A simple lor mee order at a Telok Blangah-area coffee shop turned into an unexpected lesson in honesty after a customer accidentally paid $650 instead of $6.50 for his meal — and did not realise the mistake until weeks later.
The customer, identified on Facebook as Aud Chang, said he had mistakenly entered the wrong payment amount before leaving the stall. He only discovered the error about a month later, after returning from an overseas trip.
The hawker, meanwhile, had already noticed the unusually large payment.
According to AsiaOne, the incident happened at Kai Fa Signature Lor Mee, located at a coffee shop at Block 109 Bukit Purmei Road. The stallholder, 48-year-old Vincent See, noticed the $650 transfer while checking his accounts later that day. Since a bowl of lor mee cost only $6.50, he suspected almost immediately that the customer had made a payment mistake.
But there was one problem: See had no way of identifying or contacting the customer.
There had been many diners at the stall that day, and the customer had already left after scanning the payment QR code.
Rather than simply keeping the unexpected windfall, See contacted his bank and informed them that the $650 payment appeared to have been made in error.
He did this so that the bank would be aware of the situation if the customer later reported the mistaken transaction.
The customer only realised weeks later
The customer eventually returned to the coffee shop three to four weeks later, after coming back from overseas.
By then, he had realised that $650 had disappeared from his account and approached See to ask whether the money could still be recovered.
After verifying the customer’s details, the hawker returned $643.50 — the full mistaken payment minus the $6.50 cost of the lor mee.
Chang later publicly thanked See for his honesty, saying he was grateful that the hawker had taken steps to deal with the overpayment even though he had no immediate way of finding the customer.
The customer also returned to the stall on Aug. 19 to take a photo with See, according to a report reproduced from Singapore media coverage.
A surprisingly familiar Singapore hawker story
The incident is not the first time a Singapore hawker has found himself holding hundreds of dollars that clearly did not belong to him.
In December 2023, a Lucky Plaza roast-meat stall owner discovered that a diner had apparently paid $750 for a $7.50 meal. The stallholder, Victor Ng of Wang Fu Roasted Delight, tried to locate the customer and even contacted NETS for assistance.
Another widely reported case involved a customer who paid $450 instead of $4.50 for a bowl of mee hoon kueh at a Woodlands coffee shop. The hawker eventually managed to track down the diner and arrange a refund.
These cases highlight a recurring problem with cashless payments: a single misplaced decimal point can turn an ordinary hawker meal into a transaction worth hundreds of dollars.
Why this story is resonating with Singaporeans
Cashless payments have become a normal part of everyday life in Singapore, including at hawker stalls. But unlike cash transactions, QR and digital payments require customers to carefully check the amount before confirming the transfer.
In this case, a $6.50 meal became a $650 payment — exactly 100 times the intended amount.
The customer was fortunate that the stallholder noticed the discrepancy and took steps to flag the payment rather than treating it as unexpected income.
And while the customer eventually recovered $643.50, the episode serves as a reminder that a quick glance at the payment amount before pressing “confirm” can prevent a very expensive mistake.
For See, however, the story ended with something more valuable than the money itself: a customer returning to thank him for doing the right thing.
In a city where QR payments can take only seconds, this hawker’s decision to wait weeks to return money that wasn’t his has turned a simple bowl of lor mee into a story about honesty, trust and everyday kindness.
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