The diabolical rise of βdine and dashβ: βIt feels like a betrayalβ
One in 20 people have walked out of a restaurant without paying for their meal β and apparently it is becoming more common in Britain, leaving owners shaken and out of pocket. What is going on?
You know the drill: you scrape the remaining crumbs of your dessert from the plate, finish off the last of the bottle of wine, settle the bill and leave the restaurant, full and content. While itβs certainly possible to forget to pay, for a small number of diners, this βmistakeβ is deliberate: they never intended to pay at all.
This summer, a couple from Port Talbot in south Wales were jailed for carrying out a series of so-called βdine and dashβ offences: racking up sizeable restaurant bills before doing a runner. Ann McDonagh was sentenced to 12 months in prison, while her husband, Bernard McDonagh, was given eight months. A judge at Swansea crown court deemed the pair to have βcynically and brazenlyβ defrauded restaurants by paying with a βdudβ card, leaving ostensibly to get cash, then failing to return. But what are the consequences for restaurants β and is βdine and dashβ on the rise?
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