Not what it used to be

I have been a long term customer at Lily's and have disagreed with most of the negative reviews of this restaurant on TheBeijinger. That is, until now. While I still don't think this is "A disgusting restaurant", it is but a shadow of its former self.

I have regularly had issues over the years with the following:

• staff unable to follow the order given by phone - countless scrambled eggs instead of sunny-side ups, Rose Mama's rolls with onions when asked without, burgers with pickles when asked without, missing items...
• distrust when calling back to fix the order - questionning my integrity and borderline accusing me of lying, and always insisting on taking the mistaken item back (as if they could sell it again...)
• long time taken for delivery (especially during winter, with unadapted packaging), resulting in cold food, or brown salad in the burgers, or, coupled with rough transportation over Beijing's famously hilly roads I assume, leaks in the bags
• unclear promotion at the restaurant, resulting in actually paying more, and being rude about it (the Chinese friend I was with vowed not to buy from LAD anymore ever a few years back because of it)
• introduction of the infamous useless "spork" instead of the originally barely passable cutleries, obviously to save money

But what was the last straw, and prompted this review, is the recent switch from direct delivery by phone to the delivery platform Eleme. With all the issues above, there was a way, albeit rather annoying, to fix the situation: calling, bitching, and getting the service and products you paid for. Now, this is gone - with the intermediary, there is no way to ask for rightful reparation without missing your meal time, and the delivery time became even longer.

In Shuangjing in particular, LAD is maybe the default choice for decent western food delivery. I will still order whenever I have cravings, but less often and with much lower expectations (and that's something given how not high they were in the first place). I would imagine this is what keeps the restaurant afloat, and it is a pity to see they are destroying their own business by cutting down on quality.