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Friday 9 January 2009

Good and bad gestures

I suppose this is two sides of the same coin.

At the weekend, we went to Portsmouth. I've never been before and my wife, who was brought up there, wanted to show me round. I didn't have particularly high expectations. But I couldn't have been more wrong. I've rarely been more more impressed with a tourist attraction than with Pompey's 'Historic Dockyard'. Everything about it confounds your expectations of British tourism and customer service.

First, it's very reasonable - £17.50 for an annual admission pass, which includes everything: HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, the Mary Rose, the museums, a 45 minute harbour boat trip, and lots more. Most places would charge a tenner just for one of them. All the staff were smiling, friendly and amenable. On the boat they brought round refreshments.

Really first class - a brilliant day out.

Last night, however, we saw the usual side of British service. After a wonderful concert at St James, Spanish Place, we went for dinner to Cafe Caldesi in Marylebone. I had a classic Genoan dish - fettucine, beans, pesto and potato. It was watery (as if the pasta hadn't been properly drained) and bland - the pesto had no flavour. I had three mouthfuls and left the rest. It was like eating starch. My wife's ravioli was not much better, and the wine we were served was warm and dull.

It wasn't cheap - my pasta was £14.50 - and I wondered how the manager would react when she cleared the table. Quite properly, it turned out, asking if everything was ok and then, when I told her it wasn't, being very apologetic and stressing how she liked feedback and hated it when customers did not enjoy their food.

This is going to go one of two ways, I thought. Either her words will be all talk, the bill will take no account of my comment, and we won't be coming back - worse, we will tell people not to go there. Or they won't charge us for the main course (my starter, I should add, was worse - my wife said it was like something from a Harvester) or at least they'll make a gesture by offering us coffee on the house and we will give them a second chance.

You can guess which way it went from the fact I'm writing this post. The full whack - £70 for the two of us. I didn't say anything, because I knew I'd have more impact writing this.

Why are so many British retailers - it's not just restaurants, clearly - so bad at this sort of thing? The tiniest gesture would have worked wonders.

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