URGENT NEWS: Double-pricing for tourists happens in Bangkok!
Apparently, there’s a new phenomenon in Bangkok called double-pricing for tourists…have you heard about it? I’ll try to link to the Bangkok Post article here, but they’re always changing their website so you’ll probably have to search for it from bangkokpost.com if you want to read it.
Basically, there have been some seafood restaurants charging exorbitant prices over the New Year’s holiday, which I assume is because not many people (both local and foreign) have been going out, so the restaurants thought it would be funny to play Enron with foreign customer’s bills.
In typical Bangkok Post fashion, facts are few and far between. The list one customer being charged about 4,500 baht (about $125) for a giant prawn (uhh…do they mean lobster hopefully?) and 200 baht (about $5.50) for a plate of fried morning glory. They also list a group of 10 tourists getting charged more than a thousand dollars for ‘just a couple of dishes’, but I find that hard to believe, must have just ‘accidentally’ added another zero in the credit card machine.
Underneath the Bangkok Post’s sorry excuse for a story, there does exist overcharging in Thailand, of course, as well as many other tourist zones in the world (and probably more so in developing countries). Even I’m guilty in a way. When I worked at a pizza restaurant in Santa Monica, near the promenade, our cash register would automatically add gratuity for parties of 6 or more. After getting stiffed by clueless Europeans time after time (the restaurant was in a tourist zone, French and Germans were the worst), I would just mark the table as a 6-top, even if there were only four or five people. I justify this because……well, I don’t really justify it, but many restaurants in Europe and tourist zones around the world add a 10% service charge to the bill, so I figure I was just making the tourists feel more at home.
A couple years later, karma decided to kick my a__ and I ended up working in a restaurant in Japan (Wolfgang Puck’s). I originally took the position thinking the waiter actually gets to keep the service charge that gets collected (WRONG…at least in Japan this doesn’t happen, not sure about other places that have a service charge).
But, the real double-pricing that goes on in Thailand is more often a rigged taxi meter or an outrageous price from a tuk-tuk driver. If you look at it simply from an economic perspective, double-pricing seems a bit fairer. There is also definitely a difference between a price being negotiated beforehand, like a tuk-tuk, and an inflated restaurant bill or taxi fare, which are a bit more deceitful.
Another issue of double-pricing that angers foreigners sometimes is National Park entry. Currently, foreigners have to pay about $10 for entry, while Thais pay $1. It’s said that this is because foreigners don’t pay tax in Thailand, which is half true. While foreigners don’t pay income tax in Thailand, they do pay plenty of sales tax (VAT) to the government. Still, it would be interesting to see how much foreigners are put off by these double-standard fees and the elasticity of demand of the National park entry fee. National parks also give foreigners who work in Thailand the Thai price ($1), as long as they show their work permit at the entrance.
Also, for those of you not interested in reading all of the Bangkok Post article (it’s actually quite short), here’s my favorite quote from it:
”In fact, we have to admit that some restaurant operators have been overcharging foreign tourists for a long time. We just didn’t receive any complaints”
That’s a quote from the deputy director-general of Thailand’s Department of Internal Trade, Songklod Ubolsing. Just gotta wonder, if they didn’t receive any complaints, how did they know about it?