

Harvard Business School Professor Goes to War Over $4 Worth of Chinese Food - legalbeagle
http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/09/harvard-business-school-professor-goes-war-over-worth-chinese-food/KfMaEhab6uUY1COCnTbrXP/story.html

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ekm2
The proprietor has apologized more than twice in the emails.I do not think it
is fair for the HBS professor to take such drastic measures because a hapless
businessman did not understand enough HTML to update a website frequently.

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gregatragenet3
The proprietor also had the opportunity to credit back the customer's money
twice - having the wrong advertised prices on a menu is the proprietor's
mistake. In the first response, the owner should have offered to credit back
the $4 not just send an updated menu. This likely would have diffused the
whole situation. And then on the second reply when asked for $12 he shouldn't
have just offered $3 (not even the full amount). It's an antipattern for
running a small business to not honor a lower price if an employee (or
website) misquoted a lower price than is usual. And in most jurisdictions it
is also illegal.

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legalbeagle
This guy, Ben Edelman, focuses a lot of his work on online advertising issues.
The question here is that his campaign against the Chinese restaurant,
although technically correct (they did charge higher prices than advertised
online) is wildly disproportionate.

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s4sharpie
This is such a brilliant example of how attention to detail and treating every
customer as your most valuable customer is crucial. Such a simple situation to
show: 1\. you never know which customer is the one that will tweet/publish
their experience (good or bad). Offering to pay the $12 immediately would have
solved this and caused no negative PR 2\. you have to make sure your entire
business and it's assets are up to date, all the time. It might be a rookie
mistake to have a website that the proprietor can't update ... but I feel they
plain forgot to make the change. If your website isn't integral to the way you
run your business and considered in every decision you make, close down your
website.

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justinsb
Perhaps so, but this exchange also reflects incredibly poorly on the
complainer in this case.

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rahimnathwani
Why?

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iblaine
Ben Edelman has been instrumental in the fight against malicious advertisers.
It takes patience and diligence to demonstrate illegal online advertising. Ben
is one of the few people that does it well. That said he should go easy on
this restaurant...the owner seems knowingly ignorant that he was overcharging
customers.

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blkhp19
All the business owner needed to do was refund the money. He knows exactly
what he's doing and he's wrong for it.

"I'm sorry for the price difference between what you were charged and what was
listed on our website. We've refunded you the $4 that we overcharged you and
hope that you'll give us another chance. We're currently working to update our
website so that customers like you are not mislead.

Thank you for your business."

Done. That's it. That's all that had to take place.

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codewritinfool
At least one of those individuals is a jerk.

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PhantomGremlin
I believe the British phrase that best describes the professor is "wanker".
Very similar to jerk. :)

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cykho
A good lesson that all emails are potentially public :)

