They Don’t Lose Money To Refunds, But They Lose In Other Ways

I meant to bake a cake for a family birthday party (three birthdays within a week, so we celebrate together), but work and other commitments meant I had no time. Not far from my house, a new but well-reviewed bakery popped up a few months ago, so I placed an order for a cake to feed twelve and got it the day before I had to drive south for the party.

Upon picking up the cake, it looked great with the three requested numbers on top in neat icing. It made it south without any major incidents and gleefully cut into almost exactly twenty-four hours after I bought it.

We all took a big bite and immediately had to try not to spit it out. It was tremendously stale (almost chewy) and had a strange taste to it, like the smell of off milk. We collected the slices back up into the box and made do without cake — not the biggest of hardships, I grant you.

As this cake cost me nearly £50, I was quite miffed. I went back into the bakery with the cake, only three days after I’d collected it, to speak to the bakers about it.

Me: “Hi, I got this cake from you guys and it’s awful. I think it’s off?”

Baker: *Rudely* “It’s not off.”

Me: “Okay, but we’ve tasted it and it really tastes bad — dry and like spoilt milk.”

Baker: “Let’s see it.”

I handed over the box of what was admittedly now three-day-old cake, cut into twelve slices with lots of bites taken out of them. It was obviously not how the cake had left the bakery.

Baker: “You’ve cut it up! You can’t get a refund for this.”

Me: “How would you expect us to figure out it was dry and tasted bad without cutting it up and taking bites? You can see there are no slices missing and no more than one bite from each slice — because it was disgusting.”

Baker: “We can’t refund a cake once it’s been cut. Store policy.”

The store manager repeated this once she was involved. I left the foul cake on their floor as they wouldn’t take it off me, and I won’t recommend them to anyone I know. Baffling policy.