The title of this post sounds rather tabloidy, but there we go, it’s 04:00 in the morning at Luton Airport and I’m going to take what excitement I can. One thing that I’ve discovered is that Big Smoke are one of the first outlets to open airside at the airport, being open at 03:00 which is earlier than their advertised time and an hour ahead of many other venues. That at least was handy.
The service was friendly, but the restaurant was in something of a state. The sauce bottles had a not inconsiderable amount of dried up bits of sauce on them and the menu was so sticky that it was hard to open. The surfaces had also not been cleaned the night before, nor had the floor, which felt an odd situation. But, it was early and I was content. I was using Priority Pass which gets me £18 to spend and I specifically mentioned, as I always do, that I had zero guests.
However, almost immediately I received an e-mail confirming that Priority Pass had helpfully charged me £18 for my guest, the one that I didn’t have. I queried this and the staff member insisted that was right and I should have been charged. It evidently wasn’t and I showed him he had typed two guests. After some faffing about he came back and told me to make a claim with my bank. This is a ridiculous way of doing it, that would be a chargeback for Priority Pass, as well as a heap of paperwork for them and the bank. So, I asked for someone else and the manager, who really didn’t seem that engaged either way, came over.
The manager repeated the poor advice and I queried what happened if Big Smoke said there were two people and not just one? They said that they couldn’t do anything, so I asked if they could just note on a receipt that there was just one guest. The manager didn’t show any interest and she didn’t do that, she just ignored the situation. Fortunately, I discovered that Priority Pass have a 24 hour call centre and so I phoned it, at 03:30 in the morning which I thought was rather decent. After some internal querying what to do, Priority Pass said that as I was still at the restaurant they were willing to refund the extra guest as it was a mistake.
No-one came over to check on this situation, so I meandered off. It’s hardly the issue of the century, but I’m not keen on managers shifting responsibility to other people and causing others a heap of work when they could have easily dealt with it. Moan over….