#WeddingDrama: Beef mistakenly served at our Hindu engagement party, what now?
Hey guys, so my fiancé and I recently had our engagement party at a fancy hotel on the Las Vegas strip. Everything was going smoothly until dinner time, when we realized that beef and pork were served, despite us being Hindu and vegetarian. 😱
Our guests were shocked, some even accidentally ate the pork lomo on their pasta! It was a disaster and now we’re left wondering how to seek compensation from the hotel. Should we ask for 20% off the food bill, or more? Less?
We’re hesitant to involve lawyers because, let’s be honest, these big hotels have powerful legal teams. Plus, a menu mix-up with multiple BOEs is complicating things. 😬
Any advice on how to handle this situation would be greatly appreciated. Have you ever faced a similar issue at an event? Poll below! 🤔 #EventMishap #CompensationSeeking #HelpNeeded 🙏🏼
In addition to the breach of contract issue, there were very real possibilities of dietary complications. Hopefully, noone became ill.
At the very least the entire food portion should be subtracted. Especially if the food was not recooked.
In addition, a discount on the rest of the venue would be appropriate for the distress it created.
If the hotel refuses to refund you. Charge back the full amount for food this is gross incompetence. Highly unlikely you need to actual sue. Services were not rendered.
Either the hotel makes you right or charge back the literally ineddible food. The hotel knows they’ll lose the charge back and charge backs suck for vendors, they should help you without ever needing to be sued.
Frankly I’d demand a discount on everything else too, but that’s me.
>We hesitant to involve lawyers, as these big hotels likely have powerful legal teams. Complicating matters that after a menu tasting, made some dessert changes, resulting in a third and final BOE. Unfortunately, this BOE reverted to the original menu with beef and pork, but we didn’t notice as we were focused on confirming the dessert changes. Our signatures are on this final BOE.
I’m not sure of the responses here. Yes you did have to correct them on one version of the contract, but the **FINAL** version you signed had pork/beef. You can always ask about a discount but if they tell you to take them to court I think you are SOL. Big miss there not reading the whole contract before final signing, especially since they already messed it up once. I would take that as a life lesson and move on.
Contact their management. Let the management know whoever did the BOE kept getting it wrong and changing it. Stay calm but don’t back down. They might try and tell you it’s your fault, but let them know you’ll file a formal complaint with the company. This isn’t necessarily a legal issue to go to court for or get a lawyer. But these businesses rely on word of mouth and they don’t want a bad review/story getting out. Especially with the religion aspect of it, and that you still have your own wedding and family members who could potentially have their events there. They’ll probably offer a certain % off.
I had a similar issue with the Bellagio getting the order wrong for a small brunch. Then they couldn’t cook the correct food in time so we had to settle with random sides as the meal. They ended up comping the meal but I had to complain 3 times.
If the final contract that you signed included beef and pork in the menu, then you are going to have a hard time making them liable for your mistake?
What a completely useless company. Any venue in the business knows about this and should have a BOE and recipes all set up. Write a letter to the general manager of the hotel.
Sorry this happened to you but you really should have been more careful reviewing and signing the final BOE. This mess is a result of your lack of attention to detail. It’s likely the BOE was provided to the kitchen and they prepared what was documented there, having no knowledge that this event was for Hindus and meant to be pork and beef free. Talk to the hotel, they may give you a discount in the interest of delivering good customer service and avoiding a messy situation.
NAL I suspect that third order could be a problem for you, unless you could successfully challenge it by pointing out they changed items from the second order, that didn’t fall under the third order changes. You would need a competent lawyer in your jurisdiction to chime in on that. I am surprised the hotel isn’t contacting you to offer some kind of refund after a screw up that bad. It would be cheaper for them to offer some kind of refund, than it would be to take that case to court. Even if the hotel won a lawsuit over the menu failure, the negative publicity they would get over it would be huge. I wouldn’t be surprised if a well written letter from that competent lawyer provoked a significant refund.
This is really embarrassing for host and sorry it happened to you OP. I am not sure how much legal recovery is possible given that your signed final order had reverted back- but to me the essence of contract has been breached. If you have any written communication specifying your desire to avoid meat in your order – it would be very helpful in arguing with the management. I know of a friends wife who was served meat in pizza despite multiple instructions prior to placing order – successfully got few hundreds from the restaurant. She gave it to food bank and went through fasting as a penance for having consumed meat. So i understand how traumatizing it is for religious folks – hope you can involve upper management, draft letter with facts and ask for some recovery. At the least it would stop irresponsible event manager from messing up next time
> Unfortunately, this BOE reverted to the original menu with beef and pork, but we didn’t notice as we were focused on confirming the dessert changes. Our signatures are on this final BOE.
Your signed contract included these menu items whether you read it or not before signing. You’re almost certainly SOL.