lane7.co.uk Reviews 

Friday 30th of September for 3 people at their Durham site. I paid £26 to secure it and recieved a confirmation email. 2 days before, my daughter caught Covid and was ill. So I checked the confirmation and there was a link to cancel, which I used over 24hrs in advance and recieved an email to say, it had been cancelled. A week later I phoned to enquire about my refund and was told by a female member of staff that it takes up to 5 days. Even though it had already been a week. Though in fairness, she could not get me off the phone quick enough. It is now 2 weeks and I have still not recieved the refund. You cannot contact them by email, as tou can only contact thwm to book. Really disappointed in them and have given up ever seeing that money again. My advice to anyone, is do not pay anything in advance, as you will be fleeced. I would have given zero stars but that is not an option. Suffice to say, that I will never use this place now.
Within 3 hours of this review going live, I have had a phone call from Lane 7 and an email confirmation of my refund. What a shame that they only acted after being shamed on social media. Certainly not a company that you should be giving your hard earned cash too.

Lane 7 at Edinburgh has so much potential … but mismanagement, poor customer service and budget equipment ensure it falls short. If anyone from Lane 7 actually bothers to ever read these comments (they’ve never responded to any of the other reviewers at the point of typing this) - sack the manager and don’t be so cheap with the equipment.

The pool tables are squeezed in together making playing the game impractical - you’ve also have to contend with those playing darts and arcade shooting which are in the same area, and random folk walking past. They’re also so cheap they’ve bought pool tables that don’t even have ball returns, not even a rack per table and chalk scant too.

We were missing the white ball so had to ask for it … the girl with a surly attitude didn’t even bother talking at all (presumably too cool to talk to customers) but her colleague passed her the ball they’d found on the floor (the geniuses obviously hadn’t worked out that a ball on the floor may have actually come from one of the pool tables).

There appears to be an option for drinks being ordered whilst playing pool, bowling etc. This experience differs massively depending on the staff member - one young man was super polite and another appeared to try his best to not care at all about anything - an emo type who wandered about aimlessly and would have fit in better at a funeral with his attitude (presumably getting the same amazingly quality customer service training as the staff that deal with the game booking desk). But you’ll be waiting about fifteen to twenty minutes on the drinks arriving.

The bowling isn’t much better - ball returns shared between two lanes with insufficient bowling balls and I suspect no maintenance of the lanes themselves. Random folk again walking by aimlessly.

The golf is a farce - the time-slots are prebooked but again the greed of Lane 7 shines through - a queue of 14 people ahead of us waiting to start all at the same time with people already ahead for the first few holes. We ended up skipping it altogether (it doesn’t look particularly entertaining to be honest). The staff member on the golf booth was too “cool” to take his headphones out (whilst flicking through tracks on his iPhone) to care about much … although at least he didn’t have a surly attitude. The manager here must really just want to be a ‘friend’ to all the staff and really not care one at all or maybe it’s actually just a free for all without management … which would explain a lot.

The food arrangement is via FatHippo but unlike drinks whilst playing games - must be ordered at the bar (a curious move given the profits they are making on what are not much better than burger van burgers … albeit you can watch the two “chefs” overcooking all the food and slopping it altogether in their booth if you want). The sitting arrangements are a number of large wooden tables which aren’t clean at all (one poor staff member doing her best to keep up).

The bathrooms are hipster chic … or I can imagine that’s the sort of explanation they came up with for what is a ridiculous bad joke - the walls are wooden chipboard and it just seems like the sort of thing you’d find on a building site.

The music blasts out a weird mix of random club classics and hip hop without any discernible theme. The prices are all inflated but that’s to be expected … no point Lane 7 trying to excel with well priced anything.

It’s such a shame. It has a lot of potential but they’ve obviously gone down a budget theme, with budget equipment and just try to make as much profit as quickly as possible. Customer service is just bizarre and management clearly lacking.

