Here is Pattaya there are thousands of restaurants. Many of them are clearly directed towards tourists and don't really care if they are one offs, but then a good portion are hoping to capture the locals/expats/long term residents market.

I feel with thousands of restaurants there is rarely a good reason to give them business unless they DESERVE the business.

Now some reasons to reject a restaurant are clear cut and universal: not your type of food/bad food/bad value (high prices not justified by the quality)/over your budget though good food ...

But then there are the cases where they actively LOSE YOUR BUSINESS. I know it in a flash. In a moment.

Here are some examples, what are yours? No need to cite specific restaurants:

Case One:
Mid to low end Thai food place catering to farang tourists mostly. I arrive near their closing time. There are no other customers. I am very hungry. I order TWO dishes of Thai food plus rice. The first dish comes ... I eat it. As is common with Thai food, I figure the second dish is being cooked and will come when it is ready. I finish the first dish. I look over. The entire staff is socializing and drinking by the kitchen. They are fixing to close. They never got the order for the second dish. It was a bad waiter. Now if the place was exceptionally good, I would forgive one time a bad waiter. But they weren't that good in the first place so it didn't take much to kiss 'em bpai bpai. LAST TIME THERE!!!!!

Case Two:
Similar place to above but slightly better food and many more Thai customers. The menu says FRESH JUICES. I order a fresh pineapple juice. It comes. I sip. I know it is not fresh. Don't say anything. When the bill comes I point out that on the menu it says FRESH JUICES. They acknowledge I didn't get a fresh juice (as I am staring at a FRESH whole pineapple sitting in the fruit area) and they say it WOULD HAVE BEEN fresh if I had ordered a smoothie. No apologetic attitude. More like, pesky farang for telling us and also I should have known they were not going to honor their menu, stupid farang. Now if they had just said oh I am sorry and there hadn't been the fresh fruit in view, I would have let it pass, but ... LAST TIME THERE!!!!!



How about you? What happened that made you conclude in a flash: LAST TIME THERE!!!!!

This post has been edited by Jingthing: 2009-02-17 22:22:52

both cases u cite r very minor events.

i eat out always - never cook - so frequent many places regularly in many cities. of course they make mistakes sometimes or things don't work out as expected - so what.

try going there a few more times before condemning them - otherwise the world will become - a shoot from the hip place!

I am seeing an explosion of both farang oriented and Thai restaurants starting to tack on a 10%-15% "service charge". This is in addition to tax and tip. When I find a place that has newly implemented this policy, I tip the staff as I normally do and cross the restaurant off my list. Hundreds more to choose from.

If costs are escalating and a restaurant feels they need to reprice their menu, I can understand that and would evaluate the restaurant on a different basis. I don't mind paying a fair price , or even a high price for quality food but I just hate getting nickeled and dimed.

The minute I go in any shop and they start following me............ I dont go out much now
I forgot closely followed by them wanting to sell me something I dont want, ie I want a green hat please "them" We have a nice red one, oh dear bye. "Frumpy grucker" that's me.

This post has been edited by yabaaaa: 2009-02-17 23:36:55

I've gotten over it but when the server immediately stands next to my table for as long as it takes me to read through the menu, makes me feel rushed and claustrophobic. My analyst says I shouldn't worry so much...

I quickly order my standard water which gives them something to do and gets rid of them. I've never had trouble getting their attention when I need them again. A fairly loud "Nong Krap!" gets the place looking and smiling as I attempt the Thai language.

These were both places I had been to repeated times. Like I said, there are thousands of alternatives. These are hard economic times, why reward businesses that don't care? If a place is exceptional, great food, friendly, good price of course it would take a lot more to lose my business. Lets face it, location and convenience also matter.

This post has been edited by Jingthing: 2009-02-17 23:41:52

Ya those were SUPER minor examples OP, you must live a blessed life to have those as examples, I could list a million much much worse that have gotten me to stop my business with certain establishments.

Yes, I am indeed spoiled for choices. And your point is ... ???
I really don't get the loyalty factor to businesses that don't give a flying ...


This post has been edited by Jingthing: 2009-02-18 02:31:44

I was just saying, such horrible things have happened to me at restaurants that yours seem so nice in comparison, you are lucky. I don't go back to a restaurant in Thailand usually when they almost kill me.

quoted........am seeing an explosion of both farang oriented and Thai restaurants starting to tack on a 10%-15% "service charge". This is in addition to tax and tip. When I find a place that has newly implemented this policy, I tip the staff as I normally do and cross the restaurant off my list. Hundreds more to choose from..."

..........................................................................


I'm with you on this.

Being a Thai from the US, I tend to be a fairly tipper, normally between 15%-20% (if cocktails being served). Quite often if I enjoy the meals so much ( the chef prepares all the dishes to my liking), then I tips the chief separatedly .

But I can not stand any eating establishments automatic added the service charges on the restaurant tab WITHOUT printing this policy on the menu where the customers can see. So usually we end up double tips without knowing.

As you already know, in the US you would find a small print at the bottom of the menu; a 18% service charged will be added for a party of 5 and more. Fairs and squares.

One thing is funny when dining out in BKK, I was the one who found out ( 2 years ago) that we had been double tipping for ages, my group of Thai friends never once looking at the tab one item at a time. All they did was to pay the total plus 15% tips.

Now we avoid those places ( they must be missed our tips), we feel it's not nice to do that to your regular customers.

