Caffe Boccaccio - belated refund and reply

To Mr Keith Abela, Caffe Boccaccio:

As you are well aware, on July 24, my friend and I came to your restaurant for a meal. After we ate I gave your waitress my CashLink card so that she could withdraw the amount owed to you. She returned to our table shortly afterwards and informed me that I could not pay the bill using my CashLink card because your machine was out of paper. Therefore, I paid the bill by cheque and this cheque has since been cashed.

On July 27 I realised that my bank account had in fact been debited by Boccaccio to the amount of Lm8.45. My friend and I came over to your restaurant to explain what had happened and we asked you to refund the Lm8.45 you had erroneously withdrawn from my account. Your manner was arrogant, and at no point did you offer an apology. Instead you told us that you had to check with the waitress who was on duty, promising you would call us.

You never did. We called you about three times in the following week and every time you told us that you had been too busy to check! Finally you decided to call BOV Card Centre while I waited on the phone and you verified that you had withdrawn the extra money. You also checked with your waitress to confirm that the bill had, in fact, been paid by cheque. You agreed that you owed us the money. You then informed me that you were not comfortable giving us the cash or sending us a cheque. Instead, you told us that you would refund the money to my account. That was over a week ago.

Next, you informed us that BOV would be sending someone to show you how to use your machine in order to refund the money to my account last Saturday (August 2). This never happened. We called you again on Monday (August 4) and you told us that you had not yet had the time to refund our money. We called again on Tuesday (August 5) and you told me to hold on while you refunded the money through your machine. At that point, you assured me that the refund had gone through. However, the refund never went through.

At this point I refuse to spend more money on telephone calls to you. There is absolutely no excuse for your poor customer care. I expect my money to be refunded immediately, no more excuses or delay. (Doria Grixti, August 8)

Unbelievable but true! Indeed, a gross lack of customer orientation.

On August 14 Ms Grixti informed me that on two days before Bank of Valletta informed her that on August 11 her account was credited to the amount of Lm8.45 by Caffe Bocaccio.

However, she is still extremely disappointed at the kind of customer care offered by this establishment and added: "I don't know why it had to take a letter to your column to get my money back."

For what it's worth here follows Caffe Boccaccio's reply to his customer:

This is a belated reply to your letter of August 8 regarding your complaint.

I would like to clarify a point, in that the waitress thought that the machine did not process your charge. I was never arrogant to you. I only informed you that I would like to check the matter as I was not present during the transaction and I had to check with my waitress. I happened to be extremely busy with the terrace project I was undertaking soon afterwards.

As soon as we verified the mistake, we refunded the money through the same credit card system, which is a normal procedure in this regard. I apologise for the inconvenience caused and I have made sure that such instances would not recur.

Once more my apologies and I look forward to serving you once more at Caffe Boccaccio. (Keith Abela)

I have no further comments to add. Readers can draw their own conclusions.