Vent: Re wetherpoons in the midlands

Idiophreak

Stormchaser wrote: »

But NONE of the places you have mentioned are the kind of places you were hinting at that offer some kind of 'restaurant service.' Nor are ANY of them better than Wetherspoons; NOR any cheaper. None of them would give more food or better service for a cheap price.

I go to Wetherspoons about once a month and the prices quoted by the OP are correct, yet you seem to be seriously implying that the OP is lying. Some paninis are actually a fiver each, depending on the content of them. You should go and look at the prices, before nit picking or implying someone is bulls**ting.

The nitpicking is a tad pedantic, when the OP was simply posting about the issue with the waitress's attitude. Also, comparing like you are doing, is like someone saying they had bad service when they got a blouse from the NEXT store for £15.00, and someone has a go at them, saying 'at Tesco, you could have got the whole OUTFIT for fifteen pounds; skirt and blouse and socks and shoes!' They're different shops and it's ridiculous to compare.

I'm not sure I can understand the pedantic nit picking and the Spanish Inquisition. Why are you making such an issue of her paying £12 for 2 meals and 2 drinks??? Why does it bother you so much. Even though she's answered you with the individual prices, (when she didn't have to,) you're still grilling and bleating how much cheaper she could have got it elsewhere. Why does it matter???

Blimey...been on the caffeine have we!?

I didn't imply the OP was lying, I made it very clear that wasn't my point, if you actually read the thread. I also never mentioned anything about "restaurant service"....just better service. I'd rather go somewhere where I have to wait for my own panini, but they'd apologise to me if there was an issue, than somewhere with "waiter service" and ignorant staff as discussed in the OP.

This is a site centred on moneysaving and part of that is to do with getting good value for money. £6 for a *wetherspoons* panini and a coffee is pathetic value for money and the OP could have got something much nicer for the same money. That was my only point.

Your analogy is a little off. To correct it, it's a bit like someone saying "I went into Primark and bought a sweater. It was terrible service...and it cost £300". In such a situation, someone may well point out that £300 is actually as much as you'd pay for a much nicer sweater in some really nice shops (where there isn't a foot deep pile of clothes over the whole floor, for instance) and that maybe shopping there would represent better value for money.

I also never said it would necessarily be cheaper elsewhere...I said it might be 50p cheaper, I said it might be 50p more...I just said it would be better value. The USP of wetherspoons is the price. If you take that away, you're paying normal prices for rubbish food and dodgy service, which is poor value and I think it's perfectly justifiable in the spirit of this site to point that out.

Personally, I drink pretty much exclusively in spoons - because the beer's half the price there of anywhere else local (and they have a good selection of ales on tap) - so I can forgive it's foibles. But if I started paying the same price as anywhere else, I'd just be in a weird smelling bar with very sticky surfaces, ignorant staff and still be paying the same money for the privilege....Which doesn't sound like a great deal.

techno12

goater78 wrote: »

Yours might be ok then. Most of them stuck tvs in for the 2010 World Cup and kept them in. I think all the manc ones have tvs.

They're always on silent with subtitles so not too obtrusive. I've been in dozens of Spoons (as poster above says, it's half the price of a lot of places. Plus they do Erdinger and they all have tellys.

Less welcome is the special horse racing telly that some Spoons now have - they show the same 20min loop of that day's races all evening, right up until closing. Waste of a telly!

sharnad

Idiophreak wrote: »

But that's £5 for a "full" meal, like curry, or burger and chips, or fish and chips etc and a pint of beer.

A pudding, panini and a couple of soft drinks sounds like it should cost less....that's all.

puddings about 4.00 as are paninis and drinks are a couple of quid

mountainofdebt

Idiophreak wrote: »

You mean aside from clusterbombing, tax avoidance, the tip scandal, their reticence to use fairtrade, their refusal to allow human rights monitors to inspect their premises in the third world, their opaque use of GM, etc etc

You can do some more reading if you like..."starbuck" and "evil" returns plenty of hits on google...And some good images, too:

I've highlighted this bit particularly as I don't see what Starbucks or Amazon have done wrong.

If my boss came up to me and told me I could pay 1% tax and it was all perfectly legal I'd go for it in a shot.

Personally if HMRC can't get its act together to close down all these loopholes then they deserve to lose the tax

Azari

mountainofdebt wrote: »

I've highlighted this bit particularly as I don't see what Starbucks or Amazon have done wrong.

You don't see what they've done wrong, presumably because you don't actually know how they've avoided paying tax.

What they have done is, roughly speaking, in line with people who avoid paying stamp duty by overvaluing fixtures and fittings.

They have dishonestly overvalued goods and services they have 'bought' from subsidiaries based in very low tax jurisdictions.

It is true, however, that the fact that they have been able to get away with these financial sleights of hand can really only be blamed on the UK government for allowing the accounting procedure that are used. (Where UK citizens attempt to use the same tricks they can be prosecuted for tax evasion.)

jumpedtheshark

mountainofdebt wrote: »

I've highlighted this bit particularly as I don't see what Starbucks or Amazon have done wrong.

If my boss came up to me and told me I could pay 1% tax and it was all perfectly legal I'd go for it in a shot.

Personally if HMRC can't get its act together to close down all these loopholes then they deserve to lose the tax

I agree. The media and government for some reason seem to think that the great British public is stupid enough to just blame the businesses concerned. They're avoiding, not evading tax, and it's the government, HMRC in particular, that have allowed this. We should be blaming them for not closing the loopholes, for allowing senior employees at large accounting firms to help draft new legislation with them, which they then turn around and exploit with their corporate clients. The problem isn't the businesses, but the government.

Azari

jumpedtheshark wrote: »

They're avoiding, not evading tax, and it's the government, HMRC in particular, that have allowed this.

You can't really blame HMRC.

They can only operate within the framework of the law as it stands.

If there are loopholes it is up to the chancellor, via the legislature, to plug them, not some government department whose hands are tied by current statutes.

Idiophreak

mountainofdebt wrote: »

I've highlighted this bit particularly as I don't see what Starbucks or Amazon have done wrong.

If my boss came up to me and told me I could pay 1% tax and it was all perfectly legal I'd go for it in a shot.

Personally if HMRC can't get its act together to close down all these loopholes then they deserve to lose the tax

Meh, I kind of agree, actually. There's this thing called "capitalism" at work...and as a shareholder, I'd probably be pretty down on any company that paid more tax than it had to instead of paying me a bigger dividend...

That said, in your example, if the way you could pay 1% tax was to shoot (legally) a stranger in the street, would you still do it? Just because something's legal, doesn't necessarily make it ethically sound - or implicitly "non evil", if you like. Starbucks have avoided paying tax in this country so they can operate at a loss in other countries, which enables them to better deploy clusterbombing, driving small independents out of business and ultimately preventing a free market. "Perfectly" legal...But I can honestly say that I'd never allow a company I run to use such methods.

Azari

goater78 wrote: »

Yours might be ok then. Most of them stuck tvs in for the 2010 World Cup and kept them in. I think all the manc ones have tvs.

Update:

By a weird coincidence I happened to be in one of the two locations I mentioned earlier (saying they had no TV) and discovered that they actually do have a TV. However, there is no sound and it's quite hard to spot from most positions in the pub. Certainly not a game changer like so many places where a loud TV dominates the whole atmosphere.

I'll have to have a closer look at the other location but, again, if it does have a set it must be located somewhere where you are unlikely to notice it.

whitelabel

am i the only one thinking that going out for a "meal" and just ordering a crumble is a bit weird ?