We had our engagement party at Dolphins Banquet Hall last weekend. When we first met with the owner…read morethey gave us a deal and said the decorations wouldn't include fresh flowers, which I was okay with.
In the beginning, planning the party was going okay, we ended up picking out decorations that day, but we only had a limited amount of time to look at the decorations, so I did request to make about 4-5 changes to our decorations from the original request.
Two days before the event Suman(the owners wife) notified us that they put out only 18 tables, instead of the 20 we agreed upon. My Fiance requested for 2 more tables, and if needed he would pay extra, but thinking they wouldn't charge us more since on the contract it said 20 tables, but my fiance was incorrect, they wanted to charge us $300 extra for the table and chairs, even tho we weren't inviting more people we wanted 20 tables and 9 chairs on each table for our 180 guests. I was upset so I called Suman and asked why they would change things and ask for more money 2 days before our event?! Suman was so rude and condescending over the phone, and and finally she said to talk to her husband and decide it with him, then I had to explain to the owner that you can't say you will do something and then back out 2 days before the event, and he finally agreed to put out the 20 tables. I was so upset, what kind of owner would do this to their clients 2 days before their engagement party.
So stressful, but it doesn't stop there, the day before the event the owner asked me to come and see the decorations. When I got there everything looked fine, except instead of the cloth napkins that we agreed upon they had put regular paper napkins on the table, and 3 of the tables had random centerpieces, after talking about the changes that were made, Suman said 'well you can take your money and have your party somewhere else", yes she said that to us a day before our party, so we decided it wasn't worth the stress to argue about it anymore, and told them just leave it as is and just change the 3 centerpiece to match the rest of the tables.
So after all that stress we hoped there would be no more drama, but that wasn't the end, the day of the event the owner only had 19 tables out instead of the 20 which we were able to overlook, then the owner had the audacity to lock the front doors and tell us we had more than 180 guest, which was untrue, we had so many empty chairs, and we made sure to only invite 180 people and about 20 weren't even able to come. When my guests would walk outside for some fresh air they would be locked outside and would have to knock on the door for a while in order to have someone open it. My aunt went outside to get her medication, because she recently had surgery and even she was locked out, even my mom was locked outside for a while, even tho it clearly says to keep front doors unlocked during business ours. Also during the party he came up to my mom to say there were extra guests, and told us we would be charged per person. They had the security guard count every guest with a "clicker", and he was counting people who were going out and coming back in.
The owner called me the next day and said we had over 35 extra guest(which was not true) and wanted us to pay more money for that. I told him that can't be the case because we had so many empty seats and he never put the 20th table out. I asked him if he had to make more food, and he said no but we had to make more Naan, which was not true because they ran out of Naan early on, they probably didn't even put out enough Naan. It just seemed that they some how wanted us to pay more than what was agreed upon.
I was debating if I should write a review or not, but I decide to because I would hate for another family to experience this. If you do decide to go with dolphins banquet hall, please make sure to get a copy of the contract that has all agreements right after you sign it, so later on they can't cross things out, and make it seem like you agreed to something else. Also I hope after reading this the owner will know it is not okay to treat your clients this way. Customer service matters, and you should not add extra stress to your clients the day of their event.
Two great things about Dolphins Banquet Hall, one was the decorations were really nice, and everyone loved the food, it was really good. If we didn't have the added stress from the owners a few days before and during the event, then I would have definitly given them 5 stars.