But does he? Threaten with legal action, I mean. What he says in the emails is, to paraphrase, that he’s warned the correspondent authorities, and that if he were to be reimbursed some sort of compensation, that would impress on them the willingness of the owner to make amends for his mistake.
Another form of bullying, if you want, but not threat of legal action.
The poster didn’t say any of that. They said that there is an ethical responsibility to honor your advertised prices. Since you think they should have given the money back (implying they overcharged) and that they should update the website, you seem to agree.
Everyone is making excuses about not updating the website, but I’ll point out that at least half the restaurant websites I see don’t have prices on them. No large chain does, for sure.
I think it’s reasonable to expect that, if you put the prices on there, they are accurate.
But if you do want to address your ideas, it’s pretty simple. If you had a law, you would just put expiration dates on your ads, and honor them up to that point. Handling mistakes would require some standards of making the customer aware of them before money changes hands. Websites could have expiration dates, if you want, though I think either keeping it up to date, saying “about $X” if it’s close, or just not including prices at all would be better.
It doesn’t need onerous restrictions. It would basically just enforce what good business people already do now.
It would probably help if you read the linked email exchange.
Keep in mind he has already apologized for acting like a douche. If you’re arguing that he wasn’t, even he disagrees with you.
I wonder if you read the same page I did – what I read cut off there, too, and I, also, wondered why people were saying he’d asked for 50% off. Go read it again. There are more emails, in which the customer looks worse and worse. In one he says, “hey, that $12 isn’t enough, you really ought to give me 50% off.”
If the exchange had stopped where it did when I first read it – the customer asking for $12 and the owner brushing him off, with no suggestion he intended to update the website, then both parties look about equally bad. Or at least, that was my take. But it goes on to have the owner offer $12 and promise to ask the website manager to update prices, and the customer saying “not good enough, give me more.” That, imo, is where the customer completely lost any moral standing.
You are forgetting the email in the middle when the owner claims that his lawyer told him he’s covered by the “prices in locations may vary” disclaimer and refuses to refund any amount.
The owner first apologized and offered to send an updated menu to the customer. Then he agreed to pay the $4.00 difference in prices. Then he agreed to pay $4.00 plus $12.00 in damages.
Each step of the way, the prick took each concession on the owner’s part as a sign of weakness and went for more.
Fortunately the owner got a little legal advice before offering anything more and was correctly advised that this guy was full of a hot air, his disclaimer protected him, and most importantly - to stop agreeing to any further demands and clam up now that the guy has started threatening class actions and claimed to have reported him.
Pointing out the disclaimer and refusing to cooperate was the appropriate thing for the owner to do once the customer made clear he was going to bully them out of anything he could and merely getting what was fair was not good enough for him.
He didn’t, though. The owner offers to refund him 3 bucks in email 4, then his next email, number 6, is him refusing to refund anything unless ordered by the authorities.
Unfortunately the email exchange was published as images instead of text which makes quoting them a real pain in the ass. But it appears you and others are not reading them very carefully.
Email 1, owner apologizes, agrees to update the website, and offers to send the customer an updated menu. (reasonable)
In reply to this the customer demands a refund and treble damages. (prick)
Email 2, owner replies that he is willing to honor the website price and refund the $4.00 (types $3.00 apparently by mistake) (reasonable)
In reply to this, the customer responds that in his opinion a mere refund would not be sufficient sanction for the ‘violation’ that has occurred and states that he has already referred the matter to applicable authorities in order to compel the restaurant to identify all consumers affected. (prick)
Email 3, the owner responds by saying in that case he will await instructions from the authorities that the customer says he notified. He apologizes again, explains again that the online menu was outdated and not applicable to his location. He assures the customer that he has contacted the website designer to see that it is corrected and that the correct pricing will be reflected as soon as possible. He offers again to honor the website price, and states that he had no problem paying the customer $12 as ‘damages’. However now that the customer says he filed an official complaint, he has to await resolution of that complaint and follow whatever instructions they give him. He assures the customer he will keep him updated on the situation and the website status and will make every effort to make sure this doesn’t happen again. (reasonable)
Email 4, the owner writes again to let the customer know they hae taken down their menu from the website. He also informs him he has received professional legal advice (again because the customer escalated things to that point) and they assured him that the disclaimer on their website protects them, and he should not comply with any of the customer’s requests for compensation. So he won’t. (reasonable)
Based on the progression of demands by the customer and his statement that he was going to compel them to disclose all customers who may have been affected by this, and that he had filed a complaint with appropriate authorities, the owner was well-advised to refuse any further communication about it.
That is hardly “refusing to refund anything unless ordered by the authorities” at least not from the onset - it only got to that point because it became clear the customer was bullying him for more than he deserved and intended to make a legal claim against the restaurant despite their offer to make good on the price difference. At that point refusing anything was the only thing they could reasonably do.
But I did. There was only one offer of refunding any quantity voluntarily in the whole exchange. One. Three dollars.
Yes and instead of accepting it the customer pushed for more, threatened class action, notified the owner that he had already filed an official complaint.
