Finished packing a pile! YAY!!!! :D Now got a new pile knee-high to file... Seems like I just shifted the old pile to a new location, at a different angle... but! What I did do was extract all the nice wedding stuff- receipts, greeting cards, excess cards, lying press kits from a certain delight-ful caterer... :P Well, I've been meaning to do this... and here it is! The correspondence from our wedding co-ordinator & their response! :D
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THE CATERING SAGA
PART I: THE COMPLAINT LETTER
Tan Boon Haur
June 23, 2003
Mr James Wong
Managing Director
Continental Delight Catering Services
46 Senoko Drive, S(758229)
Re: Feedback and Report of Service Rendered
Dear Mr Wong:
I am writing in my capacity as wedding coordinator on behalf of Mr and Mrs Benjamin Teo, and on behalf of their parents. We wish to register our feedback of the service rendered by your staff during Mr and Mrs Benjamin Teoís wedding reception on 21 June. We hope that you will be patient in reading and responding to our report and queries.
We are appreciative of the early efforts put into the planning of the wedding, such as the food tasting, the site inspection by Mr Huan, the early setting up of the tentages, and the readiness to customise the order. We are grateful to Mr Huan for his tireless work during the buffet reception.
However, the delivery of the order and the performance of the staff on the day of the wedding were unacceptable. We wish to bring to your attention the shocking mishandling of the whole event prior to and during the wedding reception:
1. It has been clearly stated during the site inspection five days before the wedding that the buffet should be ready by 3.15pm. Yet, the order confirmation sheet, which was fraught with errors, timed the setup at 3.30pm and the food layout at 4.30pm. I had personally called on Mr Huan on 18 June, Wednesday, to remind him about this error. On the day of the wedding, the food arrived after the wedding ceremony had ended at about 3.30pm.
We fail to comprehend why our requests for the buffet to be ready by 3.15pm could not be fulfilled despite the reminders. If the mistake had been discovered earlier or the delay anticipated, we wish to know why we could not have been informed earlier. This would have allowed our organisers to react to the contingency instead of being left in the dark up till the last minute. The failure to observe the correct timing was compounded by the lack of transparency on the part of your staff. Until this very moment, we still do not know whether CDCS has realised that a mistake has been made.
Please respond to this: Why was the buffet not ready by 3.15pm despite the reminders? Why could we not be informed earlier that the buffet setup would be late ?
2. Floral arrangements for the signing tables, and banquet chairs for the bride and groom were expected to be delivered by 11.00am as reflected in the order confirmation sheet. We did not receive the floral arrangements that day even though the tables had been set up. When your staff arrived at the church for the 11.00am setting up, I had personally informed the gentleman who was in charge that the banquet chairs were missing. He, and later Mr Huan, had assured me that it would arrive before 1.00pm. The wedding ceremony started at 2.00pm. The banquet chairs were seats for the bride and groom during the wedding ceremony and we had engaged two florists to come and specially dress up the chairs with flowers. As it turned out, the chairs did not arrive until after the wedding ceremony had ended! The florists had left by then for another engagement. In the end, we still have to honour our payments to the florists even though they could not do what they were paid to do with the chairs.
We again lament the lack of transparency in not informing us that the chairs could not come on time as promised. This unreliability had left our organisers with the incredible situation of having seats for all the guests but none for the bride and groom. An honest admission would have given us more time to react and find suitable replacement chairs for the bride and groom and utilise the services of the florists specially ordered for the occasion.
Please respond to this: We wish to understand why the chairs had been omitted even though it was clearly stated in the order confirmation sheet. We wish to understand why the chairs arrived after the wedding ceremony despite assurances from your staff that it would be on time.
3. The overall service of the staff was unsatisfactory and the last-minute delivery of the food items raised several complaints regarding the quality of the food. We hope that you will take note of the following:
ï Our own ushers, dressed in their formal attire, had to help with the unloading of the food in order to expedite the setting up.
ï The VIP table was not served.
ï The ice-carving left a huge puddle of water around the dessert table in the
middle of the reception hall. No attempts were made to rectify the problem.
ï Guests had feedback that dessert items, such as the chocolate eclairs and cream puffs, were served frozen.
ï We noticed that Mr Huan appeared to be the only person serving and clearing tables in the reception hall. A few of us, including myself, had to personally clear the cocktail tables when the used plates and drinking glasses were left to pile up. The replenishment of food was also not done promptly between the two reception areas.
Please respond to this: Why was there an apparent shortage of service when there are eleven members of the staff (one manager, two cooks and eight service staff, four of which were additionally requested and paid for) at work ?
