Are you open yet?

Not quite, I’m afraid.

You are very welcome to phone through to the shop and arrange a collection, or you can still order online, but we are not quite ready to actually open our doors. It was our plan to open on Monday 15^th June on the proviso that our risk assessment plan was in place.

But we were thwarted.

Three weeks after placing the order, a massive parcel arrived from the Plastic Sheets company. We assumed “Yippee! Our new counter screen is ready to install”. But the parcel looked strangely wide and not quite long enough and indeed it was too wide and too short. The delivery note was addressed to a Grill Café in Hoddesdon, obviously an easy mistake to confuse them with a Yacht Chandler in London.

I emailed the supplier to explain what had happened but got no response. The following day I tried phoning but the supplier was too busy to answer on their Customer Services phone, but soon picked up the Sales phone. The pleasant man explained that I had come through to the wrong department and he would ask the right person to phone me back.

Then an email came through from the company kindly inviting me to review my delivery online. Silly error on their behalf. I obliged with a one-star review, zero stars wasn’t an option. Strangely, half an hour later a pleasant women from Customer Services phoned up to try to sort out the mess. She assured me the massive 44 kg parcel blocking up the shop would be collected the following day and our sheet would be recut and sent out ready for Monday. Needless to say Tufnells, for it was they, never arrived to collect the sheet and we wait with bated breath to see if our new sheet arrives on Monday. I’m not quite sure how a 3 m polycarbonate sheet gets “lost” in the first place.

So, if you were thinking of visiting a Grill Café in Hoddesdon this week, I would advise a quick call first!
If you need some boating supplies please phone through to the shop 020 7836 9034 between 11:00 and 16:00 BST and we will arrange a time when you can collect them – or we can deliver them if you prefer.