Cedele @ Wheelock Place

I had a late lunch there today as I wanted to buy freshly baked bagels and bread. I asked if I could order the bagel and orange cranberry loaf from the bakery side first while waiting for my table and then pay for everything together. The staff said it was not a problem.

Unfortunately it was a problem. It seemed like either the cashier was incompetent or the system was not able to read the order.

The first and second receipt (after 10% discount with a credit card promotion) didn't tally. The service charge and GST were higher on the 2nd receipt than on the 1st. I usually do not check receipt or figure and tend to sign blindly, but this time I happened to look at both receipts and saw the difference.

I asked another staff about it, and he seemed to think I was refering to the promotion discount when I said service charge. I had to repeat it several times I was refering to service charge before he understood. That was when he also really took a look at both receipts, before that he was just giving the usual spiel about how the credit card promotion work.

He agreed that there was a miscalculation and the bread and bagel from the bakery should not have any service charge on it at all (he didn't mention the GST part even though there was a price difference too). I still did not know how he did the calculation but he gave me back $0.25 when the difference for both service charge and GST was $1.06 (yes, not a lot).

So obviously there is some miscalculation somewhere but I didn't really want to bother about it as I just wanted to find out how the bakery and restaurant part differed in the charges. And by right or law (?), they should have reversed my credit card charge and re-charged me again instead of making the difference in cash.

I mean, that is logic. Giving me cash and not doing a reverse means that at the end of the day, the till will show a different amount and not tally with the sales at all. Even at Borders when they need to credit me with cash when they made a mistake, they will input something in the system and print out an acknowledgement form for me to sign on.

Again, the attitude and standard of service staff could really be better in Singapore. It is based on individuals. The company or management can have as many training sessions as possible but if the front line staff is not that keen to serve, nothing will change. Of the 3-5 service staff within the restaurant, only 2 were enthusiastic about their work. The rest were blind to the needs of the customers and it was a full house then. Water was not topped up, hands had to be waved violently to catch the attention of a staff (I saw that at one table). That was why I walked up to the cashier at the front instead to make payment after trying in vain to catch the eye of another wait staff.

This was my 5th visit to Cedele @ Wheelock and each time, it didn't manage to wow me with its service at all. Last visit, they made a mistake with our dessert platter order.

Lesson learnt: check receipts all the time and question any discrepancy found.