Tinderbox coffee shop in Islington - great coffee, appalling customer service

Posted on July 3, 2007
Filed Under Diary |

So, I’ve been trying to find a decent local alternative to all the Starbucks that surround my workplace - I’m fed up with overpriced, mediocre coffee that isn’t even fairly traded.

The obvious place to try is Tinderbox, at the Angel Islington, which is trendy but serves a decent cup of coffee. I went in on Friday and ordered a small latte, only to be told that such a thing didn’t exist. I took a regular and jittered all afternoon. On Monday I tried again and ordered a small cappucino, which I got, and it was nice, and a good size. Today, I tried a third time, this time for a small latte again (assuming Friday had been some mistake) and discovered that they only serve cappucinos and americanos in ’small’. What?!

I had actually ordered three drinks and realised the size issue when they served up the first one, so asked them to make the rest small capuccinos. They refused. They agreed that the lack of small size latte was ridiculous, but did nothing. I mean, they have the cups, they have a price (based on capuccino), they have the coffee and the beans. So why? I mean, you could have the odd prices on display, but still make the drinks available (like Starbucks do with their ’short’ sizes).

In fact, if it weren’t for their astonishingly poor response to my asking for the drink I wanted, I would probably have happily gone back again and again and played their capuccino game. But with customer service like that, I don’t think so.

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