The John Gilbert in Worsley, Manchester

Special day ruined! Avoid at all cost!
Around the end of November we booked a christening reception for 8th February at the John Gilbert pub. We arranged we would be having a buffet and we would have exclusive use of the raised area in the pub as it was a nice sized space for the number of people we were expecting and it gave us an element of privacy. The lady (I think she was called Becky) who dealt with us at the time took our details and wrote everything down. She told us not to worry about paying a deposit at the time and just pop in a week or so before the 8th of February to confirm our final numbers and our buffet choices, the pay a deposit.
We decided to go and sort it a bit earlier on 7th January we went to pay for the buffet and confirm the details. The same lady who made our booking originally dealt with us again. As it turned out our party had been moved to different part of the pub that was far less suitable. All we were told was that the area we agreed on is now taken by someone else who already paid! Not even an apology. I cannot understand why anyone would do this!? As it was clear to see in their diary the party that has taken priority over us is no larger in numbers, there seems to be no financial gain to the pub or even just a matter of fitting more people in better.
We never received any phone call or other form of contact to question our intent of going ahead with the booking or to inform us of the change to the agreed arrangements. Imagine if we hadn’t have come in until 1st of February as advised!? Now due to the total unprofessionalism of the pub we have to find a new venue, have the already printed invitations reprinted and all our potential guests will be getting extremely short notice! This is without doubt the most disgraceful example of poor customer service and truly mighty feat to ruin such a special and important day for our daughter before it has even happened!