Getting back to the payment aspect, if you only wanted to pay 36 of the 43 on the credit card, I’m sure you could pay the rest in cash (or whatever payment method was acceptable). However, they probably would want to run a new card payment slip to reflect that (which they probably do anyway when people add tip money to it). The main thing is, until you have paid the restaurant’s bill, tip is not in the picture. The concept of “negative tip” doesn’t jibe with the food bill. Food payment (the full 43) is between you and the restaurant. Tip is between you and the server. The fact that credit card slips allow the convenience of paying both together doesn’t give license to extract a perceived debt owed by the server from the restaurant itself.
I’ve always liked this cartoon; the waiter’s expression is priceless:
Banks are creatures of law, order and technicality.
If the restaurant charges you $28, you dispute the charge and the restaurant provides your bank a slip and signature saying $21, the bank will pay out $21.
I would point out that at this point you will likely have an outstanding $7 balance with the restaurant. I wonder if TGIF has ever sent anything to collections?
A sufficiently savvy restaurateur may be able to lodge a complaint with law enforcement that would result in a warrant being issue for your arrest. Of course, this won’t work in all municipalities. YMMV in the District of Columbia but I suspect that the restaurateur might wind up getting cited for having his car parked improperly in front of the restaurant…
If the restaurant produces a fraudulent slip saying $28, the bank will likely pay out $28.
If the food itself is so terrible as to not be in your opinion saleable (and you better not have eaten it up) can you refuse to pay for the food and request the restaurant sees you in small clames court if they disagree. Or do you have to pay and the sue the restaurant to get your money back?
Having worked many years in Banking and Credit Card processing, here’s what will actually happen:
Nobody will notice that little minus sign you put there, so the charge against your card will go thru as $43 + $7 tip for a total charge of $50.
If you complain to the credit company, they will look at the copy of the receipt and see clearly $7 in the tip line. If they notice the minus at all, they’ll think it’s just a spot on the receipt, because “everybody knows you can’t have negative tips”.
Most automated tills won’t even accept a negative number as a tip; they often don’t even have a minus key. There is a special field for credits, coupons, comps, etc. that is deducted from the total. But any amount in the tip field is added.
A lot of restaurants will just comp it rather than deal with you. But for those that didn’t, I would imagine you’d end up in handcuffs.
So you’d have to pay and then sue the restaurant.
Or shot, if it’s an IHOP.
There’s an outside chance that you could decide to not pay and contact the police FIRST, yourself, and indicate that you feel that you didn’t receive the goods/service you feel you should have, and wish to resolve your alleged debt as a matter of civil law.
There’s anonymously dashing out, then there’s giving the business your name and identifying information and telling them you believe that your claims against you are invalid. Not quite the same.
Given my reading of a few “dine and dash”, “ride in taxi and dash” and “stay in hotel and dash” laws, it seems like an element of the crime in SOME versions of those laws is that you didn’t intend to actually pay for the product even if it was delivered properly.
Still, you’d likely wind up in handcuffs, but it would probably work, at least partially in a few towns, especially for values of town equal to Chicago and values of you equal to police commisioner’s grandson.
Of course, if you try this in NYC it’s quite possible the NYPD will shoot you 178 times when you reach for your wallet to pull out your ID, then they’ll ticket the restaurant owner for being parked illegally and arrest three of the restaurant’s dishwashers for outstanding warrants…
If the food and service sucked and you’re dead set against paying for it, stand up and yell, “This food SUCKS! The service SUCKS! I’m not paying for this CRAP! Where’s the manager! I’m not gonna pay one FUCKING dime! I’m calling my LAWYER! Don’t tell me to calm down, I wanna see your FUCKING boss!” Keep screaming and swearing like this, and eventually the manager will come out and tell you that you don’t have to pay for the meal, just get out and never come back.
If you don’t mind being an incredible asshole all the time, you’d get yourself a lot of free meals. Quietly changing the amount on the credit card slip isn’t going to work very well.
A related question…I paid for lunch for myself and a collegue using a credit card. He left some cash on the table as a tip. I said that he didn’t have to do that, I was going to put a nice tip on the card. He said cash on the table was better, because the restaurant had to with-hold taxes from the ‘plastic’ tip.
