"Avoid the English breakfast"

Avoid the English breakfast. I had it yesterday and have paid a heavy price since.

'Undercooked' sausages and the sorriest limp tinned mushrooms you have ever seen. The poached egg was 'pre-poached', arrived cold with a yolk like a yellow snooker ball. Cuttlery was communal and covered in dried and crusted food.

This was an awful breakfast. Party of 5 all agreed.

Store was nice and coffee was hot, otherwise.

"Wait for hot drinks too long"

Really liked going to Bents prior to this visit. However this time the wait for hot drinks was far too long in my view. We changed tills but still had a long wait which would have been problematic if we had hot food. Very disappointed

"No stock!"

Placed an order on 30 Nov, received confirmation email etc stating 3-5 days delivery. Having not received my order I rang Bents on 10th December. Apparently my item was out of stock….with all the tec available how can you sell something that you don’t have and why not contact me instantly? They said they’d sent an email but I’d not received one not even in spam…why not call at the first opportunity or just refund my money rather than keeping my money and doing nothing or better still have descent tec so you can’t sell something which you do not have? That item, which was widely available at the time of order, is now out of stock everywhere…. so thank you very much!

"I visited the cafe last weekend and…"

I visited the cafe last weekend and bought food that was in the main nice, but the single lemon meringue cake that was over £6 was so burnt on the bottom it was black. I sent an email as the cafe was extremely busy. I offered to send a receipt and photo but to my disappointment they have not even bothered to respond.

"Slooow service in cafe"

There are two areas to eat 1) a street food scene 2) a self service cafeteria where the big breakfast is big, well cooked and presented but expensive at £16. In the cafeteria, the system of a) finding a table b) queuing to order and pay for food and drinks is poor. Taking 10 minutes to serve one customer at the front of numerous long queues with a frappe latte whilst time gets bearer and nearer to the end of breakfast service, is not good. Tea served far from hot in a pot whilst you wait 15 minutes for the food to arrive at your table is not good. By the time it has arrived, your tea pot is empty. The arrangements for ordering / paying for food are unclear and SLOOOOOW. The staff are pleasant. Travelling for 75 minutes ti get to the wonderland which is Christmas at Bents, is nowhere near as charming as it once was. Toilets very good....long queues of course for Ladies.

"Reindeer family "

i brought the Iridescent Reindeer family, very disappointed with the Reindeer very poor. not worth the money!

"AVOID MAIN DINING AREA IF YOU HAVE AN ALLERGY !!"

Please avoid Bents main dining area if you have an allergy. I visited yesterday and I have a severe allergy and carry epi-pens. I asked a member of staff if the soup has the allergen in and he then asked another two staff members who said no the allergen was not in the dish and it is fine for me to eat. I felt like the staff were very vague and not taking my allergy serious so I saw a chef had come out of the kitchen and asked again to be sure. The chef said it is fine and doesn’t contain the allergen. For some reason I still felt anxious that they hadn’t actually checked and just kept telling me it’s fine. When I got to the till I asked if I could speak to the manager to double check if the food was ok to eat. The manager then checked and the food DID contain the allergen and I couldn’t have it. This is so so dangerous for a place as large and busy as Bents to not take allergy’s serious as this could have been a different story, if I had listened to the first THREE staff members that said it was fine. People should not be given incorrect allergen information and I so glad for some reason I asked the manager to check again.

"Not up to standard poor value breakfast "

Bents is our first choice for breakfast but on this occasion it was well below the standard we have come accustomed to. In all the years we have been coming here it is only the second time that it has fallen short on the standard. The sausage was tasty but rock hard and over cooked along with the bacon black pudding and hash browns. Probably left under the heat lamp for too long. It was very quiet for a Sunday morning so they may not have been as busy in the kitchen as they normally are. Bents is not cheap so no excuse for getting it wrong your cook must’ve noticed it should not have been served. Possibly edging their bet that it would not be mentioned, not acceptable. Bit of a let down. My son’s breakfast was the same no excuse. Update before I left the shop, I spoke with the manager and they passed me on to the chef who was front of house. I can see why the food is so dry as they run a buffet style breakfast service at the front of the counter, where a staff member adds the food to your plate before it is served from bowels under the heaters. Total let down as it is pot luck if you get the fresh food from the top of the food bowls or get the food that has been in there a while. The priced charged £14 per breakfast, should be for a freshly cooked breakfast if I wanted a buffet breakfast I would have gone somewhere else and at least then I could choose what I put on my plate!! Why cook loads of food to leave it standing, it is not just about making it easy to serve for the staff it is about quality food for the paying public.
Some other people around our table were not happy with their overcooked food. The staff were apologetic but that no excuse. I would not recommend their breakfast and I will now be going somewhere else, for mine, big let down.

"A very negative customer service experience!"

Went this afternoon with my elderly mother to have some tea and cake plus to do some shopping. Queued at Caffe nel verde and was served by an extremely surly, uninterested, resentful young woman whose face looked incapable of cracking a smile. I ordered a scone and asked if the butter could be replaced with an extra jam instead. She mumbled sourly that this would cost extra as the ‘butter is free’. Her response to my questioning this was to simply ignore me and move to the next customer. Needless to say that I returned the tray of food and drink and walked out.

Bents need to ensure that staff like this are kept as far away from customers as possible. She is simply uninterested and incapable of providing even the basic expectations of customer service! A truly awful customer service representative!

"Food very poor and expensive it's a…"

Food very poor and expensive it's a garden centre for the rich very expensive