Customer Services
Wetherspoon House
Reeds Crescent
Central Park
Watford
WD24 4QL
7th October, 2008.
Dear JDWetherspoon,
I have been a happy customer of yours for a number of years now.
Whenever I go anywhere for a day out with family or friends I always check your website to find the nearest Wetherspoon’s or Lloyds No1 Bar, so we can make a point of going there and having a good meal.
Whether it be a Sunday Club roast in Chichester with the in-laws, or a Curry Night in Southampton with the mates, I know I’ll always be greeted by friendly well trained professional staff only too happy to please.
I know I’ll be in a relaxed welcoming atmosphere, and know I can take advantage of the free wi-fi access and receive truly excellent value for money when purchasing both food and drink.
In fact, I have never hesitated to recommend JDWetherspoon - until now.
I honestly can’t believe I’m having to write this letter. Something somewhere has gone drastically wrong.
May I refer to your pub ‘The Regent’ in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. (Pub No: 103)
I often go, generally once every couple of weeks with a mate and generally for a meal. Generally early or mid-week, and generally when it isn’t too busy.
Sadly, I’ve noticed a steady decline over the last few visits, and Sunday for me was just plain awful. Needless to say, we won’t be returning.
And to be honest, after the experience I had this weekend, I doubt very much if I’ll be using your website to find the nearest Wetherspoon’s again.
We visited last week; a drink, something to eat. Bloody freezing, mind. Heating broken or something. I don’t know.
Deciding we’d have a coffee and muffin to finish off with, we were disappointed when told that the machine was broken (again). Cold, and somewhat fed up of being forced to be party to the knowledge of the social lives of various staff members, we left earlier than usual.
We returned, forgetful, on Sunday, both having had a busy day, and very hungry.
At about 7pm we ordered our drinks and our Sunday Roast. I knew exactly what to expect; I have had many a good roast chicken at a variety of Wetherspoon’s across the country.
As well as a few drinkers, there were a couple of other diners already eating and we were told our food would arrive in 10-15 minutes.
We waited.
And waited.
My mate had ordered an extra serving of mashed potato with his beef but when our roasts arrived 35 minutes after the order was taken, the mashed potato was with my chicken.
We questioned the delay, since there were only two other people eating at the time, and complained the order was wrong.
The member of staff sort of apologised, but was also explaining that something which was supposed to have been served as part of our roast wasn’t, since it had been left out and gone bad or something. (Sage and onion stuffing balls - having now looked at the menu again.)
To be frank, we have no recollection of what she was saying since we were both horrified to be watching her scrape the mashed potato, off one plate on to the other right in front of us.
We ate; or rather, we tried.
The food was, quite frankly, disgusting - Admittedly made worse by the already very poor quality of service.
Dried up carrots and brocolli that had been sat under the hot plate for hours; roast potatoes that had appeared to have been ‘deep fried’ for so long the potato had reduced to mash on the inside and so hot in the centre it burnt your mouth; luke warm dried up chicken; cold peas - of two different colours; maris piper creamy mashed potato that was anything but; I could go on…
We gave up eating. We were hungry, very hungry. Neither of us had eaten since an early breakfast; but we weren’t hungry enough to eat that shit.
The staff member eventually came to clear our plates. She had obviously said the stock phrase: “Did you enjoy your meal?”, without actually thinking why she was saying it since she was already saying “I’ll get your desserts.” before we could make it quite clear that we had in no way “enjoyed” our meals.
Oh, yes - We were talking to her, but she wasn’t listening to us, since she was already heading towards the kitchen with our half empty plates.
At least by: “I’ll get your desserts”, we knew she’d come straight back with them. But shortly (in both senses) she popped her head out and shouted across to us: “Which one had the ice-cream?”
They both did; surely that was on the ticket in the kitchen - it was on our copy.
We waited.
And waited.
For yet another half an hour.
30 or so long minutes in which we were forced to endure various activities of the staff: shouting at each other across the building; screaming at the chef, both outside and inside the kitchen; constantly checking texts/taking calls on mobiles glued into their hands; flirting with drinkers and sharing mobile phone pictures on the customer side of the bar at one end, while customers were waiting to be served at the other end; and again, I could go on…
Though I must mention, we were even privileged to have the young manager plonk himself down with his roast dinner on the table in front of us. He sat their leisurely eating and reading the paper whilst his staff did their very best not do anything in particular, including serving our desserts.
Oh and whilst waiting, we were slowly freezing since there was still no heating to speak off - the staff were wearing their coats, so it was quite plain that we weren’t the only people shivering.
Finally the manager got up and disappeared with his plate into the kitchen, leaving his paper on the table. Maybe now he’d organise our desserts - we’d been making various subtle hints by this stage, discussing quite openly our experience since he was easily sat within earshot of us and it waswell beyond a joke by this stage in the evening.
Perhaps he was too engrossed in his paper to care about his increasingly extremely dissatisfied customers. We never saw him again. We were told he was “out the back having a fag”.
When asked if maybe somebody, anybody, could get our desserts before we froze to death we were told they’d be out shortly.
We waited.
And waited.
And counted the customers to see if it really was so busy that an extended delay was justified. (A couple of dozen at the very most - including drinkers, and thus no justification whatsoever.)
Finally a member of staff went in and returned complaining that she’d had to do them herself.
We asked for the reason for the significant amount of time needed to cut a piece of chocolate fudge cake and scoop some ice-cream, but was told in an very obvious ‘tough shit, what do you expect me to do about it’ attitude that the chef was far too busy cooking meals for the “other customers” - who presumably had been waiting just as long as we had.
Sadly, that was it for us.
Not exctly bowled over by the quality and taste of our desserts, we waited a little while longer hoping someone, maybe even the manager would pop out of the kitchen so we could at least complain about the significant lack of the understanding of the words: “quality food” and “customer service”, as experienced by ourselves and - from various rather loud conversations of the staff with customers - other diners too.
But no.
Having decided that we wouldn’t have a coffee, though we were told the machine was now at least working, we got up, left, and vowed never to step inside the building again.
May I take this opportunity to strongly suggest that someone from JDWetherspoon pay an unannounced visit to pub number 103 in the not to distant future: It would be good for them to experience for themselves the extremely poor standards, in customer focused service, staff management, food quality, and general building/equipment maintenance.
JDWetherspoon’s is only as good as it’s worst pub, and I sincerely hope that the ‘Regent’ in Walton-on-Thames is your worst pub, else you really do have some serious problems with your business model.
Sorry to have had to write this letter and publish it on my blog, but I seriously do think that my friends and colleagues from the local area really do need to know it really isn’t worth paying good money for an experience like that.
I’ll go as far to say this horse has had better service than we did. Even if he now has to stay tethered outside!
Yours sincerely,
Paul Foster.
Well Jon, said I’d be writing, didn’t I.
and 
and a whole host of others will probs start turning up. lol! (Ha Ha, they actually turn out as emoticons on here too! lol!)
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