A bowl of lor mee at a Bukit Purmei coffee shop costs S$6.50.
One regular customer paid S$650.
The stall owner did not treat it as a lucky windfall. He reported the extra money to his bank, waited nearly a month, and handed S$643.50 back when the customer finally returned.
The stall is Kai Fa Signature Lor Mee (开发招牌卤面) at a coffee shop at Block 109 Bukit Purmei Road.
He Only Noticed When He Did The Accounts
According to Shin Min Daily News and Lianhe Zaobao, 48-year-old stall owner Vincent See (施汉明) remembered a regular coming by one day in July for takeaway lor mee, scanning a QR code and leaving.
See only realised something was off later that day, while checking the stall's accounts. A payment of S$650 had come in.
A bowl costs S$6.50, so he guessed the customer had keyed in the wrong amount. Facebook user Aud Chang later said he had misplaced the decimal point on his payment app.
There had been plenty of customers that day, and See could not tell which one had overpaid. He also had no way of contacting the person.
He Went To The Bank About It
Because S$650 is not a small sum for a hawker stall, See went to the bank to flag the overpayment.
He wanted the bank to know the money was not his, so that if the customer later asked about the transaction, the bank would know he was trying to return it.
Then he waited.
The customer, it turned out, had gone overseas after buying the noodles. He only noticed S$650 missing from his account when he checked it later.
Suspecting he had paid the wrong amount, he went back to the coffee shop, hoping the stall still had the money.
See checked his details and returned S$643.50, after deducting the S$6.50 cost of the lor mee.
The Customer Came Back Again To Say Thanks
Chang later posted on Facebook on 19 August to thank See, writing that he was grateful for the stall owner's honesty.
Zaobao reported that the customer even returned to the stall on 19 August to take a photo with him.
Shin Min visited the stall and confirmed the account with See. The paper said he has been running the stall on his own after taking over his wife's lor mee recipe about three years ago. The couple used to operate it together, but See now works alone because of his wife's health.
Mothership carried the story in English on 26 August.
If you have ever hovered over the PayNow decimal point for a second too long, this is your reminder to look twice. And if you are the one who received a hundred times the price of a bowl of noodles, See's version of the story is the one worth copying.
