Just desserts for bill dodgers who stuffed their Facebooks

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 28 Nov 2008 at 08:11

Five young diners who bolted from a restaurant without paying their bill got their just desserts when the owner tracked them down on Facebook.

Peter Leary from seafood restaurant Seagrass on Melbourne's Southbank was fuming when the diners ate their way through the menu - including oysters, trout and expensive wines - before slipping out for a cigarette and never coming back.

Leary, left with an unpaid bill of A$520 (£220), remembered one of the diners asking about a former waitress, whom he then contacted and she suggested they check through some contacts on Facebook.

"We searched a few names and there in front of us his face came up," says Leary, referring to one of the diners.

"He was pictured with his girlfriend who was the only girl in the group. We also knew where he worked, at a nearby restaurant, which was handy. It'd been clear they were in the trade."

Leary contacted the manager of the other restaurant, where both the man and his girlfriend worked, and explained the situation. Within hours the diner returned to apologise and paid the bill - and left a generous tip for the staff.

Leary claims the fellow restaurateur called him later to inform him that both the man and his girlfriend had been sacked. "On this occasion I guess you could say that being on Facebook backfired for them," says Leary, who has no intention of taking the matter any further or contacting the police.

Facebook, which began in 2004 as a socialising site for students at Harvard University, has seen its growth zoom to 90 million members from 24 million a little over a year ago, overtaking rival MySpace to become the world's largest online social network.