September 12, 2011

I am a tourist from Alberta. My wife and I visit Tofino every year. This will no longer happen. Sunday we visited again. We stopped at the Net restaurant for the $12.99 fish and chips dinner. My brother-in-law was with us. The three of us ordered 3 fish dinners, two of us drank water, one had a diet coke. For dessert, we had one piece of pie and one cheesecake. I also ordered one piece of fish (salmon) to try it.

This meal according to the menu should have cost $60.25 plus tax. I went outside to have a smoke while my wife and her brother waited for the staff to pay the bill. The waiter charged them $97.00 and change for this meal!!! My wife argued loudly that that was not the menu price. Her brother is non confrontational and paid this rip off price rather than create a scene. Two incoming patrons left when they heard the argument at the cash register. My brother-in-law swore my wife to not tell me (believe me, that thief would not have gotten away with that crap had I known about it).

Now that her brother is back on the mainland, my wife tells me what happened. If it wasn’t so far back there, I would gladly return myself to extract the over charge from that rip off artist. As I mentioned, we visit Tofino every year. Long Beach, whale watching, touring the Sound, dining, gift shopping are all over priced but we know that and pay because of the wonderful uniqueness of the area. BUT, to charge way more than the menu price is nothing short of theft. I am disgusted with that behaviour and will spend our tourist dollars elsewhere on the island in the future.

I intend to inform the RCMP, the local newspaper and online tourist reviews about this blatant theft. This reflects badly on your town. Hopefully someone will do something about it.

Larry Pratt
Hinton, Alberta