When I lived in Bangkok, I used to go to the Londoner Pub often to eat their pork chop. They had really thick and juicy pork chops. They seasoned and prepared it very well. It used to go there whenever I had a craving for western food. After moving back to the States, whenever my wife and I returned to Thailand, I would make a special trip to the Londoner to order their pork chop as it was much better than I would get in the States. Finally, during one of our return trips to Thailand a couple of years ago I went their and they served me a completely different cut of meat. It was thin and dried out. It's not that the pork chop was terrible, it just wasn't nearly as good as the ones they used to serve. I asked the manager if they had changed chefs and he confirmed that they did. That was the last time I stepped foot in the Londoner. In this case, it was the change in quality that put me off. Someone decided they could save money by serving cheaper thinner cuts of meat.

In the States, my wife and I used to eat at Thai restaurant near our home. Over time the quality went down hill. Eventually I got two dishes that were both inedible. (Okay, technically they were edible, but they tasted very bad.) Again, it seems they simply lowered their standards hoping they could retain the customer base they had built over time. My wife recently ran into the owners at an Asian market and they asked why we hadn't eaten there in a while. My wife, being Thai, didn't want to offend them and cause anyone to lose face claimed "we have been very busy". Had I been there, I would have attempted to politely tell them their food had gotten worse and is no longer to my liking.

- Crappy food (Duh.....)

- Heineken/Tiger/San Miguel girl trying to push her brand on you before you even had time to open the menu.

- Inattentive/rude waiter/waitress.

- A looooong, unexplained wait for the food to show up.

- An even loooooonger wait for the bill to presented.

- A service charge added to the bill without this being stated in the menu.

All these things might make me choose not to come back. Luckily there are thousands of eateries to choose from

You guys are so UNLUCKY to be living in Thailand with all this bad service, been to a Little Chef recently? LOL

Exactly, all this moaning seems misguided, when now in the UK when ordering from a fast food restaurant it is commonly expected to be given the wrong order/wait till you have actually starved to death/not actually have the food you order etc etc. It sounds like heaven where these guys have been eating. 55555

The waiter had his thumb stuck in my mashed potato when he sat the plate down on my table. Naturally I asked him what the fcuk he thought he was doing and he said it was rheumatism and he had to keep said thumb warm. I suggested he stick it up his arse. He said he did in between serving...

I can't resist.

Am in Chiang Mai and went to a Brit style pub, asked the waiter for a glass of water, he said can only sell me water!!!

I walked out in a huff.

There was a thread about some similar stuff. The owner made a fuss about this ! Might be the same case....

you got it, but it wasn't me. just couldn't resist.

I went to a Pizza Company restaurant and ordered my pizza both verbally and by pointing at the picture...of course the pizza came wrong. My wife explained that if I didn't eat and pay for the pizza, the waiter would have to pay for it. I said fine but the pizza is more expensive than the one I ordered, I'll eat it and pay the price of the original pizza I ordered, which is what happened. I didn't pay more, the waiter, if true, only paid a bit more and hopefully he learned from the experience.

I did leave a good tip.

Regards

This post has been edited by Martian: 2009-02-18 07:56:59

Common sense here would be: Choose a restaurant which opens longer and ask before ordering, if the juice is really fresh pressed

I would not have a second thought about that. Such situations are a part of daily life here. No problem

The intention of the thread was to suggest other people describe their own "Golden Moments" when they rejected a restaurant, not to dissect my examples.
The examples about the pork chop changing/no water, etc., that was the idea.

This post has been edited by Jingthing: 2009-02-18 09:35:19

I hate when you have paid your bill and the waiter/ress returns with your change stands there waiting for the tip. Why?

Saw a nice mellow looking restaurant. Had the gf go in and order while I went for a longer stroll along the boardwalk (lovely sunset). She was still looking over the menu when I came in. The waiter came over, gave me a menu, and took away gf's menu and gave a her a new one. Well, our two new menus were in English and Thai and had "Farang" prices. The previous menu was in Thai with "Thai" prices.

We asked the waiter about the discrepancy. He apologized, sheepishly saying it was the restaurant's policy. He motioned to the owner and wife who were sitting at the back of the empty restaurant glowering at us.

Gf smiled, said thank you, and got up and left, followed by me.

A couple of days ago in a Thai restaurant in Central i was charged 5 baht ++ for ice in my water, I never knew there was a charge and they pointed it out in the menu (I never looked at the drinks page as I knew i would have water). I said I wouldn't pay it and the manager said he would have to pay it if I didn't, I said thanks for his offer and I let him pay it

I know its only 5 baht ++ but come on, it's ice ffs, the one and only time in 3 years I have seen a charge for ice in a restuarant

I never eat at pizza hut anymore. Only pizza company (and i order a pizza once a week).

I went in pizza hut one time and the sauce on the pizza tasted terrible (like they'd run out of the regular sauce and decided to use ketchup instead or something).
Anyways the waiter came by and asked was the pizza ok (note that was not making a scene, or even looking as if the pizza was bad). I said "no the sauce tastes terrible, and nothing like it normally tastes". Then the manager came out to inquiry, I said again the sauce tastes terrible, i'm quite sure it's not the normal sauce you used. Manager seemed confused and didn't say or offer any solution.
I asked "have you tried the sauce today, see for yourself it tastes bad"... at which point the manager explained that she did not like pizza and had never tried it. Also none of the waiters liked pizza, and had never tasted the sauce....

Quite a laugh really, that no one working in the restaurant had ever tried the food they sell, so had no clue when it was tasting like sh*t....

That's when i decided i would go to pizza company for all my future pizza needs.