"My wife booked the restaurant on-line for meal at 4pm for five people (wife and I, my Mum and two children).We arrived at 4.08pm and was informed the restaurant was closed and would re-open at 6pm. He pointed out (with a smirk on his face) that they don 't serve food between 4-6pm.I pointed out that we had booked on-line and our booking was accepted. He confirmed he could see our booking (which was highlighted in red, the other lines were highlighted in blue) and we were late.A few pointers in future. It maybe worth considering changing your on-line booking system to accept bookings when you can actually provide a service. I 'm not sure pointing out we were eight minutes late was useful given the kitchen closed at 4pm and you weren 't planning on serving us anyway. Plus industry standard is unto 15minutes before it is an issue worth mentioning. Given we had booked and you knew you wouldn 't be able to cater for us, wouldn 't it have been a good idea to phone us and suggest an alternative time ? In these circumstances, when customer is clearly unhappy, you may want to consider saying 'sorry ' or showing some empathy towards your customers, after all you were well aware that you couldn 't serve us before we arrived! It 's possible you feel that treating your customers with arrogance and distain is acceptable because you 're doing such a roaring restaurant trade. I wish you well with that approach."
