An honest restaurant owner would be upset to learn that the website had incorrect prices and take immediate steps to fix it, thanking the customer who brought it to his/her attention and offering a refund of the overcharge and a something extra for their trouble, like a comped meal. This guy’s “mistakes” are all in his favor, and it has obviously added up to thousands of extra dollars. Heck, you’d think he’d hasten to appease the complainer even if only so he could keep running his scam unchecked. But no, he tries to stiff the customer by even offering his refund of the overcharge a dollar short.
Some small businesses deserve to go under.
He’s apologizing.
Get a life dude…you’re a professor of negotiation??
There’s a link on that page to another article describing a previous time in which he did something simiilar. In the earlier incident, he complained that a sushi restaurant refused to honor a Groupon coupon on a prix fixe special.
Good for him. That was actually pretty classy. Hopefully he’s learned something.
What a complete fucking dick.
Aye, this was the first thing I thought of when I read the story.
In that case, one of the things Ben used against the business is that a few message board comments suggest that he could use is Groupon a certain way and no one from the restaurant ever commented otherwise. For starters I can’t believe he’d use that against them, I don’t think anyone wouldn’t roll their eyes at that. Secondly, even if or maybe especially if the restaurant had jumped into the conversation to say that it wasn’t valid with the prix fixe I’m sure he’d be more than happy to say “you mentioned it’s on valid on a message board, but it’s not written out on the Groupon therefore I request…” in fact, he’d probably see that in the comments and try to use it just because he saw it there.
But seriously, this guy is trying to make a claim against a restaurant, trying to get their license revoked over two comments on a Groupon message board? He must have been the kid that was tattling on the other kids in grade school. “Mrs Peters, Mrs Peters, those kids are playing on the monkey bars and last year they said we couldn’t play on the monkey bars if it rained and it rained this morning and they’re on the monkey bars” and the teacher doesn’t know if he wants to go on the monkey bars too or if he just wants to see them get in trouble…cuz I really don’t know. Is this guy just trying to help the public or is he just an asswipe? I mean in the first example it seemed like he was trying to help the public, but that Groupon thing, he’s a dick. There’s no two ways about it. He came right out and said that he would try to get the restaurant shut down if they wouldn’t let him use his Groupon on the thing he saw two people on a message board say it should work on. The general public isn’t getting ripped off or losing money just because they can’t use a Groupon on certain menu item.
That’s not advocating for the people, that’s being a bully.
Eh, how much money did the Chinese place scam from customers, none of whom thought it was worth it to fight the restaurant? The restaurant knowingly committed fraud. And it’s a real shame they’re getting free publicity for this. Crime doesn’t pay, but this time it probably did.
The Globe removed the story about the racist email saying they couldn’t confirm that Edelman sent it.
I actually am not 100% convinced he is a dick, so much as completely out of touch (not like one is particularly better or worse than the other, just a different flavor of annoying). I almost get the impression he does not necessarily see the difference between a small mom and pop business making a mistake and large corporations cheating or misleading consumers. He really has kind of lived in a bit of a bubble his whole life from what I have read.
I read that article/blog post. Supposedly the racist email and the apology were posted on the restaurant website’s comment board, so I could imagine that someone else posted that as a joke or to make the Harvard prof look bad.
Mom&Pop shops can cheat the public, too. There is no doubt in my mind that this restaurant was intentionally cheating the public. They admitted they knew the on-line menu had lower prices than what they actually charged, and didn’t even offer to refund him the overcharge until he threatened them. That’s not a mistake.
How hard is it to update a website? If you don’t have time to fix the whole thing, you could just put up a banner above the menu saying “prices are out of date, call for current prices”. Or scan the paper menu and post a link to it. That should take all of half an hour.
Guy is a dick, but he’s also dealing with pretty thieves.
Yeah, that’s the part that gets me, and, also, if I’m running a competing business that actually does post correct prices on their online menu, it would piss me off that one of my competitors is getting away with posting outdated prices, hoping that gets a couple extra feet in the door and either nobody notices or complains or cares.
They sure can; but my belief is that Edelman actually does not realize (until now) that treating them the same way you treat Facebook(some of his work involved privacy issues with Facebook I believe), makes people think he is a bully - even if he is “right” to some degree.
But then again, I also look at the fact that he mentions that he is going to contact the authorities on the business owner, and he does not. So he is using legal terms and making idle threats to intimidate the owner, and does not plan to carry out these threats - that makes me lean towards thinking he is lying scum.
$4? Really?
Someone in the underclass like myself would have a reason to get pissed over four bucks–because four bucks is a significant amount for this part of the ladder. But a high-falutin’ professional who probably could wipe his ass after the beer shits with twenties and feel no real financial hit needs to shut up and eat the loss.
He actually did eat the loss, so to speak, but complained about it afterwords.
Well, if I have to deal with thieves, I prefer that they be attractive; YMMV.
Why do you assume a small mom and pop business is making a mistake but a large corporation is stealing?
I don’t like the idea that poor people should be allowed to rip off rich people and rich people have an unspoken obligation to allow it. It’s just as morally wrong as saying rich people should be allowed to rip off poor people.
Suppose you found out that one of Duan’s other customers had been overcharged similarly - but this customer was some guy working a minimum wage job. I imagine Duan would now become a well-off business owner who deserved to be punished for stealing from some hard-working wage owner. And if this hypothetical guy had fought back like Edelman did, people would be cheering him on.