No joke: Diner in China gets $80k bill after netizens play QR code prank on her

A woman in China unwittingly racked up a bill of over 430,000 yuan (S$81,000) after netizens started placing additional orders via the QR code captured in photos of her meal.

The diner, surnamed Wang, was at a hotpot restaurant for her friend's birthday dinner on Nov 23, reported local media.

She posted photos of her meal on her private WeChat Moments page, but failed to notice that one of the photos had captured a QR code meant for diners to place orders at the restaurant.

Moments later, orders started flooding in as viewers started scanning the QR code.

Wang only discovered something amiss when restaurant staff approached the group to confirm if they had placed a 6,000 yuan order. The staff initially thought there was a glitch in their ordering system, according to local media.

Although the shocked woman quickly deleted her post, the bill eventually snowballed to over 430,000 yuan.

Wang added that the photos could only be seen by her contacts and assumed that someone had downloaded the picture and continued ordering via the code.

A screenshot of the order posted online showed that netizens had ordered 1,850 portions of duck blood, 2,580 portions of squid and 9,990 portions of shrimp paste.

Hapless against the steady stream of orders, the restaurant eventually moved the group of diners to another table as it was unable to stop or track down the perpetrators.

While Wang said she was not made to pay the bill, she said that the prank had caused a lot of trouble for the restaurant and cautioned others to be careful when posting photos on social media to avoid accidentally leaking personal information.

ALSO READ: No joke: Man gets $1,700 sushi restaurant bill in Hong Kong after QR code prank

lim.kewei@asiaone.com