A RESTAURANT in OCT Harbor was investigated by authorities after charging a customer over 4,000 yuan (US$582) for two fish, the Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday.

    The customer, surnamed Li, said that he was stunned by his bill after eating dinner with his friends at the restaurant named 1949 Huajiali in OCT Harbor. He was asked to pay 8,254 yuan for the meal, including 4,628 yuan for two wild yellow croakers from the East China Sea.

    Li said the restaurant didn’t have a menu and only served set meals, but a waiter told him that one of the dishes in the set meal that he ordered was unavailable and recommended that he replace it with the wild yellow croaker, but the waiter failed to mention how much a croaker cost.

    “Each dish in the set meal costs only dozens of yuan, so we thought the yellow croaker might cost about the same,” Li said, adding that he hadn’t known the yellow croaker’s price when they ordered another croaker during the dinner.

    The receipt provided by the restaurant showed that two yellow croakers, each weighing about 0.5 kilograms, cost 4,628 yuan in total. Li was also asked to pay a 15-percent service fee, which was 1,092.66 yuan. The restaurant agreed to give Li a 5-percent discount, saving him 122.8 yuan, after he complained about the high prices.

    “I think the restaurant should mark the prices clearly for its customers,” Li said. He made a complaint to the Shenzhen Consumer Council on Monday.

    The restaurant’s spokesperson said that Li had asked for a set meal based on 500-yuan consumption per capita, and the restaurant served dishes according to Li’s requirements.

    “One of Li’s friends asked to have a butterfish replaced with a yellow croaker. We told them the price of yellow croaker and confirmed with them after changing the dishes,” said a marketing manager for the restaurant, surnamed Luo.

    The restaurant also provided a purchasing receipt for the yellow croakers, which showed that it had bought half a kilogram of croakers for 1,260 yuan.

    The restaurant’s spokesperson said that the restaurant was still in a trial operation period, and they served different kinds of seafood each day, so they couldn’t provide a fixed menu. “We serve set meals in accordance with the standards of per capita consumption that each customer chooses,” she said.

    The city’s price supervision bureau launched an on-site inspection of the restaurant Tuesday. An inspector said that the restaurant hadn’t set a menu or displayed its prices, which might have violated relevant rules. The restaurant promised to make rectifications and settle the dispute with Li as soon as possible.

    Wei Xing, director of the Shenzhen Consumer Council’s consulting department, said that the restaurant had infringed on the consumer’s right to know, as it hadn’t marked the prices clearly or notified customers about their 15-percent service fee in advance. (Zhang Yang)