I'd planned to utilize Always Aloha to cater for my company annual birthday celebration. I went to the website submitted an inquiry and they responded quickly. I was able to narrow down a few options for dessert with the assistance of the coordinator quickly as well. Everything was professional and smooth up until we got to the payment method.
I will not mention the lady's name that was going back and forth with me for over 4-days regarding a simple credit card transaction, but it was absolutely ridiculous. I've been planning monthly birthday bashes for my company for almost 2yrs and I've never had this issue. This lady either didn't know what she was doing or dragged this out to prevent from servicing our event.
When we got to the payment method, She first ask if I can write out a check? Which i could not, I couldn't get a check available to me in the time frame we were working with. Then she ask if I can pay her through Paypal or Venmo. I explained to her that i do not have accounts with those companies and if she can send me another type of link or take the payment over the phone. She never ask for me to call her for the payment, but sends a link from Quickbooks. I go to click the link, and its simply the invoice in a PDF no option to pay the invoice. It also has a message saying "Contact Always Aloha for payment". I screen shot this and emailed her back, asking her to send another link because this one does not have a option to pay. She then sends me another link that only allows you to submit banking and routing information for a banking account. Information I do not have, as this is a company credit card. I screen shot that as well and emailed it to her. By the way, her responses get far in-between by day two and now time is wasting. I asked her twice if she could take payment over the phone via email and she completely looks over that question without answer and keeps sending links. Two days before the event she begins to tell me some of the ingredients like red beans wont be available due to the day in advance preparation needed. We are now a day before the event and she completely cancels on me saying due to the failure of payment they cannot proceed with our event.
I had to cancel my event, which i never have had to do in the 2yrs of planning these celebrations. I was very irritated and could not understand why something so simple was dragged out and made so difficult.