Australian journalist Peter Lalor is something of a beer aficionado. He’s written about brews for almost 25 years, but he balks at paying more than $10 for a pint.
“I like nice beer and nice wine, but I don’t pay silly prices,” he told CNN in an email.
That might’ve been true until he went for a beer at a hotel bar in Manchester, England. He expected to pay $6.76. He was charged more than 10,000 times more than that.
“See this beer? That is the most expensive beer in history,” he tweeted with a photo of the budget-busting beverage.
See this beer? That is the most expensive beer in history.
I paid $99,983.64 for it in the Malmaison Hotel, Manchester the other night.
Seriously.Contd. pic.twitter.com/Q54SoBB7wu
— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
The ordeal started Sunday night after he dropped off a friend at a train station and stopped at the Malmaison Hotel. He asked for something British. To his dismay, the bartender suggested a Heineken. So he settled for an IPA (that ended up being Scottish).
He wasn’t wearing his glasses when the bartender passed him the check, he said, but he “just had a feeling she’d got [the price] wrong.” So he asked her what he’d been charged, and she collapsed into giggles.
Lalor wasn’t laughing.
“She had increased the price 10,000-fold,” he said.
He’s Waiting On His Refund
Management issued him an immediate refund and assured him the charge that massive might not even go through. But a few days later, his wife called—$67,000+ dollars, gone.
His bank said it takes about 10 days to refund the sum, so Lalor’s waiting anxiously.
“I am not a wealthy man,” he said. “I could buy my car 10 times over with that amount.”
Malmaison told CNN it reached out to apologize and resolve the blunder.
“We always benchmark our bar prices and acknowledge this was a tad on the steep side,” the hotel chain said in a statement to CNN. “We hope we can invite Peter back for another drink soon. The next one is definitely on the house!”
American Tourists Pay $935 for Beers, Calamari, Salads
In a similar story, several tourists became incensed after they were charged $935 for what they said was calamari, tomato juice, and six bottles of beer.
They claimed that they were charged $661 for six plates of calamari, $167 for six beers, $20 for a glass of tomato juice, $20 for two bottles of water, and $66 for three Caesar salad appetizers with chicken, the Daily Mail reported.
The tourists went to the DK Oyster restaurant in Mykonos, Greece. According to the Daily Mail, the restaurant refused to show their party a menu or show them prices before giving them their final tab.
Francisco Tajeda, 38, a U.S. Army soldier, warned other tourists to stay away from DK Oyster.
“This place is a ripoff, look at the picture I posted,” he said.
“Avoid this place, this place is a trap,” he wrote on TripAdvisor. “They charged us 830 euros for calamari, 6 beers and 3 salads. The staff is not honest and refuse to provide a menu and prices.”
Tajeda then offered a warning: “Avoid this place at all costs! No pun intended.”
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this article.
