Venice restaurant bill outrages Japanese tourists

[webfact]

Venice restaurant bill outrages Japanese tourists

 

The mayor of Venice has voiced outrage over the €1,100 (£970; $1,347) bill that four Japanese tourists say they had to pay for four steaks, a plate of fried fish, water and service.

 

The four students complained to police after getting the eye-watering bill at a restaurant near St Mark's Square.

 

Three women with them chose another restaurant - but even they ended up paying €350 for three plates of seafood pasta, Italian media report.

 

Full story; http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42772609

 

-- © Copyright BBC 2018-01-23

 

[Thian]

Will show this to my wife, i hope she won't ask me again of going to Venice...

 

Italy is a beautifull country but the hotels/restaurants are bad....plus they can't speak english.

[Daffy D]

There was a piece about Venice restaurants on the "Rip Off Britain" program just the other day.

 

Seems in Venice the menu price is by weight not per portion. So if steak is priced at whatever on the menu it is just for say an ounce, so 5 ounce steak will cost 5 times the shown price.

 

And of course they bring huge platefuls of food so that sends the price up even further.

 

Not a cheap place to eat.   

 

 

[tonray]

I guess they have never gone to a really nice restaurant in Tokyo...because that is about what the bill would be.

[lovelomsak]

15 minutes ago, tonray said:

I guess they have never gone to a really nice restaurant in Tokyo...because that is about what the bill would be.

That was my thought too. I felt Japanese would be used to prices like that. Japan is very expensive to eat in restarants

[stevenl]

1 hour ago, Thian said:

Will show this to my wife, i hope she won't ask me again of going to Venice...

 

Italy is a beautifull country but the hotels/restaurants are bad....plus they can't speak english.

It's beautiful, no English spoken. Sound excellent, any more positives?

[boomerangutang]

When I travel, I often just buy a loaf of good bread, an avocado, a few sweet peppers, and make sandwiches.  Healthier than anything in a restaurant, and it doesn't thin out my wallet.

 

p.s. it's a good thing I travel solo.  If I had a wife, she'd be telling me non-stop, what a cheap-charlie I am, ......'kee neeo,' with a Thai wife.

[sanemax]

36 minutes ago, tonray said:

I guess they have never gone to a really nice restaurant in Tokyo...because that is about what the bill would be.

Depends on which kind of restaurant , if you go to a top restaurant , those may be the prices , but if you go to a normal restaurant , prices would be a lot cheaper .

   It depends on whether this restaurant in question was expensive restaurant or  cheaper restaurant over charging 

[tonray]

4 minutes ago, boomerangutang said:

When I travel, I often just buy a loaf of good bread, an avocado, a few sweet peppers, and make sandwiches.  Healthier than anything in a restaurant, and it doesn't thin out my wallet.

 

p.s. it's a good thing I travel solo.  If I had a wife, she'd be telling me non-stop, what a cheap-charlie I am, ......'kee neeo,' with a Thai wife.

I think we might be twins separated at birth... because when I travel alone... It's about getting away.. With the gf it's about the amenities at the resort... sigh

[gandalf12]

39 minutes ago, stevenl said:

It's beautiful, no English spoken. Sound excellent, any more positives?

It isn't England?

[Enoon]

 

"In 30 years the city has lost half its fixed population."

 

The death of Venice: Corrupt officials, mass tourism and soaring ...

 

 

[Berkshire]

Interesting that Venice has just been included as one of the destinations to avoid....

 

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/places-to-avoid-2018/index.html

 

[Orton Rd]

Bloody hell going in a few weeks, do they have 7/11?

[Thian]

2 hours ago, lovelomsak said:

That was my thought too. I felt Japanese would be used to prices like that. Japan is very expensive to eat in restarants

You can eat pretty cheap in the Ramen-bars and simple restaurants at the street/station...We eat a sushi-platter and so at Ueno railwaystation and it wasn't that expensive (also not very good though but not bad).

 

If you eat Katsu curry or so just along the street in a place with tables/chairs it will cost around 300 baht i think....not that much...a Mc meal in Amsterdam costs about the same.

