Beaverstate

Have you ever been overcharged intentionally? I was at a local tavern with a date and realized the next day that I had been charged for 4 hours of pool. We had only been there for three hours, with at most 2 hours of pool after dinner. No big deal just $20, refunded the next day(after insisting). Got me to thinking how many people would shrug it off? If so, easy money for the establishment?

Michael

About 25 years ago, I was in a busy nightclub in the heart of London and when the waitress brought me my drink (£5), I gave her a £20 note never to see her again.

Azarel

I lived in Turkey for 5 years and overcharging foreigners was pretty common. No malice in it, but there definitely was a sense of one price for locals, and another for foreigners. I remember once going to a restaurant with some friends who'd come to visit and the waiter brought us menus in English. I asked for one in Turkish as I sometimes had difficulty understanding their English translations and knew all the dishes by their Turkish names anyway. You've probably already guessed that they prices in the two menus were markedly different!

The funny thing with the Turks is that while they obviously saw overcharging naive tourists as fair business, other things were certainly not on. A shop owner might stiff you for double the regular price, but that's just considered fair game - if you're dumb enough to pay, it's your look-out. But if you dropped so much as the smallest coin on the way out of his shop, he'd chase you down the street to give it back to you. Keeping that would be 'stealing'.

Norri

Around the same time I was in a seedy club in Soho it cost us £35 for 3-1/2 pints, we were assured that this wasn't overcharging.

Michael

I think I was in Soho also and the place was packed elbow to elbow. It would have been impossible to find the waitress.

Alan17

Based on what you get for the money I seem to be overcharged by the IRS on an annual basis.....

BubbleChog

That happens here in the US too. The chinese places me and the TAS eat at have an "american" menu and a chinese one and the prices are very different on the chinese one.

One night a new waiter gave us the English menu and got a severe bollocking from the manager

Lx

Apfelkuchen

I had this in a restaurant in Athens a couple of years ago, except the two different menus were printed on opposite sides of the same piece of card (albeit with the order mixed up a bit)! Luckily I could read enough of the Greek alphabet to work it out, though, and when challenged they gave us the 'local' prices.

Michael

That occasionally happens in the SF bay area also but the difference in price is usually not very significant. Most menus from Chinese resturants in the bay area are printed in both English and Chinese but if it is only printed in English and you are with someone that understands Chinese, ask for the Chinese menu.

RICH

That must be it I often used to go to bars, and the next morning, I could not figure out where all the money I went out with had gone

Welshgator

Some 25+ years ago I worked in the Szechuan Province in China with a friend from England. For 3 months we stayed at a Hong Kong based hotel which could serve local and import beer. The local beer was really good, they had been taught to brew it by a German company. Also, it came in pint bottles whereas the import stuff like Heineken was in a small can and cost 8x as much.
Anyway, we worked a long day at a Chinese Army hospital, when we got back at night we'd sit at the bar have a couple of local beers and then eat dinner. We were the only western people at the hotel that week. After a few nights the barman had been told to refuse to sell us local beer and that we had to buy the canned import stuff at the inflated prices.
Every morning at the hospital, when we walked in, we would be introduced to a different high ranking army official as they liked to meet the westerners, things were different back then. That next morning the highest ranking army official at the hospital sat there and we drank tea and conversed through an interpreter. He asked us if we were happy with everything. My friend was ex Royal Navy and he left no doubt in the guy's mind that we were distinctly unhappy about the beer issue - we liked local beer and were insulted that they wouldn't serve us Chinese beer at the hotel. He immediately picked up the phone and a short conversation ensued. We finished our tea shook hands and went off to work
That evening, as soon as we walked in the bar, the barman slapped two local beers on the counter with a big grin on his face (and ours).
Now for the funny part, the following week we sat at the bar and four Italians, who worked at a leather shoe factory, had just flown in. They sat at the other end of the bar and were kind of surly when we said hello. So, the barman goes over and asks what they would like to drink? They said, "we want the same as those two guys over there". The barman with a straight face said, " Sorry, local beer is only for them." It was all I could do to not spray my beer everywhere. I can honestly say those guys hated our guts for weeks. In fact they gave us the evil eye and never spoke to us, so every night when they walked in we'd raise our bottles and say hi to them...

Pulaski

It's not what you know, it's who you know, .... always!

HarryTheSpider

Unless it is what you know ABOUT who you know...

tuxedocat

It's not uncommon at the grocery store or fast food. Check your receipt before pulling away or driving away from the store. When you get home make sure all your groceries are there too.
Twice I've had one of those mail places charge me for a fee they did not disclose to me even after I questioned the total before paying. I give them the benefit of the doubt if they are in a rush adding things up, but when I question the total they should have let me know then.

Michael

My local supermarket has/had an idiot as their produce manager. Whenever he had too much produce, he would notify his employees to put certain products on sale before they rot. The employee would then make up and post signs about the sale but the produce manger wouldn't enter the new price into the computer until the next day.

This happened regularly for over 6 months and finally stopped either because he was fired or some manager finally realized that check out personal were wasting a lot of time manually checking prices and had him change his procedures.