This is a copy of letter sent, and do not receive reply
For attention of Rowena Shouly,
I want to make a complaint about the service that I received on Thursday 20th August. My daughter and I booked to have the Cinderella Carriage at Guilford to celebrate her 25th Birthday. We arrived on time and was shown to the carriage. There was no table cloth on the table, and this highlighted the high usage the table had with tears and cracks in the plastic covering of the table. The seats were extremely dirty and had tears in them also. This did not add up to a fairytale image, that you provide in all your media coverage. ( I have photo’s as proof if you require).
The server was pleasant in her manner towards us; however, we were given reused menus, and the table had the lightest of wipes before we sat. No servers were using their masks when they spoke to us or social distance, or at any time when they served people. I know masks are a guideline, but clean sanitised areas should also be upheld with new menus. They were not following the COVID 19 guideline at all.
I asked advice about which cream tea to have and was told there really is no difference so have the traditional cream tea with a glass of prosecco for my daughter. I opted for tea, and was not given any choice except breakfast tea. The 17 different tea types that you promote was not on offer. Nor were we advised that it is unlimited tea, we had one teapot between us for an hour cream tea, the tea was cold by the end.
Now we had a sandwich choice to give. The choice was good, but we could not have the artisan bread that you state on the menu. We were given a choice of white or brown, I chose brown, my daughter chose white. We were told we could not have this, it was either all white or all brown, surely your chef was able to make to different sandwich choices!
When the food arrived it was very poor quality, the bread was dry, and the fillings were sparse. The choice of scones was not allowed as four different ones; we had to choose two types only. My white chocolate and cranberry scones seemed to have missed out of all the chocolate and had only two partial cranberries in the scones. Also, they were tiny; they made the miniature pot of jam look large. Again very dry, like the sandwiches. The cakes on the top plate were not the best and also small.
In your pictures that you promote for the experience, there is a cinderella tea cake stand, a crown, & table cloths, none of this was offered.
I did not want to ruin my daughters day, so I kept quiet. We were not asked if everything was ok, while we were there.
Finally, after an hour in an excepting warm environment, I asked for the bill.
The server brought the card reader to the table; she did not state the price, but took my card and started to process the payment. I asked her what the cost was and she confirmed it was £55.50, this was over £5.00 more than the cream teas. When I questioned this only then did she show me the bill, which was an optional tip of 10%. The keyword was optional, and I was not given the option. I do tip for good service, but I had not received good service, quality or value for money. The bill was never offered to me to look at until I asked to see it. The funds were being taken on false pretences.
We were then left in the carriage to make our own way out which we could not because the table had to be lifted to release us. The server came back after asking for help, and open the space up a little, if we were child-size then maybe we could squeeze through the gap. We were then left to move the table back ourselves with full china still in place, nearly sending it off the side of the table.
I feel that our total experience was poor, overpriced and not COVID 19 regulated. I am totally disappointed with this. I would not have paid the money if I had a choice.
