Checking Restaurant Bills

[Guest fountainhall]

On another thread, there is a discussion about paying utility bills each month 'manually' rather than by direct debit - so that the amount can be checked before payment. I wonder how many of us similarly check restaurant bills? I have to admit I occasionally flip through a bill before paying, but more often than not in most vases I just pay it. Not after last night, though.

 

A friend and I went to one of our usual restaurants, the Coffee Shop in Le Meridien in Suriwong Road in Bangok. Perhaps not surprisingly, the hotel's business is terrible just now and the Coffee Shop was closed. Only the rather funky bar and more formal Bamboo Chic restaurant upstairs were open. After a few drinks and a pleasant meal with a lamb dish and a salmon dish and two interesting but tiny desserts, the bill arrived. My friend looked at the total, immediately said it was too expensive and checked each item. He quickly discovered that the cost of the lamb dish was just over double the amount on the menu. We asked for this to be checked. Our rather ineffectual waitress returned a few moments later to apologise that there had been a more expensive lamb dish on the menu until the week before and the computer had not been changed!! As a result, we had been billed 25% more for the meal, which she had now adjusted.

 

This morning, I checked the restaurant's website, and see that the girl was telling the truth. The menu has not been changed on the web and there was indeed a lamb dish at double the cost of the one my friend selected. But in these rather desperate times when hotels are trying everything to generate business, for a hotel of Le Meridien's class not to update the restaurant computers and to be seen to have overcharged guests 50% on just one dish is absolutely disgraceful. Perhaps another sign of the times was that the quality of service was nowhere near that we are used to in the Coffee Shop. The girls were pretty clueless about some of the finer points of serving guests.

 

All very sad for such a fine hotel, but it does highlight the need to check bills every time.

[Gaybutton]

I always check my bills, no matter whether it's a restaurant bill or anything else. Whenever I find an error it is almost always unintentional, usually a mistake or oversight of some sort. I've done that all my life, not just in Thailand.

 

"I was in a restaurant. The waiter gave me the wrong bill. It was for the guy at the next table. I said, 'Hey buddy, I've got your check.' He said, 'Thanks.'"

- Rodney Dangerfield

[Guest]

I find more problems on bills in Thailand in restaurants, bars, etc than anywhere else on earth. I often think it is on purpose to try to get more money but sometimes I think just honest mistake. When you hire people to do your work in bars and restaurants that often don't even have a high school degree, do you think that the bill is going to be right the majority of the time?

 

I like the way some places do it and that is it is a typed out version of the bill in both Thai and English. If only Thai, the BF will check. If only English, we both check.

 

I do think that this is an issue in MANY places in Thailand.

[Bob]

I find more problems on bills in Thailand in restaurants, bars, etc than anywhere else on earth. I often think it is on purpose to try to get more money but sometimes I think just honest mistake.

 

I'm just wondering if it's simply evidence of poor math skills much of the time (but, of course, maybe not all of the time). For about 3 months earlier this year, I used the same laundry - great place, great service - and noticed that almost half of the laundry bills had math errors and half or slightly more than half of those wrong bills were in my favor (yea, I pointed it out and paid the right amount). A couple of the ladies would use a pocket calculator to add up amounts that 90% of us would have simply figured out in our heads and even they got it wrong on occasion as they didn't clear the calculator to start or didn't read the English numbers correctly. I really don't think these ladies were trying to cheat me at all.

 

Remember, a lot of these kids were pulled from school to work in the fields or the family restaurant business when they were 12-13 years old. And the education they got up to that point in time wasn't always very good.

[Guest]

People should be able to add up even if they leave school at 13. You often see people adding up something very simple like 30 + 50 on the calculator.

 

I have started to check bills and change more carefully, after noticing one 7-11 in BK carefully counting out my change 20 baht short.

 

Probably it was an innocent mistake, but I now keep an eye on these things.

[ChristianPFC]

I rarely check. When I go shopping in a supermarket, they scan everything so no mistake is possible, only wrong change is possible.

 

When on holiday in Thailand, I usually pay the exact amount. The required small change I get from 7-11 by buying a bottle of water and paying with a 1000Baht bill, the cashier counts the change twice and I count while he/she handles the money.

 

However, when I had my clothes washed in a laundry in Pattaya, I later checked the bill and found out that the sum was wrong (to my disadvantage), I think it was 255 Baht istead of 155 baht.

[kokopelli]

I hate it when my friends find it necessary to check every item on their restaurant bill. Every time they do they find one of my drinks has been put on their bin.

[Guest fountainhall]

Thanks for all the advice. What surprised me about the bill I mentioned was that it came from one of those computerised tills in a 5-star hotel restaurant - i.e. the waitress only has to press the 'dish' name and the dish and the price are automatically printed. The fault lay either with the failure to recalibrate the computer with the new menu, or a lazy waitress. In my case, I suspect a bit of both, as the waitress should have picked it up before we did.

 

However, once bitten twice shy. From now on, everything will be checked.

