Customer recieves $60K bill after unintentional social media mishap at restaurant
KUNMING, SOUTHWEST CHINA: A Chinese restaurant customer was taken aback after an unintentional social media mishap resulted in a staggering $60K bill.
The woman, identified only by her surname Wang, was dining with a friend at a hotpot restaurant in Kunming, Southwest China, on November 23, when the incident occurred.
What went wrong for the customer?
The customer decided to take a picture of her meal for social media, as is common among many restaurant patrons nowadays.
Things went wrong when the diner included a photo of the table's QR code, which customers scan with their iPhones to pay for their meals, according to The South China Morning Post.
After posting the photos to the Chinese social media site WeChat, she realized something was wrong when she received a check for 430,000 yuan (approximately $60,500).
As it turned out, even though she had only posted the photos for her contacts, a shady party — or multiple malicious entities — had used the QR code to charge her a ridiculous amount of food.
There were 2,580 orders of squid, 1,850 orders of duck blood (a popular delicacy in the region), and an insane 9,990 portions of shrimp paste among the illegally 'comped' dishes.
Even after Wang realized her mistake and deleted the photo, she continued to receive bootleg orders, which she attributed to someone downloading the photo before it was erased.
Restaurant's digitized ordering system
Staff members did not make the besieged eater pay for the extra items and moved her to a different table to distinguish the genuine orders from the forgeries.
Unfortunately, the restaurant owners were unable to identify the perpetrators or prevent the scammers from racking up new charges.
To avoid future free-for-alls, the restaurant's ordering system has been modified so that orders can only be placed within a certain distance.
Despite being digitally hornswoggled, Wang described the experience as a learning lesson. Meanwhile, other WeChat users reported having their QR codes stolen, highlighting the drawbacks of the digitized ordering system.
Lin Xiaoming, a lawyer in Sichuan Province, recommended that ordering platforms implement anti-theft security measures such as requiring customers to make a prepayment before ordering and penalizing food thieves with credit score deductions and other deterrents.
