Poison Karaoke Bar Neukölln — Restaurant in Berlin

I reserved four tables for my birthday party at Poison on a Saturday, each requiring a €150 deposit, totaling €600. This deposit would be refunded if our group met the minimum spend of €600.

To celebrate, I printed 30 drink coupons for my friends, and we agreed beforehand that only drinks ordered with these coupons would be deducted from the deposit. When settling the bill, the staff confirmed that 28 coupons were used and that I had ordered one additional drink on the deposit as advised by the staff. However, upon reviewing the bill, I noticed 35 drinks were charged against my deposit, meaning 6 extra drinks were double-charged.

When I raised this issue, I was accused of drinking the six extra drinks myself and was mockingly called “detail-oriented.” They even said they would “obviously reimburse the five cheapest drinks” (see email screenshot).

Generally, Poison has its ups and downs, but unfortunately, my birthday experience was rough for several reasons: One of my reserved tables, which I paid a deposit for, was given to another group without asking, simply because some friends arrived later. Many friends waited over 3 hours for their song requests, despite ordering early, and some requests were never played. When we inquired, the DJ said our group had already sung frequently—hardly surprising with a group of 50 people. Song selection seemed biased; if you had an attractive girlfriend asking, your request was more likely to be played. This seemed dependent on the DJ, who in our case was a straight male. Ordering drinks was chaotic. We were instructed to mention the reservation name when ordering to track our minimum spend, but bar staff often appeared confused about why we were naming it. This may have contributed to the 6 drinks being...

If I could give this place zero stars, I would. The short German girl working as security ruins everything. She’s stiff and kills the vibe everytime. This last Tuesday, my friends and I went, and the karaoke host, made the place come alive. Everyone was singing, dancing, and buying drinks. It felt like a weekend with the huge crowd present. Our Greek friend needed a YouTube song, Ali (the tall bearded guy who i believe is one of the bosses), let him sing it. Then this awful girl walks in, lowers the volume so much you could hardly hear the music, and refused more YouTube songs, citing some ridiculous copyright nonsense. Like if it was illegal, then those songs would've already been taken down from youtube. The night went from amazing to dreadful. She single-handedly turned a great night into a disaster. A third of the crowd left, and the place turned into a ghost town. The karaoke host looked so frustrated as she kept bossing him around, making him adjust knobs every minute. He was patient, but I would’ve lost it. And this is not the first time i've seen her do this. Everytime she walks in the mood changes and a lot of people start to leave. It's not coincidence that everybody outside complains about her. If i was the boss, I wouldn't be naive. That girl is bad...

I Recently had a very negative experience poison. The DJ decided not to play several of the songs we requested. Even though we ordered early (starting ~ 9pm), many of the requested songs from our large group weren't played, while other people made it to the stage several times. It seemed that the common trend was if you ordered a song with an attractive girl beside you, or if you yourself were an attractive girl, your song was pushed to the front of the queue. Overall it was a very disappointing experience from a bar that I used to really enjoy. I'm not sure if it is a general trend or if it was just a bad night/DJ, but I'll really have to consider whether I will return to the bar. On top of this, at one point another patron started throwing things at one of my friends on stage. To the staff's credit, the bartender quickly asked the person to leave, so I'll give 2 stars...