Great Western Surf Café — Restaurant in England

Avoid. Don’t book, don’t go. I pre-booked this place before our holiday to Newquay online. Sadly, a member of our party tested positive for COVID and therefore our trip was cancelled. I attempted to contact GWSC via phone and email multiple times on the afternoon of our booking (in hope they could release our table to other customers - as they make very clear through other reviews and their ‘booking policy’, that they’re very busy). Strangely enough, they never answered the phone. The number, advertised both on their booking policy and website. Nor did they respond to my email. Their online booking system also did not allow me to ‘cancel’ my booking, as it was within 24 hours notice.

I then receive an automated email the next day telling me they have taken £60 from my card that I booked with, as we failed to show.

I respond with Evidence showing my attempts to contact and explained our situation. I receive a response, from the owner, David. Telling me that I agreed to the T&C’s when booking, and that nothing further could be done.

I proceed to inform GWSC that we are LEGALLY unable to attend this booking and we would in fact, be breaking the LAW by attending. Again, I tried to contact multiple times via phone to explain this - but oddly - no response.

I would advise anyone to avoid this establishment. Clearly there’s no consumer compassion in such challenging times, there’s no desire to have answered my communication on cancelling - which just makes me wonder if they gave my table away, and pocketed the cancellation fee as extra profit?

Real shame, don’t spend your money with people like this. There’s plenty of other places struggling to recover from the pandemic who would appreciate your custom a lot more. Hopefully we will find a resolution to this...

Called in after a day on the beach, after seeing the table photographed with drinks outside. We had already changed and managed to remove most of the sand off and looking to relax before heading back to the nicer party of Newquay. Bleached blonde barman, initially had his back to the bar, turned saw me, wandered up and down the bar, looked at some wine glasses, went over to the pass looked at a ticket, chatted to the cook, came back, said it was table service and would be a while, and that there was a bar on the beach.

Explained that we'd headed up from there and freshened up, he had the expression of a dog shown a card trick.

As I sat writing this review, a gentleman came out with another pint...

We were considering dining here, at least once on the week we're here. Wouldn't bother with such poor front of house and customer service for a drink.

The other female staff seemed to be doing the lioness' share of the work, on a quiet Saturday.

I've seen the replies the owner gives, so I'm not expecting...

Awful experience. We had a reservation for 5pm, but at 4am that day we received an NHS track and trace notification that we had to self isolate due to being in close contact with someone who was positive for Covid-19. Despite calling many times (before 12pm as stated on their website) and emailing, we had no response. Then a week later we were charged £30 for being no-shows. However, it would have been illegal for us to have turned up for our reservation. This is completely unfair and against public health advice. If you’re thinking of visiting here, don’t! Remember you could get a notification like ours at any time and you will be charged £10 (or £20 as per t&cs) per person despite following government rules and have no control over the matter. Edit: Reply to this calls the review 'incorrect' which is untrue. We tried to honour our booking but we were told to self-isolate by the NHS. Tried to call over 30 times (see photo for one time where i called 23 times). So no, definitely...