My sister in law and I had such a terrible, disappointing experience at
the Calico Cat in March 2008 (I have only recently discovered Yelp reviews for this establishment.)
In August 2007, my parents decided it would be nice to buy my sister in law and I twenty five dollar gift certificates (each) to the Calico Cat for our birthdays. We were delighted as we had often talked about visiting the Calico Cat. In March, we decided to redeem our gift certificates and made a reservation, intending to eat lunch as well as have our tea leaves read.
Upon our arrival, I was surprised, and I will admit rather unimpressed to see a large sign on the door warning that expired gift certificates would not be honoured. However, we were warmly greeted by Calico Cat staff and shown to our table. Then, upon seating I also noticed another sign saying something about presenting gift certificates upon seating or they would not be honoured. I found that extremely unusual, as well as distasteful. However, we located our gift certificates, which is when I noticed that they expired after SIX MONTHS.
I was shocked. Six months is a ridiculously short period of time to expect people to use a gift certificate. And, given that the gift certificates were only a month or two over the 6 months, I didn't think it would be a problem. In any case I spoke to our server to explain what my sister in law and I had just realized. The server looked - in a word - mortified. She explained that the short expiration date was the restaurant's policy - she was joined by her colleague who looked equally mortified to be enforcing something so unreasonable. I politely told them that I realized this wasn't their doing, and asked if the owner was on premises. They said that the owner, Heather, was downstairs and we asked them to find her so that we could speak with her directly.
Imagine our surprise when the poor girl returned and informed us that not only had the owner refused to honour the FIFTY DOLLARS in gift certificates that my parents had paid her for, but that she was UNAVAILABLE. Unavailable to deal with an extremely valid customer complaint? Really? It certainly felt as though that satisfying her customers was not high on her list of priorities as a small business person. My sister in Iaw and I agreed that neither of us had ever been so insulted in a place of business.
As such, we wrote the owner a letter in the hopes that upon speaking with her staff and reading the letter, she would re-consider her position and choose to rectify this extremely unfortunate situation. Ha - so much for that idea!
Neither my sister in law and I are particularly confrontational people, but this was an extremely upsetting experience and one that I would not like to see repeated. In fact, the Ontario and Manitoba governments had already both passed legislation banning businesses from placing expiration dates on gift certificates and a similar law went into effect here in British Columbia shortly after our experience at the Calico Cat.
We never even received the courtesy of a response after both asking for the owner to come up and see us in person, as well as writing a letter to her directly. It was one of the most horrible experiences we have ever had, and I will never step foot in the Calico Cat again! Clearly, Heather has no idea about a little thing known as customer service.
Her website says "We specialize in making memories." Well, she's right about that. We will NEVER forget how badly we were treated by the owner of the Calico Cat Teahouse. read more