Proma Debnath

Review of Infusion Lounge

I've never given a 1 start review but I wish there...

I've never given a 1 start review but I wish there was a 0 star option for this management.
This was, by far, the worst experience I've ever had with the staff/management in any establishment. In short, they don't have set prices for anything for their benefit. They will try to take advantage of people and bully you into giving them money that you do not owe them. If you want the full story, read on.

I had called 2 weeks ahead to book an event for my friend's birthday. They gave me options of bottle service, private room, or just an area towards the back of the bar. It's worth mentioning that there are no details of prices on the website other than a vague range of prices for bottle selections. On the phone, I decided to book 2 couches for the night. I was told they need $100 deposit per couch which would go towards our check at the end of the night. No mention of any minimum number of people or minimum amount of money required to spend that night.

On the night of the event we were greeted by the gentleman I had spoken to on the phone. He said, since there were less than the number of people we had planned for, we didn't need 2 couches. We would all fit in one. We're a pretty easy going group of people so we complied and crammed 7 people into one couch. The other couch that we had booked was taken up by other people. Our final check came to $256 (which was more than the deposit).

Out of nowhere, we hear that they will keep 100 out of the $200 deposit we gave them because we didn't have enough people. It shouldn't even matter, but it's worth mentioning that the club was the emptiest I've seen any club on that street on a late Friday night. Yet, we are being told that we have to pay a surprise penalty which was never communicated to us. He then realized he never told me about this absurd rule, so he brought in his manager to talk to us. The manager didn't bother to say hello. He started his first sentence to us with this: "You guys are paying us the $100. You can contest it. You won't win. And I'll write you up for theft."

I worked in the service industry before and I tend to treat restaurant/bar staff with a lot of respect. This was the first time I needed to raise my voice and stand up for myself and my friends. I asked him again why we're having to pay a penalty for something that was not communicated to us. He said there was a $300 minimum that we didn't meet. So now we have 2 different reasons that were created on the spot by these guys as to why we owe the $100. So I ask him, where are any of these rules written? When did any of your staff mention this to us? He started being hesitant because he didn't have an answer. He said things like, "It used to be on the website, but the website is being updated so it's not there right now"....yea, right. After a few minutes of this, when he realized we couldn't just be bullied into paying something we didn't owe, he tried a different tactic. He tried to guilt us. He said that he would take it out of his staff's paycheck, in hopes that we'd feel bad. We weren't going to leave on those terms. So we stayed and insisted we keep talking about it until it was sorted. We weren't in the wrong. We weren't trying to take anything from them. They were unrightfully trying to take money from us. Eventually, he admitted it was their fault for not communicating to us that there was a minimum and gave us our money back. It was a terrible end to my friend's otherwise quite pleasant birthday.

Needless to say, we will never be returning here and will tell all our friends to beware of this terrible management.