If I could award minus points for this unholy shambles of a business, then I would.
We ordered Don Paulo's 'Roast chicken meal deal' for the sum of £9.90 - enough for the two of us we thought and waited patiently for the delivery. After 50 minutes of discussing how much we were looking forward to the whole warm chicken, garlic bread, chips and salad, there was a knock on the door. Slight alarm bells started ringing when the delivery driver (manager) handed over the food and the bag of food just felt a little too light to substantiate the order. By this time we were both very hungry and began opening up the contents..
The room fell into deep silence as we revealled Don Paulo's 'Whole Roasted Chicken' to be, as my first thoughts transgressed into thinking - why have these people delivered two pigeons, scraped off the tarmac from the A45? The 'thing' was already cut in half, an attempt to disguise the non-existent breast of meat I expect - a Don Paulo illusion which wasn't fooling us. We could not believe our eyes as we stared at this monstrosity, were we meant to eat this!? And what would happen to us if we did? I had seen fresher looking fossils. I managed to pluck up enough courage to touch it with my finger in an act of twisted curiosity. I quickly withdrew my finger which was now caked in some sort of engine grease - had an oily old motorbike ran over these two unfortunate pigeons, repeatedly? And why was this costing me £9.90?
With trepidation, we checked the remaining contents of the order..4 nobbly ends cut thoughtfully from what appeared to be three week old baguettes. Not even Jaws from James Bond would have been able to munch his way through this garlic bread and I'm quite sure even Spielberg's shark would have had his work cut out.
Next we opened up the chips...a huge mist of steam filled the room as the lid was prised open - had we unwillingly ordered ourselves a mini sauna? I ran outside, away from the steam to double check the menu we ordered from and it did cleary state 'chips' included in this 'meal deal'. We opened all the doors and windows in the house to let the steam escape and over time I could slowly start seeing what housed itself in the takeaway carton. I slipped on some thick yellow rubber gloves and braved the remaining steam and as my glove began to melt, I prised something out which disturbingly felt as though it barely had anymore substance than thin air. I could only just recognise this as once being a 'chip' - it was more white than yellow for some reason and quickly gave up on life as it disintegrated between my two fingers. And without delay, I phoned up Don Paulo to explain what had just happened..
To cut a long story short, I was told the manager would be phoning me back as he wasn't in the shop at the time. 30 minutes had passed, and still no phone call. Where was he? And why wasn't he phoning me back? I pictured him on the A45 shovelling dead vermin into a carrier bag. I called the shop back, I was told he would be calling me shortly..I again waited..nothing. I then called the shop again, I explained that I didn't mind bringing the 'Roast Chicken Meal Deal' back to them in exchange for my £10. But he couldn't do anything without the manager's permission, so he gave me the moblie number to contact the manager..
To the heavy sound of motorway traffic, I didn't get very far in explaining my simple conudrum here - and in plain English I said 'we reverse the deal, your food back to you in exchange for my ten pounds'. To the sound of a scraping shovel, all I could hear from him was "We are not a charity shop!" I quickly pointed out I'd unwillingly donated £10 to the cause of Don Paulo Pizza without personal gain, so therefore they must be a charity. And, as I could hear flat animals being dropped into bags, I was told in no uncertain terms that I could take the matter to court but I wasn't getting any refund.
To sum it all up, avoid 'Don Paulo Pizza' like the Bubonic plague. read more
