Always Check Your Bills and Receipts: Lessons from a £1,600 Wine Blunder

When dining out, it's easy to get swept up in the ambience – the chatter, the clinking of glasses, the enticing aromas wafting from the kitchen. 

But before you pay and leave, there's one small but crucial step you should never skip: check your bill and your receipt.

A Costly Mistake: The £1,600 Wine Incident

Recently, a diner in a UK restaurant got a nasty shock when she discovered she'd been charged over £1,600 for a single bottle of wine – one that should have cost just £16. 

What was meant to be a modest treat turned into a four-figure fiasco, all due to a simple human error. 

While the mistake was eventually rectified, it raised an important point: mistakes happen, and they can be expensive.

Why Checking Your Receipt Matters

1. Human Error Is Common

Waitstaff are only human, and input errors can easily occur during busy shifts. Whether it's a decimal point in the wrong place or an incorrect item added, the wrong figure on your bill can go unnoticed unless you take a moment to double-check.

2. Protect Your Budget

Dining out is a luxury for many, especially with the rising cost of living. An accidental overcharge – even by £5 or £10 – adds up over time. Spotting these errors protects your wallet and ensures you're only paying for what you ordered.

3. Avoid Awkward Aftermaths

In the case of the £1,600 wine mishap, the diner didn’t notice until it was too late. Imagine trying to get that resolved days later. It’s far easier to sort out issues while still at the table, when both staff and systems are in place to fix the problem immediately.

4. Build Better Dining Awareness

Checking your receipt also gives you a clearer sense of pricing – not just whether you were charged correctly, but whether that side salad really was £9, or the service charge was optional. It’s part of becoming a more conscious and empowered consumer.

How to Check Efficiently

Take 30 seconds before paying to scan the receipt.

Look for obvious errors: number of items, prices, service charges.

Ask politely if something looks off – most staff will appreciate the heads-up and fix it without fuss.

Pay attention to wine or drinks especially, as these are often the costliest items and most prone to confusion due to similar names or vintages.

Final Thought

A meal out should be a treat, not a trap. While the story of the £1,600 wine might seem extreme, it’s a cautionary tale that highlights the importance of vigilance. Next time you’re out, take a breath before you tap your card or hand over your cash. A quick check could save you more than just money – it could save you a headache.

Food shopping made simpler and easier as Asda displays daily fuel prices online

Food shoppers looking to fill their car boots with groceries at the same time as they fill their car with fuel, will appreciate the latest idea from Asda, as Asda's become the first supermarket in the UK to publish local fuel prices online, thus empowering and enabling motorists to check the price of petrol or diesel before they even get in their car.

Asda's confirmed fuel prices at each Asda filling station will be available alongside other key information on the Asda Store Locator pages https://storelocator.asda.com.

The latest fuel prices will be available on the store locator page from 10.30am every morning and will show the previous day’s closing price, too.

Asda is continuing to develop a system to display real-time pricing and it expects that this will be working in the coming months.

Asda is also continuing to work collaboratively with the Government as they develop an industry-wide fuel finder scheme.

A spokesman for Asda said: “We at Asda are very proud to be the price leader in fuel costs and by sharing our prices online, customers will be able to find the best value at the pumps before they get in the car.”

www.asda.com

Which? responds to Labour’s call for budget lines to be available in smaller supermarkets

Sue Davies, Which? Head of Food Policy said: “Many households across the UK are really struggling to put food on the table during the worst cost of living crisis in our living memory. 

"Yet it's true that most of the supermarket giants are failing to stock a range of budget lines that will support healthy choices in their small branches, despite the huge difference this would make to people who have to rely on them for food buying."

She went on to say: “We believe that our supermarkets have a responsibility to step up and ensure everyone has easy access to a sufficient range of healthy, affordable budget items at a store near them. 

"They also need to act on the Competition and Market Authority’s concerns and provide transparent and easily comparable pricing to help people work out which products offer the best value.”

(Image courtesy THAM YUAN YUAN from Pixabay)

Alcohol Pricing: Better England Free than England Sober

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties institute, today has issued a strong and trenchant condemnation of proposals to make it harder for poor people to buy alcohol. The proposals include higher taxes, compulsory minimum prices for drink, further controls on advertising, and power to close down retailers. The only disagreement between the three main parties is how far they wish to go.

Speaking today in London, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, commented: “These measures, if adopted, amount to an attack on the poor. The ruling class politicians who continually whine about alcohol will not be affected by minimum pricing or the abolition of special offers. I might add that none of them can be affected by such laws. Income aside, anyone who lies his way into Parliament can look forward to round the clock drinking in the Palace of Westminster of untaxed alcohol.

“But the measures will hurt poor people, for whom alcohol will become cripplingly expensive and hard to find. They have the same right to drink as the rest of us. Bearing in mind the problems willed on them by our exploitative ruling class, they often have a greater need to drink.

“The claim that drinking ’causes’ public disorder is nonsense. Alcohol does not run about the streets. People do. If people are making nuisances of themselves, the police should be instructed to stop behaving like some equivalent of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and to start protecting life and property again.

“The claim that drinking makes people unhealthy is irrelevant, where not a lie. People must be regarded as responsible for their own mistakes. Anyone who bleats about increased cost to the National Health Service should consider that drinkers already pay more in taxes than the alleged cost of treating their specific illnesses.

“We oppose all controls on the availability of alcohol to adults. Better England free than England sober.”

The Libertarian Alliance believes:

* That all the licensing laws should be repealed;
* That all controls on the marketing of alcohol should be repealed;
* That alcohol taxes should be reduced to the same level as the lowest in the European Union, and that there should be no increase in other taxes;
* That not a penny of the taxpayers’ money should be given to any organisation arguing against the above.