Disappoinment to Groupon.

Wish to create this sharing colum to share with you all readers out there on what had happen to my sis last week about the deal she bought From Groupon.

http://www.groupsmore.com/cities/petaling-jaya/deals/academy-of-pastry-arts-malaysia
Please bear in mind that they no longer going to refund full amount to us for any unsatisfied deal.

Hi Groupsmore,

We went to Academy of Pastry Arts Malaysia in Wisma Thrifty last Saturday 6^th August 2011 for our Hands-on French Tart Baking Workshop. We arrive around 1.30pm -1.45 pm and being greeted by an Expat Lady, did our registering – merely confirm our attendance – and being given an apron, and we waited.There is no one who guide us to the bakery training room, but as we saw the others rushing in the class, we follow the others like snail. And this is an improper welcome, we had no guidance on what to expect what to do. The first thing we know is we should do the baking in group of either 3 or 4 person. In a minute, a lady voice out there should be around 13 of us instead, or as per the attendance list, and the trainer say, “Oh, then we divide 4 or 5 per group”.

We actually waited for the real chef as we thought Chef Azura was just to settled us in. To our disbelief, she actually run the whole workshop and to what the voucher say “ Headed by Chef Lejeune from France…” has never happen. We are really disappointed and full of anger. We could see another Expat man who is conducting a bread and pastry class next door and we felt worse. If we know that the conductor was local, we would never signed this up as we would rather print the recipe from internet and bake ourselves or could have learnt it somewhere with a cheaper rate. We paid RM120 and this is the discounted treatment and service that we had.Classes are on, we listen to the Chef, the recipe on her workstation has eventually a better outcome than ours, and she is saying that the recipe is the same. We thought we did it wrongly but confirming with other groups, yes we agree ours outcome is different from the chef.

Back to the list of recipe. The recipe given is pretty unclear at times when she describe. As and when we would ask questions like “ Are you sure that we will need 3 eggs, and she would reply oh, maybe not”. All this did not give us an assurance and we are really pissed off. The moment we got to do the tart base, she mentioned, you have to roll till 1mm thick, but when she did, it wasn’t up to 1mm, but she say its 1mm.

There is an ingredient room where we will be asked to measure the flour, take all the ingredients for the next task. Icing Sugar, we find none, ask the Chef, and to our disbelief, she say we are out of those and there will be people buying them now at that moment.  Not only icing sugar, we need multi-purpose flour according to recipe. But due to no stock, we were asked to substitute with rose flour, which is the same according to the chef. Really unprepared and we got even more disappointed.We are making chocolate filling the next step, Chef Azura guided us on how to make them and Yes, the chocolate puree came out rather okay, thick and moisture. We went back to our workstation to try on. 

Again, things came out not as shown, 3 groups had the same outcome. Not only its not moisture, it looks watery and not thick and less chocolaty. We query that and after some time, we use her filling instead and she grab another packet of raw chocolate for us to blend with our existing watery puree as in to save our work. But, we are very upset that when she say we had the same ingredient, how come the outcome wasn’t same? It must have of different measurement of recipe, and we are alarmed.

All in the group felt uncertain with her guidance. We end up going from tables to tables to ask for assurance. Our apple crumble tart, chocolate tart and caramel nut tarts resembles the one did by the chef but nothing similar to what posted

At 4.30pm, we are yet to finish our task and there comes cleaner cleaning the fan, another 10 minutes while our tarts still on the table, another cleaner came and sweep the floor, shake the broom and can see the dust all around the area.There is also a limitation of tools and we even have to do the cleanup.hus, we insist on our refund and our detail is of as below:NAME LIST HIDE()