What is your point exactly? The restaurant’s first response was to agree to the refund until the customer backed them into a corner and forced them to stop communicating.
My point is that you believed that the owner agreed to pay the 4 dollars plus the 12 extra. He didn’t.
To begin with the customer has no legal right do demand treble damages. It is for a court to decide if punitive damages are warranted. But in the same breath that the customer made that demand, he also informed them that regardless, he had already filed a formal complaint. At that point the owner agreed in principle to pay $12 but advised the customer that since it had been filed as an official complaint he would wait for the outcome and if warranted, issue the refund.
Again what is the point? Are you saying you think it was reasonable for the customer to have demanded treble damages, or that it was unreasonable for the restaurant to say that since an official complaint was made they were inclined to see how it was resolved before issuing any refund?
I don’t need to see the narrative of this dispute as an evil moustache-twirling villain against a virginal orphan. The client had the right to ask for a refund he considered acceptable. The owner had the right to refuse once authorities were involved.
In any case, my point is still that you were wrong, the owner made only one attempt at making amends: three dollars, his second email, not several, as you implied. In the third email you quoted he’s literally refusing to pay any quantity, unless ordered to do so by authorities.
His first attempt to make amends was to apologize, promise to correct the error, and send the customer an updated menu. His second attempt was to honor the web price and issue a refund. In the same motion that he then demanded treble damages, the customer also informed him that regardless he had filed an official complaint. The owner said in principle he would have no problem paying him triple the error, but that since he had escalated it to that level he had to wait to see how it was resolved. The customer then added a demand to refund half the price of the order at which point the owner told him to take a long walk off a short pier. Which is what he should have done in email number 2.
In any case when I ask what is your point, I am asking in the bigger picture, what is your point of arguing any of this. Either you believe the restaurant was right or you believe the customer was right. In the big picture. This quibbling about who said what in which email is really irrelevant.
That’s not making amends. His client had been overcharged. He only apologized.
He did offer to make amends for his mistake in his second email. I would have refunded the money to the client whether he used his right to involve authorities or not, because that’s the right thing to do when you make a mistake. Mr. Duan chose not to.
Oh, this is yet another childish internet pile on of recreational outrage with little regard to the many grey areas. I dislike those. The fact is still that a guy was overcharged with a menu he had every right to assume listed the right prices. Whether he’s a dickead or not doesn’t make him less wrong in wanting compensation.
The customer believed he was overcharged. In fact he was charged correctly but the online menu didn’t reflect the current price. It had a disclaimer indicating that may be the case.
Your lawyer would have advised you against that once the customer made legal threats and claimed to have reported the matter.
Good for you. Why do you participate in them then? You are just piling on the other side of the debate and engaging in RO about an online menu being out of date.
He was a dickhead and he wasn’t due any compensation. That’s why he didn’t get any, dropped the claim, and apologized when he realized what a dickhead he looked like to the world.
No, there wasn’t. Read the emails: there was a disclaimer about prices changing from one location to another, but it also stated that the webpage was the one used for the restaurant in dispute.
Maybe so. That still wouldn’t stop me from reimbursing the money to a client who had been overcharged. And remember that in no way there’s any threat of legal action.
I’m not. I’m trying to defuse it.
Sure.
I disagree.
Did he? Dropped the claim?
No it is one website, with one menu, for two locations, and a disclaimer that says “prices and menu may vary by location”
Threatening to compel the restaurant to disclose all customers that may have been affected by the price discrepancy is a threat of legal action. Once he had been offered a fair refund for the difference, he decided to take the tact: “I want to see that you are punished” not “I want you to make amends for what I perceive to be a discrepancy in my bill” That is the arrogant dickhead in him talking. And it is what prevented him from getting any refund at all.
By apologizing and not following through with his threats I would say so. Obviously whatever authority he allegedly reported this to realized there was no violation and didn’t follow up with it and he declined to pursue any additional action.
The exchange started out politely. The legal threat wasn’t made until after the owner said he would only refund three dollars. It’s very likely that had he offered a 4 dollar refund from the start it would have been the end of it.
This seems representative of a problem I have seen with a lot of businesses. If the company makes a mistake they will only correct it if the customer comes back with guns blazing. If the customer makes a polite request for a correction, they (the business) dig their heels in and refuse to budge, knowing that someone who starts out polite is A: more likely to back down at the initial refusal, and B: if they do get angry or more forceful are more likely to “realize” they (the customer) are a “being a jerk” and back down with an apology.
And they do this because it works, just like it did in this case.
Yes, except in the locations listed in the webpage, which were the Woburn and the Brookline location, which made the outdated menu wrong for at least one of those. You may realize that if just a location disclaimer allowed you to change your prices at your whim, that would be a gigantic legal pothole for scammers.
It’s not contacting a lawyer and threatening to sue, which would be the standard implication of a threat of legal action.
I don’t think that he cared about the money, precisely, and in any case being an asshole doesn’t make him less right or wrong.
Again, he didn’t follow through with threats that never existed. Note that in no way or shape he claims to want any other legal trouble than reporting to the authorities.