hey all,

 

so it finally happened... my first bad review after two years of being open, and of course it has to be on a wedding cake :( she said it was dry, but i'm having a hard time believing it was as dry as the bride says (well, her guests said so apparently, she didn't eat any cake) because I baked it the night before, wrapped it up tight, and decorated the next morning. I even made a meal for myself out of the cut off tops and I thought they were great! she had some other gripes too, for example, the grooms cake was a keyboard, and her guests said there was too much fondant? thick or thin (and I know mine was not to thick for a fact, aside from the fondant keys, which, come on!) it usually gets peeled off anyways, so why does that really matter? anyways, she ended it at that, dry, too much fondant, and guests wanted the name of my bakery so they could give their own reviews..? that's nice of them :/   anyhoo, made me feel pretty lousy.  i just don't understand.. cakes weren't baked days ahead, everything was fresh and sealed and tasted good to me... hmm, i'm stumped.

 

anyways, what was your first bad review? and did it totally ruin your week like its ruining mine? :(

I made 7 dozen cupcakes with Eiffel tower fondant toppers. I thought they were great, but the customer really hated them. She told me she was embarrassed to serve them! The only thing I felt were wrong with them was that she did not want colored icing (red) so she asked me to airbrush them silver instead. I ran out of my good PME spray and had to finish up with Wilton (yuck!!!!!) unfortunately. I think that airbrushing them caused the icing and the sliver of exposed top of cupcake to harden a little more than usual, but they were still rather good. (I made one, even left it on the counter overnight, and it was still better than store bought!) That was about 6 orders ago, and now I get upset about all my orders. I obsess terribly, and thankfully, when my husband sees that I have been fiddling with a cake for longer than an hour after it is finished, he stops me. It was a huge blow to my self-esteem! I still used the pic of the cupcakes on my website-they were cute!
 

AI had one customer say that the strawberry buttercream filling was not what she expected. She said that the strawberry flavour seemed to be more in the cake than the filling, and the filling didn't have much flavour. I don't know how that could possibly have been the case because the cake was chocolate. Then I found out in talking with her that she had left the cake in the car on a hot summer day for four hours. No wonder it wasn't what she expected! I am surprised it still even resembled a cake after that!

I'm sorry; I know it always hurts. More and more these days, people complain because (1) social media makes it so easy (2) we're in a "foodie" dominated society which makes expectations unreasonably high and (3) complaints often result in refunds. Following these types of CC threads will yield tips on how to take preemptive action. 

A

Four hours in a closed car on a hot summer day? Some people are just so effin' stupid that A) it hurts my soul, and B) it makes me hope that they're NOT reproducing and thus continuing to pollute the gene pool.

These are the same poeple who think it's "cute" to feed the seagulls on a crowded beach.

A

LOL! I know, right?!

ADo guests really complain about the cake at a wedding to the bride?! I find that really hard to believe.

AI actually did take a dry cake to a party a couple of months ago (didn't realize until it was too late) and nobody said anything. Most of the guests didn't know I'd made it either as I only knew the host.

My first complaint came when I had a customer who ordered her own baby shower cake.  She kept telling me how much she liked my butter cream icing and kept saying that so many people don't put enough on.  So, stupidly, I thought I'd "surprise" her with putting a little extra on her cake (I'm talking another 1/16" in thickness, not an entire batch on the cake).  Anyway, the next day, I was excited to hear what she thought.  She said, "Um...it was good, but there was WAY TOO MUCH icing on the cake.  Everyone scraped it off and there was a TON of icing in the trash."  I felt devastated.  I "gave" her something I thought she wanted without charging more, since I thought she would love it...also, 2 guests were friends of mine and they said that was absolutely not true...no one complained and no one threw icing away.  I think she was a refund-seeker, but it still made me feel like crap!

I can't ever remember having a complaint, except for the time I put the wrong name on a cake. It was seriously keeping me up at night, and I kept remembering it and obsessing and blushing when I thought of it. I was mortified. Also, when I shared the story on CC, 7 out of 10 people made me feel even worse, and I didn't think it was possible.

 

Though, I did have a stupid B**** tell me that my cake was dry. But this was after the recipient of the cake froze it, uncovered for 3 months because it was too pretty to cut....This was right before I left my first husband, and this was a woman who went to high school with him and thought he was wonderful, and hated me, and was jealous she never had a chance with him, so she may have been a little biased, as well.  I did find out about 3 -4 years later she finally got her chance, lol.

