Restaurant refutes mum's claim that daughter was scammed after she was charged $536 for crab meal

A woman alleged that her teen daughter was scammed by Seafood By The River restaurant, which charged the teen and her friends $536.47 for a crab meal on Sept 18.

Stomper Sherry shared a photo of the receipt, where the priciest item is the Alaskan king crab, costing $356.40.

She told Stomp on Sept 19: "My daughter who is only turning 17 in a week went to dinner with a few peers and wanted to eat crab.

"They cook an Alaskan king crab and slap them with a $356 bill! Making the total bill $536!

"It’s a HALF size king crab! What in the right mind will a business sell teenagers king crab and not tell them the price upfront!

"Ridiculous for a restaurant to think teenagers want to eat Alaskan king crab. They don’t even know and weren’t told of the cost.

"Bad business ethics! Not the way to do business bad karma to scam young teenagers of their hard-earned part-time job money and saved allowance!"

The Stomper added: "I’m going to the restaurant to speak the manager tomorrow.

"Please avoid this restaurant at all cost n hope this type of restaurant will close down soon so not to scam more people!"

She also posted her rant on Facebook and it was subsequently shared on the Complaint Singapore page.

In response to a Stomp query, a spokesperson for Seafood By The River said on Sept 20:

We are aware of a recent social media post by an individual claiming that her daughter had patronised our restaurant on Sept 18 with three others, and which had claimed that we had unethically sold her half an Alaskan King crab and further claiming we had served alcohol to “teenagers” who were dining at our restaurant with a few of her peers.

From our own investigations, CCTV footage have revealed that the party of 4 had included adults one of which had even paid the bill by using his Visa credit card without any protest.

Our store video recordings had captured the party of four, two Chinese females and two Indian males and and who did not appear to be teenagers to us.

Although the individual had posted to claim that she will be seeing our manager on Sept 19 to demand an explanation, she did not do so.

If the posting was to berate us for selling an expensive seafood dish to her teenage daughter, we state for the record that the diners which included adults were fully appraised of the prices, and whose bill only included an order of buns and pineapple fried rice, in addition to a further order of chicken satay after the dishes were served on top of several alcoholic beverages.

Our prices were in line with any other restaurants in Singapore selling live Alaskan King crabs.

As we had stated, instead of seeking an explanation directly, we note with dismay that the said individual claiming to be the mother of the teenage daughter had instead taken to social media including on our own Instagram page as well as Google review to chastise us, and urging patrons to avoid our business, this is clearly a case of cancel culture.

The matter is in the hands of our solicitors and we will be pursuing legal action against that individual who continues to post such negative comments at us, and which we note that she is not even a diner at our restaurant.

We wonder why is it that the adult who paid the bill ( and who is obviously not her daughter) had not raised this with us but from someone else in the party who allegedly was a minor who has not yet turned 17 years of age.

This leaves us to conclude that the action of this individual posting the comments did so with malicious intent as the posts were calculated to affect our sales during the busy F1 season, we will be seeking legal remedies against the individual concerned for all our losses as a result of such postings.

The Boat Quay restaurant also shared its statement on social media.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Seafood by the River 滨海湾渔村 (@seafoodbytheriver)