 

We were in Italy in a grouptour this year, 4* hotels including breakfast/dinner...many times nobody ate the dinner because it was so crappy...and the breakfast also is not what i would call breakfast buffet. And the hotels sure were not 4stars, even didn't have seaview like promised. I can sue them easy for that but am too lazy.

[isaanbanhou]

Tourists in Venice were charged more than $600 for a lunch they claim they didn't order — and this is a more common scam than you'd expect         Nov 7, 2017

http://www.thisisinsider.com/venice-tourists-lunch-bill-scam-2017-11

 

Mayor proud restaurant ripped off ‘cheapskate’ tourists

https://nypost.com/2017/11/14/mayor-proud-restaurant-ripped-off-cheapskate-tourists

 

It's a shame the internet isn t in Japanese.  A simple google search would have saved them a lot of grief.  The Brits in the first article paid 526 Euros for their lunch.  

[watcharacters]

4 minutes ago, isaanbanhou said:

Tourists in Venice were charged more than $600 for a lunch they claim they didn't order — and this is a more common scam than you'd expect         Nov 7, 2017

http://www.thisisinsider.com/venice-tourists-lunch-bill-scam-2017-11

 

Mayor proud restaurant ripped off ‘cheapskate’ tourists

https://nypost.com/2017/11/14/mayor-proud-restaurant-ripped-off-cheapskate-tourists

 

It's a shame the internet isn t in Japanese.  A simple google search would have saved them a lot of grief.  The Brits in the first article paid 526 Euros for their lunch.  

 

 

 

Japan has no internet?

 

 

 

 

[chuang]

I thought this happens only in Thailand with all the comments on TVF....

[isaanbanhou]

6 minutes ago, watcharacters said:

 

 

 

Japan has no internet?

 

 

 

 

oh they do? my internet is in english only,

then they had the opportunity not to be scammed, just as I did when AirAsia charged me $400 for an extra 20 kg of luggage on a flight from Guangzhou to BKK that the airline ticket cost $375 for seat, 20 kg of luggage and a meal.

 

I  believe the greeks used to greet each other by saying " caveat emptor"

[Thian]

7 minutes ago, chuang said:

I thought this happens only in Thailand with all the comments on TVF....

Italy has many things in common with thailand, they also have a lot of maffia...

 

But italiens have very good manners in traffic and they make touristic spots absolutely perfect. We never got cheated in italy and the people have good manners. In fact along the italien coast is a much better place to retire than in thailand.

[stevenl]

10 minutes ago, isaanbanhou said:

oh they do? my internet is in english only,

then they had the opportunity not to be scammed, just as I did when AirAsia charged me $400 for an extra 20 kg of luggage on a flight from Guangzhou to BKK that the airline ticket cost $375 for seat, 20 kg of luggage and a meal.

 

I  believe the greeks used to greet each other by saying " caveat emptor"

Greeks speak and spoke  Greek.

[tonray]

51 minutes ago, isaanbanhou said:

Tourists in Venice were charged more than $600 for a lunch they claim they didn't order — and this is a more common scam than you'd expect         Nov 7, 2017

http://www.thisisinsider.com/venice-tourists-lunch-bill-scam-2017-11

 

Mayor proud restaurant ripped off ‘cheapskate’ tourists

https://nypost.com/2017/11/14/mayor-proud-restaurant-ripped-off-cheapskate-tourists

 

It's a shame the internet isn t in Japanese.  A simple google search would have saved them a lot of grief.  The Brits in the first article paid 526 Euros for their lunch.  

In Japan.. The Internet is in Japanese 

[isaanbanhou]

24 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Greeks speak and spoke  Greek.

ok, well travelled greeks greeted each other in Latin saying caveat emptor ...let the buyer beware.

 

in the future I will note sarcasm with an astericks (*) so that some posters don t misunderstand 

[abrahamzvi]

5 hours ago, Thian said:

Will show this to my wife, i hope she won't ask me again of going to Venice...

