The next time you go to a hotel to eat, make sure you check the prices on the menu against your bill. On Wednesday, the Consumer Court passed an order against a popular restaurant chain in the city for overcharging a customer by Rs 2 and trying to pass it off as a donation to a charity.
In a complaint before the First Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, T Narasimha Murthy had accused the restaurant chain Vasudev Adiga’s Fast Food of wrongly billing him Rs 2 extra. Murthy said that when he visited the restaurant on November 24, last year, he was billed Rs 50 for two idlis, when the price on the menu was Rs 24 a piece. When he enquired, the hotel staff told him it was a collection for a donation to an NGO.
The complainant estimated that with 21 outlets in the city alone, a minimum of Rs 1,000 per outlet would balloon into Rs 75.6 lakh in a year, all of which is collected without the customers’ consent.
In its defence, the counsel for the hotel chain said that the amount was being collected as part of a tie-up with the Akshaya Patra Foundation. The defence stated that Vasudev Adiga’s had decided to donate `1 ‘on the rates shown in the menu card’. But it couldn’t explain the additional `1.
The court directed the restaurant chain to pay the complainant a sum of Rs 100 and a further sum of Rs 1,000 towards the cost of litigation.