I bought a $100 restaurant gift card. Was going to give it away, but ended up not doing this. Today I used it, and was told I couldn’t leave a tip on this card, but had to tip in another way. The card does not list such restrictions anywhere on it. Can the restaurant mandate this? i am in Pennsylvania.
The card came with a seperate “bonus” card for $25. It has many restrictions, including the time it can be used and what it can be used for. This I understand, as it is like a coupon and they can restrict anyway they like.
I think in most places, they don’t add the tip that way not because they don’t want to, but because their computer system literally doesn’t let them. Similarly, I don’t believe you could say, pay for your entire meal with cash, then ask them to put the tip ($0 initial charge) on a credit card at many places. Or have one person pay for the meal, the other for the tip on a card.
This answer sounds completely wrong to me. I know that at least in some restaurants you can put the tip on the gift card and I know that you can split a bill between credit cards. (The restaurant might not want to do that latter as the credit card charges to them might be higher.)
I’m not saying that there is no restaurant at which the computer couldn’t let you add a tip to the gift card. (In fact, I suspect that McDonald’s system probably doesn’t.) but I’d say it was a poor computer program, for any sufficiently upscale restaurant in which tips are expected, that wouldn’t let you add a tip or make other adjustments when a bill is totaled.
My guess would be that some restaurants don’t like you to put the tip on the gift card because they give the tip in cash or add it to the next paycheck of the waiter/ess but that headquarters is much slower to credit them than are the bank credit cards.
Assuming there is a discount involved (e.g. $100 gift card sold for $90), it is very logical that tipping with it would be prohibited. That’s cash the restaurant doesn’t get. As an extreme case, if you took cash (or paid tip) for the entire $100, the company is losing $10.
(This may apply even if there is no explicit discount. For example, $5 in advertisement may have been spent to get you to buy the gift card.)
Put this in the “businesses that go out of their way to piss off customers” thread we had a while back.
This, and it also helps prevent fraud by preventing employees from converting cards to cash.
This is probably it, plus the “waiters converting giftcards to cash” thing.
If your bill is high enough that you’re paying a $100 tip with the gift card, the restaurant likely made plenty of money off you to justify the discount they gave.
However, if you’re friends with a waiter and give them absurdly giant tips via gift cards bought at discount, the restaurant is potentially out a huge amount of money. There are probably better ways to catch that kind of fraud than not letting you tip with gift cards, but that’s not what they’ve chosen to do.
Back in the day when I waited at a restaurant with gift cards we allowed customers to do it.
The way it worked for us was like this:
We kept our own “banks” throughout the shift. We made our own change for cash receipts and did the credit cards at the bar register. If I sold $600 worth of food today, I “owe” the restaurant "$600 at the end of my shift. I have $300 in cash, $150 in gift cards and $250 in credit cards receipts. I turn in the gift cards, the credit cards receipts and $200 in cash. The rest of the cash is my tips for the shift.
I had a $100 Chili’s card.
My first visit I was able to tip no problem.
One week later I was told I can’t do that.