A customer who left a negative review for a tea shop was exposed through a surveillance video that showed him dropping lint into his own drink.
The incident occurred at The Tea Hut in Millbrae, California, where a man identified as 'Nat. A' penned a Yelp review remarking the health department needs to "check on" the shop for violating a health code, per Daily Mail.
Alongside his one-star review message to sabotage the business, the unidentified man added a picture of the drink which appeared to have lint in it.
The shop's owner, Aaron Qian, took to Instagram to respond to the customer's review by sharing damning footage of him dropping foreign objects into his drink.
Watch the footage below:In the clip, the man is seen sitting at a table inside the cafe. He takes several sips before he takes the cup lid off and reaches into his pocket to presumably drop lint. He is then caught photographing the cup's surface.
"Why are you doing this?", the business captioned under the video. They also explained in the comment section: "This guy left two reviews at two different locations. Luckily, our camera caught what he did to this drink."
The owners reported the poor review to Yelp and it has now been removed. They wrote in a separate post: "One of the fake sabotaging reviews got removed! Thank you so much for having our back and reporting this person. We are so touched by the overwhelming support of the community!"
Upon seeing the video, many users began to share their stunned reactions. One person wrote: "I reported his review but Yelp said they wouldn’t remove it. Glad they at least removed one. What a sad excuse for a human to do this to someone else, especially a small business. Keep up the good work guys, know that the community is behind you."
Another user commented: "Why ruin people's reputation of small business, especially in [these] hard times[?] This is messed up. I wish there would be consequences for this dude and people like him."
A third person pointed out: "I’m sure this happens without Yelp too, people lying about something wrong with their food or drink just to get a refund. Happens all the time with food delivery."
A fourth user simply stated: "Yep! He should be banned coming to your place."
In a statement to KRON, Qian expressed his gratitude to supporters on social media and to Yelp for solving the situation by deleting the review.
"As a small food business owner, food safety is our top priority," he wrote. "There's no way that we would serve a product that doesn't meet our standard."
"Not just me, even the tiniest restaurant will greatly pay attention to food safety. This is the basis of survival when it comes to operating a food facility," Qian added.
The Tea Hut now has a 3.9-star rating on the site, with dozens of positive reviews from customers.