How Would You Handle This?

[Abra]

Something like this just happened to me. I left my coat over the back of the chair (no offer to hang it up) and a candle that was burning on a wall sconce all through the meal dripped a huge amount of wax all over the inside of the coat. It''s a relatively expensive and unique coat, so I was freaked out. Because we were on vacation, the restaurant manager, after trying fruitlessly to clean it himself, told me to have the hotel owner call him to arrange a solution. When I told the hotel owner, she said "wow, the same thing happened to me there not too long ago."

The restaurant offered to pay for the cleaning, but since it only cost 9 Euros I didn't even bother to send them the bill. However, the fact that they let this same accident happen to at least two customers really made me wonder how I should have reacted. The coat's fine now, and we won't be going back there in any case since it was a tourist destination only. It still bugs me, though.

[MikeHartnett]

presume a similar situation, if the customer did check his coat and the wine was spilled by the waiter--would the restaurant still refuse to reimburse the cost of the shirt, trousers, and perhaps belt that were stained? is it the customer's fault in this case because it was a risk of dining out? i don't think many people would blame the customer in this situation.

←

I don't think anyone's arguing that it was the customer's fault, and I think you could remove the coat-check issue entirely and it wouldn't change much. The issue is how much the customer was damaged by this. It would be difficult to argue that the customer deserved more than the dry cleaning bill and maybe the loss in value of the coat, though as mentioned above, since the stain was inside it, it would be hard to prove there was much loss in value.

These days, though, the guy probably could argue that it was his very favorite coat, it's irreplaceable, and he's emotionally scarred. No one thinks about how fair it is to the person paying; they just sympathize and give the poor guy his money.

[PopsicleToze]

uh oh -- looks original query posted 2007