The Consumer Complaints Blog

Fighting the trained monkey in modern society.

November 20, 2010

Spice Route

Filed under: Food Related — Editor @ 1:05 pm


I am so outraged by the experience I had at Spice Route last night that I have to say something!

We were at Spice Route for a friend’s birthday. As we were seated at two booths (there were about 16 of us), we were told that we would have to order off a pre-set menu as there was a required spending amount. My friend who had booked the booths disputed this, saying this was not communicated to her and she never agreed to this. She had specifically asked at the time of booking whether we could order off the a la carte menu and whether there would be a minimum amount spent, and she was assured there wouldn’t be one.

My friend went to speak to the manager, who right from the beginning was rude, dismissive and wouldn’t listen to her valid complaint. While she was discussing the matter with him, the server was instructed to completely ignore us (after we were seated late and were absolutely ravenous). She wouldn’t even bring bread to our table.

The manager wouldn’t listen, but we were all starving to death so we had to start ordering food. The manager (after threatening to throw us out – for what I don’t know, talking back to him? Aren’t we the customer??) said we could order food as long as we spent a certain amount. Starving, we thought we’d give it a try – maybe we’d spend that amount anyway.

When the bill came we realized we were $220 short of the minimum amount. My friend decided the manager would have to be reasonable – we still spent close to $750. She went to plead with him again. He completely shut her down. So she said that she wouldn’t sign the bill, because she wouldn’t authorize him to charge her that much. He told her that he had her credit card number on file anyway from when she booked the tables. My friend said fine. We were gathering our stuff to leave, her plan was to just contest the amount with Visa.

Then the manager showed up at our table with four bouncers – he told us no one was allowed to leave until the bill was paid in full. He said the police were on their way. We sat there, shocked and humiliated, for 45 minutes.

The police arrived, and spoke to my friend, then spoke to the manager. The police sided with us in the end, and we paid the amount that we had spent – no more. The manager was no where in sight as we walked out of the restaurant. We were still so in shock we didn’t even think to ask the police if our rights had been trampled on.

I’ve never been held hostage in a restaurant before! It was a bizarre, surreal, horrible experience. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go there.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

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