 

Italy is a beautifull country but the hotels/restaurants are bad....plus they can't speak english.

I entirely disagree. Hotels are expensive, as everywhere in bigger cities in Europe, the Americas and Australia and NZ. The restaurants, at least most of them, are very reasonable. My wife, daughter and myself were in Venice last year and had good meals in very nice centrally located restaurants for very reasonable prices , some EUR50. Of course, if one chooses luxury 2-3 Stars restaurants, or if one is unlucky and visits a restaurant owned or managed by crooks, one pays a fortune, but this can happen anywhere - Paris, London, Melbourne, or even in Bangkok. By the way , we found that most waiters in or owners of the restaurants we frequented did speak English, albeit not perfectly, but good enough to be understood.

[ChrisY1]

Venice is on Trip Advisor 7 places Not to visit..!

[wgdanson]

5 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

When I travel, I often just buy a loaf of good bread, an avocado, a few sweet peppers, and make sandwiches.  Healthier than anything in a restaurant, and it doesn't thin out my wallet.

 

p.s. it's a good thing I travel solo.  If I had a wife, she'd be telling me non-stop, what a cheap-charlie I am, ......'kee neeo,' with a Thai wife.

On a two week holiday? Avocado butties every day?

[wgdanson]

2 hours ago, tonray said:

Tourists in Venice were charged more than $600 for a lunch they claim they didn't order

But they still ate the food 'they didn't order'

[mike324]

"Italian media did not name the restaurant, but said it was owned by a Chinese woman and run by an Egyptian." The chinese are known to not like japanese, perhaps this is the reason why the japanese were scammed too?

 

I've visited Rome once, went inside a restaurant and the servers started opening champagne and pouring it for everybody on the table. We thought it was complimentary given how cheap wine and champagne can be in europe. I think many tourist fall for this trick into thinking, what good service and complimentary drinks in the beginning of the meal, these restaurants owners know tourist won't return so they don't care about repeat businesses. Needless to say, when we check the bill, we were charged for the champagne. We tried to argue, they said we didn't say we did not want it.  We ordered a lot of food too, and they over charge us for one extra dish, which we got it removed, but they accidentally removed two dishes as it was a heated talk. They ended up removing two dishes from the bill, call it karma. This was not a one off occurrence, we visited several italian restaurants during our 1 week trip, perhaps 1/3 of the restaurants will pull this champagne scam on us - needless to say we quickly tell them we don't want it.

[Dap]

5 hours ago, Enoon said:

 

"In 30 years the city has lost half its fixed population."

 

The death of Venice: Corrupt officials, mass tourism and soaring ...

 

 

And I hear it's sinking as well 

[Srikcir]

4 hours ago, isaanbanhou said:

a lunch they claim they didn't order

To be fair the tourists did eat the food rather than rejecting it as food they didn't order.

You eat, you pay.

[Thian]

3 hours ago, abrahamzvi said:

I entirely disagree. Hotels are expensive, as everywhere in bigger cities in Europe, the Americas and Australia and NZ. The restaurants, at least most of them, are very reasonable. My wife, daughter and myself were in Venice last year and had good meals in very nice centrally located restaurants for very reasonable prices , some EUR50. Of course, if one chooses luxury 2-3 Stars restaurants, or if one is unlucky and visits a restaurant owned or managed by crooks, one pays a fortune, but this can happen anywhere - Paris, London, Melbourne, or even in Bangkok. By the way , we found that most waiters in or owners of the restaurants we frequented did speak English, albeit not perfectly, but good enough to be understood.

In the big italien cities they speak a little english but not in the smaller ones or along the coast in touristic villages.

But Venice is very nice and worth some extra costs i think, it's of a whole different level than thailand which only has malls to visit.

 

In Italy you can also drink coffee for 18 euro a cup, if you go sit on a terrace at a very busy place in Rome it's possible...but if you stand at the bar while drinking coffee it is much cheaper..

 

But this issue with the Japanese will be solved i assume, italy is not thailand and they sure know how to deal with issues. Guess that restaurant will get big problems soon.