to suggest you call it the uninspiring sundae or the drab sundae, It would be far more appropriate.

The ice cream sundae was equally as poor, Described as 3 scoops of ice cream it only contained 2 and the cream on top looked like it had been provided by an unfortunate bird with an upset stomach.

So now I come to the end of my experience with your restaurants, Needless to say I will NEVER use a Two for One pub again. It’s a sad state of affairs when the best part of the meal was the drinks i’m sure you’ll agree.

I look forward to hearing from you in regards to this matter, If however i Don’t i will not be surprised and will just become another person to visit restaurant guide websites telling people to stay away from your poor food and service.

I hate that pub chain, I have never found one that doesn't fuck me over. Now here's another.... This was to Brown's restaurant chain.

Dear Sir/Madam,

It is not often I feel compelled to complain about service, the last place I ever expected to have to do it was a Brown’s restaurant but it was unavoidable given the shocking experience I received at your Islington premises.

On Monday the 2^nd of January 2012 a group of us decided to go out for a celebratory meal after our friends announced their engagement. Having dined out at Brown’s in Cambridge many times I didn’t hesitate to recommend your restaurant as a place to enjoy some good food and a great atmosphere.

We sat down to eat, our order was taken promptly and the starters arrived at the table within 10 minutes, all very promising it seemed, and that’s where it began to go wrong. Two of my party (including myself) ordered the ‘Tiger Prawn Cocktail’. Well the mother of the Tiger Prawns must have had a 40 a day smoking habit stunting their growth because what we were served were barely the size of regular prawns, in fact in my experience of seafood (having worked in that industry) they were almost certainly not Tiger Prawns at all.

My guest had already eaten part of her starter by the time the waitress was next back at our table but I asked for mine to be taken away as I refuse point blank to pay £7.95 for something that would have been classed as a poor portion at even your most basic of pubs. I mentioned the quality of the Prawns and the waitress agreed saying “You’re right they are very small”.

This would have been bad enough as it is, I recommended Brown’s as the perfect place to celebrate and 1 course in things were already bad. Onto the main courses, we ordered 2 Steak, Mushroom and Guinness pies with crushed pea and potato mash. Also ordered was 1 Lobster Tagliatelle and a shepherd’s pie. First of all let’s address the Steak, 2 small pieces of meat in a pie, 2 measly pieces..... Might I suggest it is renamed Mushroom and Guinness pie with a little bit of Steak? Only that name wouldn’t be right either, as there was no taste of Guinness in the gravy of the filling either. There may have been the faintest of aromas of Guinness but no more than you’d expect from the pie having passed by a truck delivering Guinness to a bar. So now we have the name of Mushroom with a little bit of Steak and the faint aroma of Guinness pie. Nearly done for this meal, Key component of a pie? For me it’d be pastry, good quality pastry not something that with the lightest touch of a fork turns to dust.

So there we have it, a Mushroom with a little bit of Steak and aroma of Guinness mess with pastry dust. I think the crushed pea and potato mash must have been embarrassed to have been on the same plate as the ‘pie’ as it had gone stone cold, I think it was in shock. I briefly considered asking for a first aider but I think it was too far gone for even the wonders of modern healthcare.

Where was I? OH YES! The ‘Lobster Tagliatelle’ let me just quote the menu at this point.

Flaked lobster in Parmesan, cream, white wine and chiveSauce topped with a grilled half of lobster.Sounds nice doesn’t it. I see the thinking behind not mentioning the size of the lobster ‘half’ I mean if you don’t mention size people won’t complain when they see that their Lobster was plucked fresh from Crustacean Crèche on his/her first day! Even the Shepherd’s pie was sub standard, my wife barely ate half of it so all in all it was a pretty disastrous meal.
The tail that we were served as a half portion was so small it could get into London zoo for free with a paying adult. Even a shrimp would have stopped, pointed and laughed at the Lobster for being so small, it was a pathetic portion from a pathetic kitchen. Normally I’d not be as blunt but I am thoroughly ashamed to have recommended your restaurant to celebrate a major event in our friends lives, it reflected very badly on me personally and to be honest it has made me reconsider using your establishments again.

I hope you can offer an explanation for such substandard service, I look forward to your reply.



Is it really so difficult to  provide good customer care? Why do we allow ourselves to get treated in a way most people wouldn't treat their pets. Oh well, thanks for reading.