$4 War

[Jiro]

Harvard Business School Professor Goes to War Over $4 Worth of Chinese Food

Ben Edelman is an associate professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit.

Ran Duan manages The Baldwin Bar, located inside the Woburn location of Sichuan Garden, a Chinese restaurant founded by his parents.

Last week, Edelman ordered what he thought was $53.35 worth of Chinese food from Sichuan Garden’s Brookline Village location.

Edelman soon came to the horrifying realization that he had been overcharged. By a total of $4.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a Harvard Business School professor thinks a family-run Chinese restaurant screwed him out of $4, you’re about to find out.

(Hint: It involves invocation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Statute and multiple threats of legal action.)

Surprised yet? We were, too.

In addition to teaching at HBS, Edelman also operates a consulting practice where he advises clients like Microsoft, the NFL, the New York Times, and Universal Music on “preventing and detecting online fraud (especially advertising fraud).” (That’s from Edelman’s own website, which it seems safe to presume is always kept up to date.)

He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Ran Duan moved to the U.S. from China when he was 3-years-old. His father had hoped to support the family with a career as an opera singer, but when that didn’t pan out, Duan says “like all Chinese families we decided to open up a restaurant.”

Sichuan Garden opened its doors in Brookline in the early 1990s. A second location followed in Woburn.

Despite the restaurant’s successful expansion, Duan admittted that Sichuan does not have the budget for teams devoted to public relations or a website that is updated as regularly as it should be.

“I personally respond to every complaint and try to handle every situation personally,” said Duan, who was profiled by Boston Magazine in June and featured in GQ Magazine last month as “America’s Most Imaginative Bartender.”

The exchange with Edelman stood out to Duan. “I have worked so hard to make my family proud and to elevate our business. It just broke my heart.”

Edelman told Boston.com that investigating pricing discrepancies by neighborhood restaurants isn’t something he does every day.

“I mostly look for malfeasance by larger companies,” he said. “It certainly seems like a situation that could call for legal redress. But this is a small business in the town where I reside.”

As for the troves of angry customers likely looking for recourse? Edelman pointed Boston.com to Massachusetts General Law, Section XV, Chapter 93A, Section 9. (Translation: If you didn’t pass the Massachusetts bar, but still feel as though you must do SOMETHING, then just gather all the receipts you’ve saved, along with all screenshots you took and saved of the website menu in case that dinner order ever ended up in court, find a lawyer whose fees aren’t likely to exceed the few dollars you’re seeking, and ... voila?)

As for Edelman, he alerted town officials in Brookline about the matter, but told Boston.com he doesn’t expect them to take action. He plans to “take a few days” before deciding whether to pursue any further legal action against the restaurant.

Oh and the food? Edelman admitted: “It was delicious.”

 

[Steinhauer]

I hope this backfires on the petty control freak attorney and the Chinese restaurant gets free publicity and their business booms as a result.

 

[whatdidyousay!]

http://www.thebaldwinbar.com/menu/



Their menu change seasonal and I know seafood and veggies cost more in the winter in New England . This could be why the meal cost $4.00 more.
I think it's disgusting the guy is trying to destroy the family livelihood they worked so hard to build up. I saw the sound bite on the news for this story and miss the story , I had no idea what it was about.


I think Ben Edelman who is an associate professor at Harvard Business School would be embarrassed to have the public he did not add up his bill to see if was correct before paying it.

 

[jonnyghost]

Wow, what a jerk. To put someone through all that for $4. Plus it was only a 7% increase. With today's rising food prices that reasonable seems to fall under their "prices may vary" disclaimer.

 

[whatdidyousay!]

The guy apologizes to the owner of the restaurant and he offer to pay the
$4.00 back . This was just on the news .

 

[Steinhauer]

I bet the lawyer voted for Obama and felt FAMILY owned businesses should be made to suffer.

 

[Eater of Worlds]

The funny thing is the guy didn't even get the law right. One of the things he missed is that it needs to be at least 25 dollars for him to attempt to do what he did, among other issues. The guy was just a major douchebag on a power trip.

 

[Jiro]

Actually, We Need More Harvard Professors Who Would Call Out Overcharges at a Restaurant

Before this week, Ben Edelman was best known as an up-and-coming professor at Harvard Business School. He has economics and law degrees. He writes both for academics and for a popular audience outside the ivory tower. And he offers a successful course on the online economy. As of this Tuesday, though, you probably know him for something less illustrious: He’s the guy who got in a heated spat with a Chinese restaurant over a $4 overcharge.

As an academic who researches in Edelman’s field of digital business and interacts with him regularly, I wasn’t surprised when Boston.com published a set of emails in which he had taken an employee of the restaurant Sichuan Garden to task and asked for a triple refund, according to his understanding of Massachusetts law. In some sense, Edelman takes everyone to task and encourages others—myself included—to do the same. And that’s a quality we should admire in academics.

In my interactions with Edelman, I’ve found myself both frustrated by his choices and impressed by his gumption. In an era in which there is heretofore-unmatched pressure to publish in the best journals with the most technical methodologies and to not otherwise make waves, Edelman doesn’t play by the rules. His papers are provocative. Rather than, say, advising Google on improving their market design, he’s highlighted carefully tended evidence that the company seems to be manipulating search rankings. While journalists are now portraying him as an entitled elite, I’ve always considered him a maverick. He reminds me of someone like the late activist Aaron Swartz, acting fearlessly and, often, selflessly. It is inspirational in many ways.

So when I saw the Boston.com article—not to mention two posts on Slate—go viral, I was dismayed at the broader message it was sending.

First, it’s important to realize that Edelman’s complaint and lengthy email exchange were private. He didn’t forward it to Boston.com; that was the restaurant. As it appears that business may have broken the law by charging more than advertised prices without letting customers know, Edelman could be forgiven for being surprised. More importantly, he didn’t use his Harvard affiliation in any form in that exchange. Not even his email. But Boston.com and all of the other headlines played up the Harvard association. Why? Because portraying Edelman as an Ivy League bully guaranteed clicks.

Second, Edelman doesn’t have tenure. I’ve seen untenured professors get bad publicity—both fairly and unfairly—and it can have the effect of harming their chances. Harvard Business School junior faculty have a very tough run, and most drop off before they get to the promised land of tenure. The system says that they should, therefore, play it safe. And that makes academia a less daring place.

In Edelman’s case, the passion that makes his research on unsavory and hidden practices by online firms compelling bled into a dispute over takeout; as the articles exploded on Twitter and Facebook, he wrote Wednesday that he is genuinely sorry for how this turned out. But who among us hasn’t had some sort of heated customer service argument at some time? We should be concerned when the defense the business uses is to forward an email exchange to the press. It means that semipublic figures who are more vulnerable to bad press cannot even operate within the bounds of normal life. And it means, in this case, that we’re chastising an academic for qualities we should hope to see more of in academic life.

In Edelman’s exchange with Ran Duan of Sichuan Garden, you can see his maverick side at work. He knows this isn’t personally a big deal, but he also knows he’s complaining about the same thing he tries to hold big businesses accountable for. And if no one calls them out, the law is meaningless. Put simply, things that hurt lots of people a little bit are socially damaging, but it’s hard to initiate action against them. It is death by a thousand little cuts.

I want our Harvard professors to be more like Ben Edelman and take up causes that are controversial but that they are passionate about. The moment we let them be punished disproportionately for these traits, conformity wins.