[Guest Astrrro]

When I go shopping in a supermarket, they scan everything so no mistake is possible, only wrong change is possible.

 

 

As with the OP's menu issue, this assumes that the display price on the shelf matches the computerized price.

[Guest globalwanderer]

Always check

 

I've had prices on the till not what was on the shelf/price tag in many stores in pattaya, including many 'international' brands. The staff at my 'local' seem to forget a refill of coffee is included in the breakfast. It has been a lifetime habit.

[Guest beachlover]

Vietnam is even worse for this. But over there it is usually quite deliberate. They seem to have no shame in scamming tourists whenever they can there.

 

I mean when a Thai does it and is caught out, they are often ashamed or try not to lose face. In Vietnam, it's like they have no shame or guilt and couldn't care less. They just want your money.

[Guest GaySacGuy]

I found Vietnam quite the opposite...I don't recall ever having a check that was cheating me. Several fairly large meals I had checked by a Vietnam guide that was with us to be sure that the ticket was correct, and there was never a problem.

[Guest beachlover]

Really?... I was a bit shocked at how often they attempt to scam you by adding bits and pieces to your bill in Vietnam, even in higher-end eateries, occasionally. Sometimes it's as little as charging for a napkin you didn't request or use. Sometimes they blatantly add things to the bill. I don't think I recall any incident like that in Thailand or elsewhere.

 

It's not just the restaurants in Vietnam... Everyone really tries to scam you and they are quite cold and completely shameless about it.

 

I have never had a problem with a taxi in Thailand, but I would say 2 out of 5 taxis I caught in Hanoi tried to scam me.

 

Most common method was to run the meter absurdly fast. A 20,000 dong ride across town spun up to 250,000 dong.

 

I knew to expect this so each time it happened (around 10 times) I would tell the driver his meter was faulty and tell him an estimated amount what the amount should be. Usually they played dumb and either smiled or stayed blank faced.

 

I would then tell thde driver what I was going to give him, usually 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 (I couldn't care less if it was slightly under what the real meter would be - their loss for lying). They would then usually get very very angry, but you could tell it was just bad acting, putting on a show.

 

I'd give them the money and just get out and walk away. I figured if they were going to chase after me, (1) there's often a policeman on every corner, (2) I would have a head start seeing as they have to get out and run around the car to get to the side I'm on and (3) they're older and probably don't run so fast... But they never bothered to chase. The moment you get out, the act ends, they accept whatever they made and move on....f*cksticks.

[Guest lvdkeyes]

I have had three trips to Vietnam, Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City and have never had anything but good experiences with the Vietnamese people.

 

I have had problems with taxis in BKK. They say they know where you want to go, then drive all over hell and back and finally they have to ask another driver where the place is. Often it is far from where we are. I have also had taxis drivers in BKK try to tell me bullshit like "Chatuchuk market closed today, only open Sunday." This was on a Saturday, when I knew for a fact that it was open on Sat & Sun.

[PattayaMale]

I rarely check. When I go shopping in a supermarket, they scan everything so no mistake is possible, only wrong change is possible.

 

When on holiday in Thailand, I usually pay the exact amount. The required small change I get from 7-11 by buying a bottle of water and paying with a 1000Baht bill, the cashier counts the change twice and I count while he/she handles the money.

 

However, when I had my clothes washed in a laundry in Pattaya, I later checked the bill and found out that the sum was wrong (to my disadvantage), I think it was 255 Baht istead of 155 baht.

 

In the USA a survey of "scanned" items was done and found 10% of the time there was a mistake and almost always an over charge. Two big super market chains in California alone were find hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Guest beachlover]

I have had three trips to Vietnam, Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City and have never had anything but good experiences with the Vietnamese people.

 

I don't have any major gripe with them either... I was just a bit shocked at how cold and shameless they were in attempting to rip off tourists. That did piss me off.

 

I have had problems with taxis in BKK. They say they know where you want to go, then drive all over hell and back and finally they have to ask another driver where the place is. Often it is far from where we are. I have also had taxis drivers in BKK try to tell me bullshit like "Chatuchuk market closed today, only open Sunday." This was on a Saturday, when I knew for a fact that it was open on Sat & Sun.

 

I've never had any issues with taxis in BKK... except on the odd occasion when they couldn't understand English too well and needed to do the same (ask another driver what I meant). Never really had an issue with them saying stuff like "xxx closed" because I'm usually savvy enough to realise it's BS... but I suppose I should get pissed off about the attempt at a scam.

[Guest lvdkeyes]

Your earlier posting about Vietnam sure sounded like you had a gripe with the people there.

I certainly was aware that when the taxi driver told me that Chatuchuk was closed it was bullshit. That's why I told him to stop the taxi and I got out.

 

When I had had problems with drivers not knowing where I wanted to go it was after he said. "yes, OK OK", then drove around before stopping to ask another driver and had gone off in the wrong direction altogether. It is a scam to run the meter up. Sometimes, it is a language problem, but not always, sometimes it is a good ploy to pretend not to understand.