Bad experience at a roaster's open day!

This is going to be a serious rant, because I really hate them now.

The roaster's are ROM, a "family originated roaster", but that is where the good stuff ends.

First, July 2011, I tried to schedule a guided tour of the company, I was advised they do not do this, so I was asked to just show up at the open-door days. Having to wait nearly 3 months, I reluctantly said yes, I will wait, I made my appointment by phone.

The day itself, finally, I drove there together with my mom. She doesn't like coffee, but she was interested in the entire process, you don't visit a roaster every day. It was supposed to be a fun day.

Upon entering, we were asked who we were. A little strange and I thought it was rather impolite too, later that day, it was clear why, but no explanation at the time, we replied we were just interested in coffee and wanted a look around.

After waiting nearly 10 minutes, we were taken to the back, the roasting machine was there, it was computer guided, the way I expected it to be. The handler of the machine was not really friendly, he was dissing commercial roasters like Douwe Egberts and calling them "not good", he was obviously meaning other things...

He also said some mistakes, apparently I knew more about coffee then he did, like the airhole in packages, he said it was to keep the aroma in, but he apparently didnt know they are mostly to keep the CO2 from staying inside (this ages the coffee more smoothly)

In the entire conversation with the guy, I only found out 1 thing i didnt already know, this is about the expiration dates and the policy they had, After roasting, the date will list 1 year starting at the roast date, this rule is enforced by the food agency here.

He claimed coffee remained good for 3 years, he had no reply to my claim that coffee loses its true flavour within 6 weeks, even after properly sealed, which they do.

Then off to waiting some more, before we could go upstairs, where we would be able to try the coffee coctails, which i looked forward to, I like tasting many flavours.

Disappointment, they were making "frappé", a stupid coffee/milk/ice mix, wow, that was supposed to be an awesome coctail... They put in some syrup, to spice it up.

The guy serving them, a real douchebag, ignored us and went straight ahead to the lady behind us, she asked for the amaretto flavour, which he claimed was without alcohol... I am allergic to alcohol and I can vouch for this, my doctor forbade this syrup for me, so I know it was going to be bad.

Once he was finished making them, he offered them to the lady, who told the idiot we were first, so he offered it to me. Obviously I said NO, I didn't feel like dieing because of some idiot.

He said he would give us a new one, so I asked him to rince the mixing mug, because yes, that can still hurt my body...

He then turned his head and helped the people after us.

So that meant no coffee for me, we had been there almost 45 minutes and still hadnt been able to try a single coffee... What a utter disappointment this was becoming...

Back downstairs, I did decide to buy some coffee and "Jules Destrooper" cookies, because my fiancee loves those. After having to wait 10 minutes, we finally got someone's attention and were finally helped, we were given the price of 27 euro for a giant box, which we agreed to, I would give my fiancee anything, so I wanted to pay this price too.

When the lady finally returned with our box, approx 10 mins later, she gave us a completely different price, namely 31 euro... WTF, right? turns out the first lady didnt include taxes, despite me asking if she also sold all the products to individuals (without a shop/bar, aka non-professional)

I put back the bag of 9 month old coffee I took and left.

Yes, their show room only had NINE MONTH OLD coffee for sale, disgusting really, considering it was only valid for another 3 months by law... Not something you would put on display for a open door day...

Afterwards, I emailed them about my bad experiences and they said it was all my fault, I was being dificult, they barely admitted the douchebags mistake in not wanting to clean his shit...

In short, Rom will be on my "NEVER AGAIN" list for life.