A woman says Wetherspoon staff refused to serve her because of a 'gut feeling'.
Amber Satriani went to The Glass House in St Helens on Tuesday (15 February) with a mate, when they had their drinks taken from them.
Th 19-year-old and her friend, 24, had ordered their drinks through the Wetherspoon app.
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However, things took a turn for the worse when bar staff came over to their table and asked the pair for some ID.
After scanning the teenager's friend's ID, the employee returned to their table a few minutes later and asked them to leave.
Speaking to the Liverpool Echo about the incident, Amber said the manager refused to scan her ID.
She told the publication: "The manager said she couldn't serve us because she had a gut feeling [my friend's ID] was a fake because something had gone wrong with the scan.
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"She didn’t even bother to scan my ID and instead just took both our drinks and said I'd be refunded through the app.
"After a few minutes I went up to the bar and asked if I could scan my ID to see if there was something wrong because obviously we’d have to contact the DVLA if our cards were playing up, to which mine scanned completely fine."
Even after managing to scan her mate's ID, having removed some residue on the card, Amber said staff weren't interested.
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She claims the manager continued to refuse to serve either of them.
"We even showed our bank cards to show the names matched and had completely run out of any ideas how we could further prove our age," she said.
"Even after all of that the manager still refused us service."
Angry at how they had been treated, Amber shared a post to Facebook, explaining what had happened.
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She also asked if anyone else had had a similar experience at the same pub.
And they had.
"Same thing happened to me. Reason given was that my ID hair was pink and mine's now black so it was fake," wrote one.
Commenting on the post, another chimed in: "They told me my licence wasn’t me and I was using someone else’s card when I showed my name matched and made go to get my passport."
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While another added: "This happened to my daughter and her friends. I wouldn’t mind, they had been drinking there for two hours and then all of a sudden they refused to give them their drinks, even though they had paid for them.
"They haven’t been back since."
Responding to the claims made by Amber and her friend, a spokesperson for Wetherspoon said: "It is a legal requirement for all licensed premises to prevent the sale and consumption of alcohol by anyone under the age of 18 years old.
"Unfortunately, fake IDs are readily available over the internet which means that our employees, when checking a customer’s proof of age, have to be extremely vigilant and exercise a degree of discretion as to whether IDs presented to them are valid or not.
"Invariably this means that on occasion, customers who do present valid IDs will be refused service.
"We apologise for the inconvenience caused to those individuals to whom this may have happened to at the Glass House, St Helens."
Topics: UK News
Dominic Smithers