Such a manipulation should be illegal.
We saw the offer for Valentine’s day menu called One Love at Turtle Bay, and booked ourselves for this menu in the Romford restaurant. When we arrived at the restaurant the waiter gave us a table. We were waiting for 15 min without any waiter coming and bringing the menu, because the waiter that gave us the table was chatting with the ladies on the table behind us. When my husband decided to go and look for someone to bring us the menu, he suddenly appeared and brought to us the la carta menu. I said we are booked for One Love menu and he said that it does not say in the booking but he will still bring it. This was lie because it was written in the booking confirmation I had from Turtle Bay. Please see photos.
We decided what we want to go for, which was 2 courses and free cocktail for each of us for £25.5 per person. When we were ordering the cocktails, he said to us that actually is one cocktail with this offer. So, I said to my husband alright, we will pay the his cocktail on top of the set menu price even though it was odd that for Valentines they will give free cocktail to one of us but not to the other one. In few min the same waiter is coming and brings 6 cocktails. I am asking why 6 we wanted just one cocktail each of us and he says, it is 2 for 1 and he leaves. We are completely confused and spent the rest of our Valentine's “romantic” dinner discussing what is the deal here, why something feels odd with the whole offer? We look repeatedly at the One Love menu, on one side is the food, on top with pink written about the free cocktail, and on the back side is the One Love list of cocktails, with option to go bottomless which we do not want nor need.
My meal was good, but my husband's meal was disgrace. He went for jerk chicken and rice. There was no sauce with it, very dry and just reheated, you could see pitiful meal.
Then we asked for the bill and another waitress is bringing us the bill which is £84 instead of the £53 what we were supposed to pay according to the Valentine's offer. I asked her to call the manager and the same waiter, the guy who gave us the table, the wrong menu and failed to explain himself with the cocktails comes. So, he is the manager. We are asking him about the bill, he says, he can see the deserts they put them as additional by mistake. I am asking him why the cocktails are listed to be paid separately, when the offer was including cocktail he says I told you that for free is only the One Love cocktail, that was the one looking like a cube. So, at that moment we are realising that actually One Love is a type of a cocktail. We saw later that it is listed as number 16th on the list One Love cocktails, among the other cocktails. We are asking why he did not told us that when we were ordering, he said because “it’s self-explanatory”. Well you know what, its not. Both, my husband and I are people with degrees, we love dining out and have seen many menus before. And this was not at all well communicated. We said to him that we will pay what we feel is right for what we understood in the offer. The amount we needed to pay according to the offer was £53 because my meal showed +2 on the menu. I gave him cash of £55.
He said to us to be aware that if we do that we are going to be blacklisted as customer going in the restaurants.
So, Turtle Bay let me tell you. You are on purpose creating menus that will manipulate people. And you already have other people leaving 1* reviews because of this. This is illegal and I am going to report you to the Trading Standards to investigate this. We are not deserving to be blacklisted because you want manipulate people in order to rip them of. And if this was not intentional on your side, better use user testing to see if your menus are self-explanatory.
February 14, 2024
Unprompted review