Twenty Three — Restaurant in Waitematā

It was yesterday, a Friday in the middle of the day, we walked into the cafe in a very good mood as we hadn't seen each other in a very long time, there was not a single other customer there, due to the long weekend she said. We'd been there for less than a minute perusing the counter food when the lady who seemed to be the manager on the day started saying repeatedly and loudly that we should just take a menu and sit down, they'd come to us. We just wanted a quick snack and drink. My 5 year old son had seen and pointed at the 'Almond Croissants' (as they were labelled) at the counter, so I ordered one immediately and then due to the pressure to find a table we took a seat in the courtyard before ordering our drinks. We sat waiting for about 10 minutes until at last a sweet waitress arrived to take our order, a couple of green smoothies and said almond croissant. Another 15 minutes, nothing. So I went to see what was happening, the croissant was sitting on a plate at the counter, she was just finishing making the smoothies so I handed my son his croissant and then carried the drinks myself when they were ready. Upon sitting down we quickly realised that the croissant was not an almond croissant just a plain one, cold, no butter, no jam ( they said they didn't have any?), there was no apology just defensiveness, she said, "the kid pointed at the plain croissants, I didn't think he could read." I was just gobsmacked, yes they did replace upon request with another pasterie but the damage had been done. Will...

My friend and I went out for a drink and to study. We both bought drinks and then went to find a seat. We didn’t realise that BYO food wasn’t allowed, so when we were told, we put the food down on the seat next to us because our bags were full.While my friend went to charge her laptop, a rude blonde lady came over and said, “This place is no BYO. If you’re going to come here and USE OUR POWER and OUR SPACE, then don’t eat your own food , this isn’t an internet café + much more."We explained that another staff member had already told us about the rule, and that’s why we had put the food aside. She ignored this and insisted she saw us eating the food, even though we explained we were only eating the ice that came with our drinks. Throughout the conversation, she was extremely rude, acting as if we were taking advantage of their power and space, despite the fact that we had purchased drinks and are customers. If you want a nice study spot, I recommend walking two minutes down the road to Ditto Café. Their service is genuinely friendly, and they treat you with respect. Here’s some advice to the staff: learn to treat people respectfully maybe then you’ll get enough customers to cover the “massive” cost of the power bill you seemed so...

Incredibly disappointing customer service. Attempted to make a booking to which I was met with hostile and cold customer service. The lady had a slight accent and she treated me as though I was offending her. She misheard my cellphone number, so I repeated it and asked if she got it correctly, instead she stopped talking. I could hear all the cage background noise happening, I gently asked if anyone was there a few times, after prompting 2-3 times, the lady ended the call. Unsure if this was intention or not, I called back to clarify, to which my call went straight to the answer machine.

In the end I cancelled my booking because the customer service was so rude. Would not recommend this cafe to others and I think this cafe needs to reflect on whether they want to continue in this business...