Not price gouging tourists might be a good start.
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I think one could fairly summarise your points as:
People who go to foreign countries shouldn’t have to make any effort to find out anything about where they’re going. They should just be able to assume everything is done exactly as it is wherever they come from, especially if that is the US.
Perhaps a bit harsh but that is how it comes across…
I think one can expect tourists to do a bit of basic research.
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Yeah, lying about the tip not being included is a definite jerk move.
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Sure, it’s not the businesses doing price gouging that’s the problem. The problem is that all these victims of price gouging don’t do enough research to prevent them from being ripped off. Kinda like how Venice is rife with pick pockets so anyone who keeps their wallet in their back pocket is the problem because they make pick pocketing so easy. I mean, they could have looked up the prevalence of pick pocketing and price gouging in Venice and then they could have made the decision not to go there right? Otherwise it’s their own fault for not being as savvy and wise as you.
I gotta say, American tourists, please understand, this cafe has a point. There are different prices and menus for seating in different locations in cafes in Europe. It’s a standard thing there. The rent for a cafe in a central tourist location must be astronomical. There are hordes of people who want to sit down and rest their feet for a while. Supply and demand. I don’t know if this cafe’s prices are out of normal range for that seating, but they might not be far out of range. I know here in the US we have a different expectation. We can spend $2 on a tea and sit anywhere we want as long as we want. Now Starbucks has removed even that. Anyone can plop down there without spending anything. It’s just another thing that’s very different between the US and Europe.
Yes even in tourist areas in Italy, if you want to get an espresso and pastry at the bar, it’s really cheap and good.
There are, in some touristy areas, “clip joints” where they use ringers to get people to come into the restaurant and they get the bill for hundreds of dollars for a glass of wine for a friendly girl who invited the tourist to have a drink. Those seem to be more in Eastern European areas. Those are scams. But that’s not what this cafe is doing.
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I can definitely remember a few times where I was simply too exhausted to think straight (travel can take a lot out of you), and locals too impatient to allow me time to process what they were saying.
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I think conflating outright theft with charging people lots of money in a clearly and openly stated fashion is a sign your argument is collapsing in on itself. At least until we achieve our dearly longed-for fully automated luxury communism, the latter is simply not even close to criminal.
If you genuinely think someone can simply decide to get on a plane and fly to a foreign country without doing something as basic as checking the exchange rate, I don’t know what to say.
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Been there once. Totally standard all over the USA.
Actually it’s not. Your anecdotal tourist trap experiences doesn’t make it true.
Totally is. And not based at all on tourist experience. I lived in Amsterdam for two years, and traveled to Italy and France for both business and holiday over that time. It’s very typical for espresso bars even in residential neighborhoods to have three pricing tiers:
- The lowest - For standing at the counter
- The median - For an indoor table
- The highest - For sitting at a table
The massive St. Mark’s pricing is excessive, true, but the location leads to that. In a neighborhood, the price difference is much narrower, but still there.
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So France and Italy is “all over Europe”?
And this particular cafe is in one of the top tourist destinations in the world. And these tourists orered both espressos and bottled water. It would be more normal to just have the espresso only and sit there for an hour enjoying the scene. That would have costed them about $30, which, shockingly, is about the price of an hour of parking in NYC. Which is the rip-off, an hour with great espresso in a beautiful and amazing location, or an hour of a car being in a parking space for $30? We all understand that it’s going to cost $20 to $40 to park your car in a central location in a building in NYC or SF for an hour.
Can you imagine a European tourist coming to NYC and being outraged at a $30 parking fee? That’s kinda what this situation is.
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All over the more important parts 
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I totally get it. Victim blaming is ok by you. You can do any bad thing you want as long as the technicalities are in place to support it. Price gouging is the problem of the consumer and not the retailer as long as the retailer can point to something that shows they aren’t culpable for their actions due to some disclaimer or notice.
And hey, this is the way things work after all. I mean, take a look at EULAs these days. All sorts of crap in those things no rational person would ever agree to but they do every day and the courts uphold those things all the time so legally, it’s not a problem right?
Of course, the less authoritarian portion of the population may be more concerned with the morality of the practice rather than the legality.
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This.
I’m sure part of their pricing strategy is exactly because tourists want to park on a chair for hours and only buy a coffee. So they charge accordingly. This isn’t ripping anyone off or taking advantage of anyone, this is simply the price you pay to sit there. Just like when I go to Canoe I know I’m not paying market value for my glass of wine, I’m paying extra for the amazing view.
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It is not. I have never accounted it anywhere. I live in Europe and have travelled to at least 14 European countries that I can think off of hand.
Capitalism at work.
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This doesn’t even happen all over France let alone all over Europe. Do you mean Paris? Because the French say “Paris n’est pas la France”.
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Anecdote: My very first taste of coffee was espresso at midnight on Piazza San Marco, a…while ago when I was 12. We did sit outside, but the espresso was not overpriced. We were at the cafe on the corner by the Grand Canal, not Cafe Lavena.
I think it might actually be illegal for wait staff in Italy to demand a tip like that. Any Italians on the board care to weigh in?
The images of menus from the place show that they have separate menus for outside and inside the cafe. So do all the cafes I checked on Piazza San Marco (though others are much more reasonable).
No, I just don’t agree with you that this is victim blaming.
I don’t agree with you that people are entitled to expect the sort of protection and cotton-wool wrapping that you do.
I don’t agree that clearly and openly charging an awful lot of money for something that could be had cheaper somewhere else is either legally or morally wrong.
Some people who have been to this cafe complain that the staff did things which I do say are wrong, such as lying about whether service is included.
Charging anyone, tourist or no, the advertised price for a cup of coffee is not something I can say is wrong.
I might agree that the price is obscene but I can’t even do that. They make a, to me, fairly compelling argument about the benefits to be had from choosing to sit at a table outside as opposed to drinking at the bar inside.
I wouldn’t pay the difference myself but I can see why people might.
You obviously feel differently about it. That’s fair enough.
I’ve been trying to explain my perspective on it and on what you’ve had to say.
I think we’ve probably made our respective positions as clear as they’re going to get and I have to bid the BBS adieu for the nonce, so we can leave it there 
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Nonsense. How can you, in one post, criticize @tacobucket and @seyo for generalizing their experiences to all of Europe, then do the same thing about the US? You’re cracked!
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