Beware of Customized Cakes.

We used to love Pink Sugar. In fact when we first bought a tray of their cakes we found it incredible that they were vegan; they tasted so good! We remained faithful customers and passed on many good reviews to friends and colleagues. We even brought overseas visitors there to sample what great food Victoria has. Well, things have certainly changed in the past couple of years and their quality has steadily decreased in terms of taste and flavour. (Their customer service has never been great, but you tend to overlook that for good food sometimes, right?) Numerous Groupon vouchers to sell their stale, bland goods have been circulated recently, hoping to drum up more business. That should have been my another warning.

So, against my better judgement we had to go with ordering our son's birthday cake with them. After previously looking at Ooh La La and loving what they do, we discovered they were closed and couldn't get the cake made in time. Pink Sugar sprang to mind as we had never had a customised cake before - maybe they were better? With more thought and attention to detail paid to them? Let's take the risk. They used to be good!

Bad move.

After confirming our requirements and stating what we would like for such a special occasion in our lives, Pink Sugar assured us that the cake would be made and in time. To cut a long and disappointing story short, the cake was dreadful. It was late, so my husband had to rush out just before the birthday gathering to collect it. I thought that kind of understandable, thinking the cake's appearance would make up for the delay.

Wrong again.

Plain, cracked icing and characters unsecured to the sponge so they fell over, when it arrived home in my husbands arms I was so sad. We didn't even want photos of it to remember such a lovely day. But such is life and we wanted to speak with the manager for feedback. Feedback that would be beneficial to their business that this was not good enough for the amount we were charged. We didn't expect money back, but hoped we could spare other parents the disappointment of such trash for the money paid. We left messages and was assured we would be called back by the manager. She never bothered. We then emailed them with sad looking pictures of this cake, he again, never received a reply. Maybe the manager is deluded into thinking it was a one off (no, it isn't from what I have heard), maybe she is plain lazy (likely). Either way, she is definitely unthoughtful.

So I would suggest you only go here if they have a special offer and you are desperate. Definitely not for customized cakes. They are not worth the money and seriously need to re-evaluate their business plan, their staff, their management and certainly the quality of their cakes. As they do not ever reply to phone-calls or emails from customers, I hope you guys out there never encounter any issues with them. You certainly would not want to have a conversation with their staff behind the counter like I will have to, they are miserable and sometimes, damn scary.

I don't like giving bad reviews, I prefer to speak to the business themselves. But they don't want to know that this quality of service is unacceptable, especially for special occasions. People have told me not to bother with Pink Sugar anymore, I wish I listened. This is one place I will be telling friends, family and colleagues to steer away from now. Lesson learned.

Go to Ooh La La instead. Lovely friendly people, stunning cakes and great service.