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After some discussion during which other customers said this was absurd, one even saying he’d been served water there the week before (so some people actually go back!), the assistant offered to buy me a bottled drink. Again I said I did not want a bottled drink, I wanted tap water.
On principle, we left without taking or paying for what we’d ordered.
I ran a full service restaurant and a small hotel, in another country admittedly, so I am not without experience in the hospitality industry, and I know that by law we were obliged to serve tap water to anyone requesting it, even if they were not buying anything from us. I believe a similar law exists in many countries, I don’t know about UK.
I was so incensed that I wrote to KFC Head Office, as below, to complain about what seems to me just another way of extorting money from the public. As of today, three months later, I have not yet had the courtesy of a reply from them.
"Could you please refer me to the section of Health and Safety Regulations which, according to staff of two of your branches in Swindon where I requested this, prevents you from serving tap water to customers.
I have never before, in any establishment serving food to the public in the UK, been advised that there is such a condition. On the contrary, I understand that in terms of the Supply of Goods & Services Act restaurants have an obligation to supply water along with a meal.
I would be most interested to receive your response, and am also taking this up with the appropriate authorities. In the absence of a satisfactory explanation, I must assume that either your staff are misinformed, or that this is a way of extorting money from the public for expensive and environmentally unfriendly bottled drinks."
By: MikeP
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