According to the report by Beijing Evening on Sep.11, to reduce cost of the dishware cleaning, some restaurants in Beijing use sterilized dishware. Sterilization service companies collect used dishware and do sterilization before sending it to the restaurants for reuse. Normally, sterilization service companies charge restaurants 0.9 Yuan for each set of dishware while restaurants ask for 1.5-2.0 Yuan from the customers.

In the process of marketization, there are many aspects to be regulated. Just take dishware sterilization for example. The charge is far from understandable and reasonable. Many customers wonder why whey are charged for the sterilization fee as cleaning and sterilizing the dishware is one of the responsibilities of restaurants. After reading the report by Beijing Evening, they become clear suddenly that restaurant make profit out of dishware sterilization, which is totally unreasonable.

The major concern of customers for this trend is that according to experience, the never satisfied businesspersons will further charge customers for anything from the dinning table to the air-conditioning service. Those who have minds to charge more will easily find excuse.

Recently, the situation of price raise is getting tense in which many sellers and service-providers are eager to charge customers for more with various excuses. There are really shadows of price-raise fear that cast pall over consumers.

It has been reiterated by State Development Planning Commission that persistent efforts will be put into the fight against illegal price raise and those who rise price without proper reasons will by severely punished.
The order of market should be maintained and people’s legitimate rights should be safeguarded. We could also learn from the report of dishware sterilization that price raise is not limited to the price tag but realized by concocting various pretexts, which we should be on alert against.

---By Yang Xin, FFL, NBU