Lanes kept breaking down, waste of money. Also charged us twice and wouldn't refund.

so it was my 19th birthday, lane 7 security decided to assume my friend was taking drugs even though he wasn’t, they didn’t even give him the chance to let them search his bag or his person before they just dragged him out, my friend being gay with all his girlfriends felt very alone when he was dragged out they didn’t even let me know they were kicking him out they just dragged him out but the collar. until u kicked off and i told them to search him which they refused, £40 down the drain for bowling and beer pong, i get searching for drugs by they didn’t even search my friend and obviously as it was my birthday i kicked off as my friend didn’t even have anything on him. I felt like they picked on him because he was not straight

*Booked Lane 7 ahead of time, went to Tenpin Bowling Instead*

First of all, I really want to support this place, I've went 3 times with the same problems each time but I wanted to give the place a fair shot but after our last visit, I need to vent the issues in hope they resolve them.

Pros
- Place looks amazing with a wide range of lanes, cool style and machines to keep you amused.
- Staff are very nice, I feel sorry for them because I don't know where the problems root from.

Cons
- Air conditioning seems to be not working, it feels like you are in a Green House and our party started sweating after 10 minutes (mentioned in someone else's review but rings accurate)

- Service is very slow, it took 40 minutes before we got our first drink. All you need to do is look around and see everyone else's concerned & frustrated face to see this is the case for everyone.

- They blocked all their bowing, even for months ahead of time by mistake.

- Ordered a Koko Kanu & Coke + a Kraken & Coke, the server/manager who served our drinks had no clue which was which and played this off to us as a 'fun little game' we can play to find out what's what. Needless to say this would be an issue if any of us had allergies and every bar, every single bar has a way of communicating which drink is which between the one making drinks and the people serving them... This happens regularly, the server has no clue which drink is what.

- It was booking entry only and we didn't get given any menus and was asked for our order which we had no clue what they sold. Menus should be presented at the door if its table service to speed up process or allow for a QR ordering system or menu system like most places.

- A lot of the machines had been turned off for some reason so you couldn't even do anything to distract yourself from the heat, we wanted to also play air hockey just for the cold air.

- Prices of drinks should be displayed on the menu, this even confused the people taking drinks because they had to ask about prices themselves. Having prices on the menus should be a given.

- There was 7+ staff on, I am going to assume that a lot of them may have been training but Lane 7 wasn't at max compacity so I dread how things would get handled if this was the case.

We then, sweaty, uncomfortable and not happy booked into Tenpin Bowling at Fountain Park and had a good load of games of Bowling, fast serving drinks at a good temperature for my friends birthday of which we originally booked at Lane 7.

In summary, I can safely say all the negative comments on the reviews actually check out but go yourself and see! I really hope things improve and in the future, I can delete this review but I would warn anyone of the above before you go.

Dire booking system and chronic customer service.

My son booked Edinburgh venue for golf and bowling. The intial bookinf accepted payment was accepted then he got a message that the booking had cancelled. He called them and they offered him a refund in 3 working days. He rebooked and went through on the train only to arrive there and be told he did not have a booking. Receptionist completely disinterested. I called customer service on his behalf and three days later all they have offered him is another refund. Waste of time and money. Avoid like the plague.

Went to Edinburgh location with my daughter. Didn't have the first 5 drinks we tried to order....no milk even.....she had water....no apology .....staff couldn't care less. Left feedback and zero response. Don't waste your money.

Booked a game of bowling for 5 people on my birthday arrived and staff where fab got to lane to start and within 3 goes lane broke down so got moved to another lane to which was a disgrace bumbers didnt work all twisted and bent floor was uneven and warped not a very good experience and certainly not value for money

"Super premium" is marketed to give a special experience and offers any strike be celebrated with a bang. However when there you get a strike and nothing happens when I questioned the staff they apologised and said its the marketing team and they have no control on what is said.

All in all £52 for 2 people 2 games is a rip off. I wish we had been told before we started bowling that super premium offers nothing extra to premium. I certainly wouldn't reccomend and will never return.

very 18th cebntury in terms of communication with deaf customers as their websites stated they would contact us by phone and how will that work. as it a one way system to them but not for us as barriers and breach of DDA Act 1998, equality act 2000 also BSLScotland Act 2015 their website, infor are not very clearly structured as they are accomodating hearing communities and forgetting hidden communities such as Deaf Customers. barriers after barrier enough is enough. get a grip new company and still living in 18th century while deaf communities suffers in terms of communications as it should be two way communication by the use of Facebook Messengers or whatsapp which the Deaf World uses and there is no excuses.