Dublin Christmas market (St. Stephen's Green)

Peanut

Worst experience ever. Is this the Christmas spirit?

A minimum of 7 or 8 burger and hotdog stands strategically placed so that you're never more than 10 feet away from the wafting odors of stinkiness.

Hruumph...

Zombienosh

Apparently the St. Annes park one is better

Sonic Death Monkey

Is there one in Farmleigh too??

AdFundum

Peanut wrote: »

Worst experience ever. Is this the Christmas spirit?

A minimum of 7 or 8 burger and hotdog stands strategically placed so that you're never more than 10 feet away from the wafting odors of stinkiness.

Hruumph...

I am not bothered by the cooking corpse stench but the whole thing does lack a certain creativity. I do not understand how this little strip of very nice wooden huts is populated almost exclusively by 'gourmet' fast food joints situated side by side. It seems very silly. It will be a few decades before we master Weihnachtsmaerkte like the Germans.

mckatiemc

The Stephen's Green market isn't just a series of stalls. Let's face it it's designed to be an experience for locals and visitors to Dublin which will carry on long past 2014. The problem with relying on a series of stalls and vendors to be an overall experience is that one rotten personality is enough to ruin the whole thing.

I had an appalling encounter with a seller on the 'Heat in a Click' stall. This tall French man in his late 40s is by far the most aggressive and inappropriate oaf I have come across all year. I bought two of their products last week. One is a knee strap with heat pads for my own sports injury and the other a heat set for a baby's bottle (this one was supposed to be a gift for a family friend.)

The tacky salesman showmanship was charming enough and (irrespective of future problems) I knew €45 for the two was overpriced. I went home to use the knee support, clicked the disks in the gel packs as advised and it barely got warm. Despite boiling both packs 6 times for as long as the leaflet stated they did not soften again and I couldn't use it.

Obviously this wound me up. For that price I didn't even get one good use out of it! Apart from that I also had one pretty unreliable Christmas present on my hands. I went back to the stall today and politely explained that the gel pack wasn't working, presented my receipt abad expected them to give me a refund.

The lanky, arrogant man I mentioned earlier didn't let me get a word in. He kept swinging his arms around, raising his voice, cutting across me and tossing his hands into my face to dismiss me. He kept cutting across me, "No, no you have done it wrong." He demanded that I get away from the front of the stall and stand along the side of it while he boiled up the knee supports' two gel backs to prove his point. "Oh 5 minutes, 5 minutes and you will see." 10 minutes later and it still wasn't softened enough.

This ridiculous man literally would not let me speak. He kept raising his voice and getting progressively more aggressive when I said I wanted a refund. I literally had to hold my hands out and repeat, "Listen to me, listen to me." It took 15 minutes of this rubbish for him to toss €20 back into my hand for the baby product and wave his arm into my face to get away from the stall. He wouldn't refund the knee pack despite me telling him the boy who sold it to me promised I could return it if it was faulty. He also kept the receipt for both of them so I can't go to a store to refund it there.

His behaviour has undermined the quaint experience of a Christmas market because the one and only reason he got away with that behaviour is that we weren't in a 'proper' store.

Weyhey

mckatiemc wrote: »

The Stephen's Green market isn't just a series of stalls. Let's face it it's designed to be an experience for locals and visitors to Dublin which will carry on long past 2014. The problem with relying on a series of stalls and vendors to be an overall experience is that one rotten personality is enough to ruin the whole thing.

I had an appalling encounter with a seller on the 'Heat in a Click' stall. This tall French man in his late 40s is by far the most aggressive and inappropriate oaf I have come across all year. I bought two of their products last week. One is a knee strap with heat pads for my own sports injury and the other a heat set for a baby's bottle (this one was supposed to be a gift for a family friend.)

The tacky salesman showmanship was charming enough and (irrespective of future problems) I knew €45 for the two was overpriced. I went home to use the knee support, clicked the disks in the gel packs as advised and it barely got warm. Despite boiling both packs 6 times for as long as the leaflet stated they did not soften again and I couldn't use it.

Obviously this wound me up. For that price I didn't even get one good use out of it! Apart from that I also had one pretty unreliable Christmas present on my hands. I went back to the stall today and politely explained that the gel pack wasn't working, presented my receipt abad expected them to give me a refund.

The lanky, arrogant man I mentioned earlier didn't let me get a word in. He kept swinging his arms around, raising his voice, cutting across me and tossing his hands into my face to dismiss me. He kept cutting across me, "No, no you have done it wrong." He demanded that I get away from the front of the stall and stand along the side of it while he boiled up the knee supports' two gel backs to prove his point. "Oh 5 minutes, 5 minutes and you will see." 10 minutes later and it still wasn't softened enough.

This ridiculous man literally would not let me speak. He kept raising his voice and getting progressively more aggressive when I said I wanted a refund. I literally had to hold my hands out and repeat, "Listen to me, listen to me." It took 15 minutes of this rubbish for him to toss €20 back into my hand for the baby product and wave his arm into my face to get away from the stall. He wouldn't refund the knee pack despite me telling him the boy who sold it to me promised I could return it if it was faulty. He also kept the receipt for both of them so I can't go to a store to refund it there.

His behaviour has undermined the quaint experience of a Christmas market because the one and only reason he got away with that behaviour is that we weren't in a 'proper' store.

That is terrible. Thanks for the warning. You should post this on one of the consumer issue boards and try find out who over runs the stalls.

queeniestar

Last year I went to a Christmas market in Manchester and it was a great Christmassy experience. Streets and streets and squares of log cabins with food, beer, crafts, gifts, sweets, toys... crowds milling around, great atmosphere... everything you'd expect form a decent market.

This year, my son and GF (who live in Manchester) came over for Christmas and I said we'd visit the market in Dublin thinking that the Stephen's Green park would be full of cabins. Heard on Nova that footfall to the city had increased by some 10% attributed to the market so thought that it MUST be good!

Ye Gods. It was sh*t. So disappointed.