China: Woman shocked by $60,000 bill at restaurant after posting her table QR code

A woman in China received the shock of her life when she went to a restaurant to have a hearty meal but ended up receiving a $60,000 (430,000 yuan) bill for food that she had not even ordered.

The woman, surnamed Wang, visited a hotpot restaurant alongside her friend last month and as is the norm in the internet age, posted photos of the dishes on her social media. However, in one of the photos, she included the QR code of the table on which she and her friend were dining.

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Since COVID-19, a number of restaurants have put up QR codes on tables which allows customers to order food using their smartphones. While the technology was for the convenience of Wang and others, the netizens who saw the QR code started using it to order food online. The tab of which, obviously, went into Wang's account.

According to the South China Morning Post, although Wang added the photo on her restricted viewing WeChat Moments page, which can only be seen by her contacts in WeChat, that list included a large number of people who started scanning the code and making themselves comfortable.

Restaurant staff approaches Wang

Surprised by the flurry of orders, the restaurant staff arrived at Wang's table to confirm the $60,000 order. Quickly realising what was happening, Wang immediately deleted her post but the orders kept on coming. Turns out, some users had downloaded the photo and continued making orders, in hopes of receiving the food.

Wang later shared the screenshot of the orders made from her table which showed people ordering 1,850 portions of fresh duck blood, 2,580 portions of squid and 9,990 portions of shrimp paste.

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Acting in good faith, the restaurant management did not make Wang pay the bill and instead, moved her to a new table while binning the orders received online.

The restaurant said it did not have the resources to track down the people who ordered the food and that it could not stop them from continuing to do so.

The incident went viral on Chinese social media and users pointed out the inherent risks of using QR codes for ordering purposes. Some suggested that the restaurant ordering system designers add a confirmation mechanism to prevent a similar incident from happening in future.

(With inputs from agencies)