301–310 of 425 posts
This is just wrong.
I would refuse to pay their „out of thin air“ charge. Seriously. If those things, would be only visible after I payed like on a kiosk or something, I would dispute the charge and report their fraud to my credit card company. Good luck doing that often.
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A little assertiveness can go a long way. "I was not made aware of this fee, so I am only paying X" and walking away should work.
You can only do that if paying cash. And if you do, what will effectively happen is that the money you intend to leave as tip will go toward the fee instead.
Photo of the menu, what i was charged and telling everybody to do the same.
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> and generally considered to be on the higher end in the US. Maybe in 1998 but it's pretty much standard now.
Tipping is bad enough culture as it is, but inflation on the percentage you pay in tip is just funny. Are we gonna be tipping 50% in 30 years? The only reason it's the norm is simply the suggested tip boxes generally have 18 as the lowest easy option now.
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One small township near us does this. They passed a law that states restaurants must put an additional 2% charge on every bill that is used to pay "kitchen staff." When we asked our server about this surprise charge they said "the law requires that we charge it now." We decided to simply reduce our normal 20% tip by 2% and pay that. We don't like the fact that the city has stepped in to mandate additional fees like t…
Outstanding, just outstanding. Way to stick it to your server to throw a fit about a duly-enacted law you don’t like. I would have thought the price of surrendering one’s decency and regard for fellow humans would be somewhat more than two cents per dollar, but I suppose I was wrong.
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I suspect most people tip on the after-tax amount when they calculate it themselves. I get that you don’t. I also know people who tip on the non-alcohol amount. Personally, I have always tipped post-tax. These are also low-margin businesses. A post-tax surcharge keeps your overall bill lower than if they had raised prices, which would also raise the tax amount. The high labor costs are going to be passed on to consum…
I think tipping post-tax is part of the longer term inflation of tipping. Once 10% pre-tax was the acceptable tip, then 15% during the 90s, and now it has drifted to 18%, 20% and possibly soon above. Somewhere during that drift it went from being pre-tax to sometimes, and even most of the time, post-tax. All this despite it being a percentage of cost and thus scaling with the price of goods naturally.
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They can decline to charge payment for anything other than the full figure leaving you with the ability to walk out or pay. If you opt not to pay you are dining and dashing and subject to prosecution the fact that you offered to partially pay notwithstanding. Logically pay the bill then leave a negative review and never eat there again.
You are not right. The crime being committed is fraud and the guilty party is the restaurant. If they refuse payment for the actual payment, that is their problem. Any court in any jurisdiction in the world will side with the customer in a case such as OPs.
Boost Mobile did this recently when my wife and I switched cell carriers. They advertised a $30/month/line plan (after a 3-month introductory period at an even lower price), but we are now paying closer to $45. This has pissed me off enough that I want to look for another carrier, but this seems to be SOP for this industry. Telcos behave like nothing less than a criminal cartel, so I was hardly surprised by this play…
$50/line for 2 lines, $10/watch for 2 watches, $5/line for international plan adds up to 130/month and I pay 130/month, nice round flat numbers for years now taxes/fees/etc are all rolled into the advertised price and not hidden after the fact.
US is the only place on Earth where I found out that a sale tax is added to price tags in grocery store at the moment of check-out. I remember my astonishment the first time I faced that abomination. How's that even possible, what is the reason behind it?
Transparency, so you know what the government is taxing.
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You should be sending the pictures of the reciept and the menu to your attorney general. Typically hidden non-tax fees are not legal if you never mention it early on.
Honestly, the cost/benefit ratio isn't just there. Leaving a one star review on Yelp is both faster and probably more likely to have an impact on the restaurant.
The most memorable example I've seen of a business sneaking higher prices past consumers was an apartment building I lived in. Let's say apartments were $1000/month. They announced that rent was going up to $1200/month, but if you signed a new one year lease the rent would be $0 for the first two months of the lease. That meant that for the next year you would have paid 12 months @ $1000/month if the rate had stayed…