Cranky customer Ben Edelman (via Facebook)

When a Chinese restaurant in the US overcharged a man by $4 for his take-away, they didn’t realise they had picked the wrong guy to slightly inconvenience.

Ben Edelman is a lawyer, Harvard business professor and (very unluckily for the Chinese restaurant), also runs a consulting practice on preventing and detecting online advertising fraud.

So, when Edelman realised that the price that had been charged to his credit card was $4 more than the price that had been advertised on the Sichuan Garden restaurant website, he went OFF. Like, ‘I’M FURIOUS AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE’ off.

The email exchange between Edelman and Sichuan Garden’s owner, Ran Duan, is addictive reading. Boston.com broke the story and have screenshots of the emails, and we’ve got some of the more bizarre parts of the exchange here.

So who’s in the right here? It seems like Duan is genuinely sorry that Edelman got overcharged, but he also doesn’t seem to care that his website is advertising misleading prices. Edelman, on the other hand, is going slightly overboard with the talk of legal action, considering it’s only $4.

Take a look and decide for yourself:

First Edelman sends a simple complaint saying he’s been overcharged by $4. Duan replies with this:

That clearly pisses Edelman off. He starts the law-talk immediately:

Duan (in a stroke of passive aggressive genius) stays very civil, but only offers a $3 refund. This infuriates Edelman, since the original overcharge was actually $4, and he was no doubt hoping all his legal talk in the previous email would scare the crap out of Duan.

Then Duan gets pissed. Like, ‘Seriously? All this for $4?’ kind of pissed. He suggests (since his restaurant is in several locations) that Edelman may have been on the wrong location’s website. Then he asks what everyone is kind of thinking by now:

That sets Edelman off. Because it’s not about the $4,  IT’S ABOUT THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING:

By this stage, Duan has pretty much stopped giving any shits:

After a pretty massive bollocking on social media, Ben Edelman released an official apology:

“Many people have seen my emails with Ran Duan of Sichuan Garden restaurant in Brookline.

Having reflected on my interaction with Ran, including what I said and how I said it, it’s clear that I was very much out of line. I aspire to act with great respect and humility in dealing with others, no matter what the situation. Clearly I failed to do so. I am sorry, and I intend to do better in the future.

I have reached out to Ran and will apologize to him personally as well.”

But do you think he should have? In this massive war over $4, whose side are you on?

Read all the emails in full at boston.com right here.

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