The Panshi Spice
1D Foster Hill Road
Bedford
Beds
MK40 2EN
01234 352276
Well hello there my little belly burpers, and a happy new year to you all!
Me oh my, hasn’t it been a long time. Now don’t take this extended break as a sign that I gave up on take-away’s altogether. Oh no, I just had shit to do.
So let’s get stuck in shall we.
Just before the Christmas break some friends and I had a night in planned. A few beers, a few games and a curry. But where should we go?
Well this was a Thursday night so the best thing to do is get as much fodder as possible for as cheap as possible. The Panshi Spice it is then ladies and gentlemen. You see, The Panshi Spice do a bit of a deal on Thursdays & Sundays, Poppadum, Nan Bread, Rice, Starter, main & side dish for a tenner…. A BLOODY TENNER!
We’d all ordered from there before and the food has always been good. Normally you have to collect with this deal but there was over £50 worth of food here so we wangled a delivery, that was a mistake!
The warning signs were already on the wall when it took us nearly 40 minutes to order the food. Not because the lady ordering had some sort of issue speaking (I mean, she is welsh but that accent has long gone –heh) but because the guy on the other end of the phone clearly could not understand the English language! Now if you’re in the service industry and you take orders via telephone then (and perhaps I’m totally wrong here) you really need someone that can understand what the person on the other end of said phone is saying. I could understand if we’d tried to order our food using fart sounds & bird calls then this may become somewhat difficult to understand and the order might possibly get lost in translation but we were just using the bog standard words printed on the menu we were reading from.
The other issue we had is that when we ordered the side dishes we were told that they were not side dishes and that side dishes were rice dishes. “So let me get this straight you get a poppadum, starter, main course, nan bread and rice as well as a side dish of rice?”
Obviously this was total balls. However, you can see the issue when you look at the menu as nowhere does it say “Side Dishes”, the side dishes are in fact the vegetable dishes listed under the heading “Vegetable Dishes” just to add confusion to what was already becoming a giant ****ing headache. Anyway, we got past this hurdle and carried on trying to order the remaining dishes.
Finally, the food was ordered now we just needed to give an address. After another battle with language the address was accepted and as we nursed the person who ordered back to health with the aid of a mental health worker and psychiatrist we waited… and waited…. And waited…
After about an hour and a half we called them back to ask where the food was and were told it was on its way. More time passed and then the driver called to say he couldn’t find the house number on BLAH BLAH Close. “Blah blah close?” we asked, “We’re not in blah blah close, in fact blah blah close doesn’t even exist in this village. We’re at Whatsist Called Way in the Village of ThisIsWhereWeLive.”
The driver read back the postcode he had, it was wrong. Only by one letter but it was wrong nonetheless. We corrected the driver who said he would turn around and head to us. And we waited… again.
Once again we called them back to see what was going on and to say how unhappy we were with the service & waiting time. That’s when the driver finally turned up. What ensued was an argument of epic proportions as the driver started shouting at us for giving the wrong address on phone, (because either A) We don’t know where we live or B) despite our hunger we like to have our food make a cross country trip so that it arrives late & cold). As the argument heated up we ended up shouting back trying to explain that we didn’t blame the drive but that the guy that took the order was the issue and got the postcode wrong. The driver had no interest in being exonerated of any blame and then argued that he was ONLY 5 miles away… 5 miles! Yeah mate, that’s fine, my plate is only 5 miles from my dinner but I’m not sure I’ve got a fork long enough to reach my bloody starter! Imagine a taxi driver dropping you off 5 miles from your home and then giving you shit for it or someone installing your Nan’s new stair lift in the house next door “Well it’s only across the alleyway, if we install a rope bridge from their bathroom window she can clamber across that when it’s bedtime no problem”. Jesus wept! (Well, it was around Christmas time and he was just a baby so I suppose he would cry a bit).
While all of this was going one someone was on the phone to the manager saying that we would pay a reduced amount for the very late and very cold food which in the end he accepted. We asked him to tell this to the delivery guy who then lost his sh*t saying he would not accept the reduced amount. It was quite frankly a bloody nightmare. I mean, what has happened to customer service? What has happened to “the customer is always right”. This is by far the worst service I have had in years and arguing so angrily with your client is no way to go about ensuring repeat orders in the future.
In the end we paid him a bit more than agreed and he buggered off. Thank god!
I (in my infinite wisdom) had already turned the oven on some while back pre-empting the arrival of cold food. A 20-minute re-cook and we could finally eat.
I think the most annoying part of the whole event is that the food was really good. I had Onion Bhaji, Lamb Rogan & Mushroom Bhaji. Obviously everyone’s dish was different but I took little notice of their orders as I was too fracking hungry at this point and just started shovelling.
I’m a bit conflicted here as food wise The Panshi Spice is my favourite Indian take-away, especially when you’re ordering on deal night as there is so much food for £10.00. Normally Mrs Belly and I would order the deal + one other main as there is enough food for at least two people and the food has always been top notch, I’ve never had Delhi belly nor a burny bum the next day as I have had with other Indian take-outs (so no need to keep that special loo roll in the fridge overnight). I’ve chatted with the owner and he’s a nice guy too I just think that (as previously mentioned) you need to have someone that can communicate effectively on the phone, and a driver who respects the client enough to ****ing apologise for the company’s error would be grand too.