ï A few of our helpers also gave the feedback that they were refused service at the laksa hawker stall after they had helped to serve the guests. The reason given by Mr Huan was that the stall had run out of noodles. My helpers were sure that this could not have been the case because they saw noodles being disposed of during the packing up at the end of the reception. We also noticed that there was still a fair amount of ingredients, such as taupok and fish cake, left over when the stall stopped serving. While the crowd might have thinned considerably by 5.00pm, we expected the service to continue because many of our helpers had yet eaten. The hawker stalls were paid for and the decision to call it to a halt and pack up should be given by our organisers and not by the staffís assessment of the crowdís demand.
Please respond to this: We wish to understand why the laksa stall had stopped serving so soon.
We wish to state that the main purpose of this correspondence is not to complain. But we wish to make known that we feel aggrieved by the level of service which we received that day. We are sure that you can empathise with our discontent and would not tolerate the same service if you were in our shoes. We are sure that you appreciate the significance of a wedding ceremony and reception as we do. It is not merely a social function but a prominent milestone that marks the new lives of the newly-weds. We desire to show our respect for the occasion and for the newly-weds not by being drawn into any hasty and angry accusations, but by being objective and seeking to understand what was behind the uncharacteristically poor service from your staff. We hope that you will also respond in the same spirit in order to honour the newly-weds as well as to do justice to your companyís good name.
CDCS does not become a bad company overnight and cannot have won over its extensive and prominent clientele without displaying professionalism and maturity. Therefore, we are confident that you will help us redress the matter. Mr and Mrs Benjamin Teo are overseas and will be back from 30 June, Monday. We are confident that you will be able to respond to them personally by that time. Thank you for your patience and time.
Sincerely,
Tan Boon Haur
cc. Mr and Mrs Benjamin Teo, the bride and groom
Mr Sam Ng, assistant wedding coordinator
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THE CATERING SAGA
PART II: THE RESPONSE LETTER
and their reply...
09 July 2003
Mr. Benjamin Teo & Ms. [A]udrey Chua
3A Robey Crescent
Singapore 546258
Dear Ben & [A]udrey,
LETTER OF APOLOGY (65944/04/03)
Greetings from The Good Food People here at Continental Delight Catering Services.
We refer to the Feedback and Report of Service Rendered received from your wedding coordinator, Mr Tan Boon Haur dated 23 June 2003.
First and foremost, I thank you for your patience with us and I would like you to know that we are taking this matter constructively. It is unusual that we provide food and services that are not in line with our minimum standard. The operations and food preparation division have been informed of this unfortuate incident and special efforts and emphasis will be put in to make sure that incident of this sort does not repeat itself.
We acknowledge that we were unable to keep to the stipulated time as stated in the order confirmation to you. CDCS is not pushing away any responsibility in this incident. Yes, CDCS is aware that it has made a grave mistake with regards to its planning and organization this time round. We are fully aware of the undue stress, embarrassment and trouble that your good self went through during the delay of our arrivals and set up.
After doing our on (??) check with the various parties involved we have come to the following conclusion:-
Mr. Huan, who did the site inspection and the final details confirmation with your goodself, had forgotten to update the details with the divisions concerned. Due to the heavy load of event through out that week, he overlooked the details despite the repeated reminders. To make matters worse, the catering assistant assigned to your event was delayed from his previous event thus causing a chain reaction and he in his anxiety and panic, did not inform us on time for us to do a recovery. On hind side (??!), we should have informed you of the situation and we apologize for not doing so.
Due to Mr. Huan's failure to inform the respective divisions concerned, the floral arrangements arrived late as well. The cushion chairs ware totally missed out from the order (it was never ordered) and we again apologize and take responsibility for the failure to deliver the items as promised. As for the service during the event, we believed that Mr. Huan had failed to properly designate his staff to their respective duties thus resulting in unacceptable service level. The cooks at the food station was never instructed to stop serving the items and they have been reprimanded and due warning was given for their unethical and unprofessional attitude towards our guests.
Ben & Wendy (???!?!?!), we really feel that CDCS have failed to meet your expectations and we would like to invite you out for a dinner and extend our personal and heartfelt apologies in person. Thanking you in advance for your kind understanding and continuous support. We look forward to catering for you in the near future to redeem ourselves.
Should you have any query pertaining to the above, do not hesitate to contact me at contact no. 6758 3393 or via .
Regards,
Didacus Chang
Cc: James Wong (MD)
Huan Beng Choon (Operations)
Mang Ah Hee (Kitchen)
Shelyn Lim (A/C)
Misnah Abdullah (Sales)
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A delight-ful letter... italics to highlight errors... gosh... couldn't they have proof-read their work? Anyhows, they've already taken 3 weeks to draft this letter! Shouldn't it be perfect by now?
Oh, prior to the catering experience... didn't want to work with CDCS already coz the Sales rep wasn't as efficient as expected. Fortunately, she recovered when Ben liaised with her.
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