Harvard Business School Professor Goes to War Over $4 Worth of Chinese Food

Harvard Business School Professor Goes to War Over $4 Worth of Chinese Food(boston.com)

41 points by legalbeagle 11 years ago | 14 comments

ekm2 11 years ago |

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.

gregatragenet3 11 years ago | |

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.

gohrt 11 years ago | |

Why do hapless businessmen disproportionately make such errors in their own favor?

How often does a store accidentally undercharge?

legalbeagle 11 years ago |

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.

s4sharpie 11 years ago |

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.

justinsb 11 years ago | |

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

rahimnathwani 11 years ago | | |

Why?

blkhp19 11 years ago | | |

I completely disagree. The restaurant owner has no right to overcharge, and the customer - Harvard professor or minimum wage worker - has every right to be compensated for the business' dishonesty.

iblaine 11 years ago |

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.

blkhp19 11 years ago | |

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.

codewritinfool 11 years ago |

At least one of those individuals is a jerk.

PhantomGremlin 11 years ago | |

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

blkhp19 11 years ago | |

Both, but the professor is also right.

cykho 11 years ago |

A good lesson that all emails are potentially public :)