True this?
If you’re getting “lousy” service, why are you tipping at all? A tip is a reward for good service. I still tip for mediocre or tolerable service, but when it’s outright lousy, I don’t leave a tip.
True- but they drive on the same roads, and send their kids to the same schools as the rest of us- why shouldn’t they pay taxes?
Legally, the server has to declare as income & pay taxes on all tips, cash, check, or credit card.
But when it’s cash, it’s much easier to evade taxes by not reporting the income. Checks & credit cards leave a record, making it riskier.
Plus the credit card companies take 4-8% off the top of the amount charged. For cash tips, the full amount goes to the server. (Though some restaurants cover the credit charges, and pay the full tip to servers.)
Generally, true. When I was a waitress back in college, we had our minimum pay rate ($2.15 per hour, IIRC) paid to us in a check once every two weeks. Out of that check came the taxes not only on the $2.15 per hour, but also on any tips that the restaurant knew about (meaning credit card tips, since cash ones aren’t reported to management). However, they also assumed that you made at least 8% tip on everything you sold, so if you got nothing but cash tips for the entire two weeks, they’d still tax you based on 8% of your total sales for that time period. I believe that’s an IRS thing because it applied to every restaurant and bar I ever worked.
Not where I work. At the end of an average night, I’m walking around with about $800 in cash. A certain portion of that is what I owe the restaurant - meaning if your bill was $20 and you left me $24 in cash, I owe the restaurant $20 in cash. If your bill was $20 and you paid on a credit card and left me a four dollar tip on your card, I settle the bill into the computer system as a $24 payment, with $4 of that as tip. The computer will tell me that the restaurant owes me $4. So basically, when I cash out at the end of the night, the computer will tell me 1) how many dollars worth of food and drink I rang in, 2) how much I rang though in Visa, MC, and Am/Ex, and 3) how much of that was specified as “tip”. The one thing that makes cash better is that there’s no record of it - if you leave me $30 on a $20 bill, I settle it as $20 cash, and there’s no record of that $10. Tips have to be recorded as income come tax time, so cash makes it easier to fudge the numbers a little, if a server is so inclined. Does that make sense, the way I wrote it? I’m not sure.
And yes, I tip out 4% of what I sell. 2% goes to the kitchen, 1% to the bartenders, and the rest to the bussers and hostesses. What sucks is that management then divides it up by hours worked, so if Hostess Hannah is a complete slacker but the boss thinks she’s got a fantastic rack and gives her lots of hours, she’ll get more than Busboy Bob who works his ass off but has no boobage to speak of. Anyway, yes, if you don’t tip me, it is a negative tip.
Back to the OP - I know that with the system we use at work, once your card has been run through, you’ll be paying that amount or higher. So I run through your card for $20, then give your credit card, reciept, and that “tip and total and signature” slip to you. After you sign it, I go back to my computer and fill in the tip amount. If it’s $0, I enter that. If it’s 5, I enter that. If you wrote "-7", it would be quite impossible for me to remove the $7 from your charge, as I’d have no way of taking that from the total - I can only enter 0 or a positive number.
Under what circumstances would they take 8%? I’ve run several business that accepted credit cards, and it’s never been higher than about 4%+25 cents per transaction (avg transaction of $10.00 makes it 6.5%). Currently, we’re paying about 2.4%+15 cents, depending on the card (Amex is higher).
Elementary my dear Wombat!
.08 * X = (.04 * X) + 0.25
.04X = 0.25
X = 0.25/0.04
X = $6.25
It will equal 8% when the bill is 6.25, and the fee is 4% plus .25.
What about this situation. Instead of putting in a $7 tip, you put in $5.
You would still have a negative tip.
Subtotal: $40.00
Tax: 3.00
Total: 43.00
Tip: -2.00
Total: 41.00
As a data point related to the OP, I’ve done a couple experiments where I intentionally made an arithmetic mistake just to see what happens (I made my “mistakes” off by a dollar and such that in the worst case, the server got a normal tip, and in the best case, he got an extra dollar).
e.g.:
amount: 20
tip: 4
total: 23
amount: 20
tip: 3
total: 24
In both cases, the error went in favor of the restaurant and I was charged the higher amount.