My first bad review was about 2 weeks ago. I made two cakes for a family friend. She called me about two days after I delivered telling me that the cakes were dry and needed more sugar. She was giving me "tips" she said  (that ran me hot but thats another story) She suggested I throw some pudding in there or maybe I could use oil instead of butter . After some discussion I found out that she was serving the cake cold right out of the fridge! and I use IMBC so its pretty nasty cold...well to me. After she let it come to room temp she called me back and said that her family loved it. It never occured to me that I had to tell people to eat it at room temp..but clearly I do. So now I put a little card in each bag telling people that it tastes BEST at room temp. Normally complaints come from people not following instructions. Ex.: leaving cake in a hot car. 

ANasty? Oh nooooo, a slice of good cake with SMBC (same thing as IMBC, for the uninitiated) straight out of the fridge with a cup of coffee is pure heaven. But I would never tell a cake muggle to serve theirs that way. It would definitely be asking for trouble.

Cold chocolate IMBC is pretty much my favourite thing ever, forget the cake, lol.

 

My only real complaint was from some seagull feeders who insisted on a 5 tier cake for their wedding. I told them it would be way too much, but noooo, their guests love to eat cake!

As it turns out, their 105 guests didn't manage to eat all 208 servings, so I got a nasty call about being a rip off.

That one didn't upset me as far as beating myself up, it just made me really mad.

 

When I first started out on my own I had one lady bully me into a partial refund, only to find out later she's done it to pretty much every baker in town. Exact same complaints each time.

lol really?! i love the texture of imbc but when its hard it tasted like butter to me! i mean i like butter...but it can be overwhelming lol

A

You know, come to think of it every single time I've ever had any MBC that wasn't my own, it was too buttery for me. Maybe it's what I do to mine that cuts that overwhelming taste out. I make The Well Dressed Cake SMBC, but it's usually a quadruple batch, and I add one more cup of sugar.

And scrumdiddly, if I ever caught wind of someone doing that, I'd come unglued.

AI think seagull feeders is going to be the new "it" phrase around here.:D

Wedding guests do not complain. (Even seagull feeders know it's bad manners to do that at a wedding.) I've learned it's a red flag when customers say even their guests complained.

AMaybe the kind of people that have the nerve to make up stories to get refunds they're not entitled to learnt the poor etiquette from family members who also think nothing of complaining to a bride at her wedding!

AI can't even imagine complaining to newlyweds about something they chose for the wedding reception. It doesn't matter what I think about the food or the cake or the tacky bridesmaid dresses - it's their day and who wants to be a downer? Besides,I didn't pay for their wedding - I was invited, and what kind of tacky person complains about the food to the host and hostess?

A

*squeals with delight*

AI'm so happy.!

Seagull feeders. My sister snd I have used that phrase for at least 20 years.

It's a perfect description for stupid people.

ASeagull feeders! Perfect term. I will be using that, possibly daily. (I don't have much patience for stupidity!)

A[CODE][/CODE]

That's what I thought, too. I bet she's just fishing for a refund.

And I loooove to feed seagulls, it creates a riot which I enjoy. It's especially enjoyable if you can do it near people who are annoying and it pisses them off.

My first complaint was also my first wedding cake, I did it for a friend and I was also a guest.

It was a 3 tier wedding cake 12"10"8" decorated in white fondant and I painted twigs and made sunflowers out of gumpaste/fondant. The cake was very pretty.

I drove 30 miles with this huge cake, and delivered it perfect 2 hour before the wedding was suppose to start. When I arrived they didn’t have the cake table yet so had me put the cake on the kitchen table, then left. I returned 2 hours later and they moved the cake in the SUN and on a unlevel table!!!!! The wedding didn’t start until 3 hours after it was suppose to be (5 hours now in the SUN in the middle of the day of the summer). The cake started leaning and the fondant was melting (naturally!). The host of the house they were getting married at had the NERVE, to come over to me and tell me it was leaning and she wanted to know if it was supported so it wouldn’t fall before the wedding. I simply told her "You put it in the sun for over 5 hours and on a unlevel table, not sure what you want me to do?!?! I delivered the cake in perfect condition, and I'm not responsible for it, it shouldn’t have been put in the sun or on a unlevel table".

She had some not nice words with me and I told her off.

This cake should have been $350.00 and I did it for $150.00 because they were friends, so it made me mad that their friends were treating me so bad for something I had no control over!