OT Cheap millionaires!

I don't think many of you would have heard this story. Have you ever heard of a negotiable bar tab? It seems that the Edmonton Oilers played the Calgary Flames on new years eve in Calgary, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours away. Later that evening a bunch of the oilers went out with their significant others for some food and drinks in a Calgary restaurant and bar. There were about 45 people all together. The owner of the bar says that the oilers didn't agree to the (approx.)$14,500 bill! Instead of calling the police, he tried to keep it low profile and thought the Oilers would clear it up. The oilers only paid (approx.) $12,500. A spokeman for the oilers said that the oilers were over charged because all the shooters were sold seperate and should have been sold by the bottle. The oilers negotiated a lower bill with the owner and paid all money owing. The owner disputes this as I think he should. What bar ever allows you to negotiate the bill? Like one comment a person sent to the TV station, The time to negotiate anything is in the beginning, not when you're drunk. If I was the bar owner, I'd be charging them. No wonder a lot of overpaid sports figures get a bad reputation. I wish I could negotiate the bill everytime I went out to eat. What a bunch of pathetic losers. Dave

The bar owner knows that it will attract business if word gets out that sports celebrities frequent his establishment. If he thought the two grand was worth the business he would lose by suing the team, he would have done so. That's the way it goes; nobody ever said life was fair.

What are you whining about? You don"t have a dog in that race and it doesn"t concern you.

It never ceases to amaze me how people think those with money should always pay the most or owe something to those who have less.

$12,500 is still a hell of bar tab, regardless who is footing the bill.

I don't have a hound in the race either, but since when do we sell shots at the bottle cost? Were they served in the bottle? NOPE, they had to be poured just like the ones that the rest of us would get.
So, next time I take a large party out for steaks, should I get the per pound rate based on the number of pounds of meat that we order? NOPE, they still have to cook each one just like for the rest of us.
What gets me is that some people with money bags think they should live by "other" rules.
You see them in lines at stores, they are so rude. They will break in front of you and feel that they "deserve" to do so. But if someone breaks in front of them they want to call their lawyers.

A big chunk of the bill must have been for ambulance service. According to my calculation they each had 27 drinks which would of course resulted in alcohol poisoning and the necessity of emergency room care.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for bars. I've seen plenty of people overcharged for liquor when they were drunk. The bar owner is permitted to negotiate a price for a group here as long as the the drinks aren't cheaper than the minimum legal price.

I don't think bar tabs are negociable... but just how do 45 people drink 14K in one night? Were they buying rounds for everyone in the place? If so, they should expect to pay. If not... and they were getting ripped off, by a LOT. Then I have little sympathy for either party. I certainly don't have any sympathy for the players...

Rod

Oh, I'm sure the owner still turned a tidy profit. I agree that negotiating after the fact is in poor taste. I'm of a mind he had plenty of profit built into the bill when he submitted it.

Who won the game? I was watching my Red Wings defeat the Colorado guys. Our rookie goal tender is playing well but I would love to have Calgary's net minder on our team - he always gives us fits.

***A spokeman for the oilers said that the oilers were over charged because all the shooters were sold seperate and should have been sold by the bottle.***
They cal this an "open bar" Could be charged either way, by the bottle or drink. Should have been agreed on before hand.
As a once bar tender, I would have been glad to negociate a bill like that one.

Don't really have a comment on this, but do have a comment on the mentality of some "big" money folks.

My dad was a builder/contractor and did a lot of biz for folks in multi million dollar homes in the 60’s and 70’s. About one in three would try something and my dad new it. The most prevalent scam was to reduce the payment by a third and type something on the back of a check effectively constituting "payment in full". Assuming he would have to deposit it to cover expenses.

More than a few got quite upset when the check was return with a letter stating, per the terms, that any payment modifying the contract was not accepted, if they didn't pony up he'd see them in court, and remind them, per the contract, interest, late fess, collection cost were pilling on, and he had a signed acceptance of the work.

As far as I can remember only one guy took it past that. He was some high ranking fell’a at a prestigious collage. He was convinced he could win in court. He didn't, and we held a lean on his house for 6 or 7 years. He finally had a lawyer try to negotiate the interest, late fees, and collection cost down so the guy could sell his house. That didn't work either. Seems like an $8000 project cost the guy $12000 in the end. Pretty good chunk of change in the 70’s.

The best one was when he was quote “fired” from a job. He was fired the day they delivered $14,000 dollars of marble. Dad went and got an injunction to stop all work until he could recover it. Boy was that fell’a upset. Sued us, and claimed all kind of damages. Trouble was other than the bid process we hadn’t been in his house. Hadn’t done any work at all. Of course it was toss out and dad sold the marble to the next contractor to cross the guy’s path.

Alberta (and a lot of other places in Canada) has/have some weird laws regarding bars, certainly different that in most U.S. bars. So don't go by what you have experienced in you own localities.

I wondered the same thing till I did the math and it was something like $323 a person. My son in law is big like those guys and regularly eats a $100 at an outing, so with drinks at a pricey place it might get that high. Still pretty high.

I really can't see how 45 people, half of them women could drink that much.
I can see some of them eating 100 bucks worth in a fancyish place. I can certainly see a good bunch of the guys drinking another hundred. I've done that once or twice... but not with the hundred buck meal beforehand. That still leaves over another hundred bucks.... each.
Open bar for everybody in the place is the only way I can see this happening...
I'm no stranger to rather expensive drink prices... but that's a lot of booze.


Rod

Forty five people at $14500 means $322/person. Regardless of what someone has they don't like to get screwed and that looks like quite a bit of money for drinks and a meal, unless they are purchasing a lot of vintage wine, then it might be very reasonable.

One thing I see from all of the responses is that everyone seems to forget that the "important" folks don"t drink the cheap stuff like everybody else. It wouldn"t be unheard of to pay the full amount for a single bottle of wine in an upscale restaurant. Add in the price of the food, which is also more expensive for the "important" folks, and it"s really not all that hard to see a bill being that high for thaty many people. Even so I still think it"s in bad taste to try to negotiate a gill like this, especially when the majority of the guys running up the tab probably make 6 figures a year...........

I assume the bar owner presented an itemized bill and the total included the tip. :lol: In any case, it's not unusual to have a single shot of fancy booze at an upscale place cost what a whole case of beer might cost you and I. That being said, I'm also assuming that the bar owner probably made out pretty good that night and if the bar owner is happy and the Oilers are happy, than what's the beef?

Also, of all the major pro athletes, I think NHL players are the least insanely compensated. When I hear baseball players making in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I gag. Some of those guys seem hardly to break a sweat and a lot of times the only exercise they get in an inning is trotting in/out to their positions. But watch a hockey player come back to the bench after a shift. They're gasping for air.

They showed the itemized bill on the news. I didn't look too close but did see that some shooters were ordered 18 at a time. Remember it was new years eve so there might have been a lot of champagne too. I can see wine being sold by the bottle but not shooters. The lowest salary in the entire NHL is over $450,000 a year. Regardless of who it was or what the bill was, the price shouldn't be negotiable after the fact. Dave

Would think the bar owner would've been better off not saying anything. How often does he get guest ringing up that kind of bill? I'm betting they won't show up there again?