My wife and I dined as part of a 10-person party a couple of weeks ago. We asked to be charged as couples, which was honored. I paid by credit card. When I received the CC slip, the line below the food and beverage total was:
SUGGEST 18%… $11.11
Below this was a line that said:
GRATUITY… _____.
I wasn’t very satisfied with the service, and crossed out the entire “suggest” line and wrote $10.44 on the blank line below, and wrote in the total of $78.00 on the total line. To me, that’s still a respectable tip totaling 16.9% of the bill (before taxes).
I just got my CC statement, and the restaurant charged the full $11.11 tip, clearly and obviously against my wishes. Now, on one hand, it is only 67 cents more than what I wanted to pay. On the other hand, though, it seems to me that that the restaurant was dishonest. FWIW, I disagree completely with mandatory tips. But the slip says “suggest”, which is the opposite of mandatory.
I’ve decided to not dispute the charge with my CC company, or otherwise take any action over 67 cents. But, in the end, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding this restaurant. Am I wrong? Could this have somehow been paid/processed with the higher tip as an honest mistake?
A party of X people automatically gets charged an 18% gratuity. You have the option of tipping more if you found the service worthy. But you do not have the option to pay less, per restaurant policy for large groups of guests.
As long as you won’t go through the hassle of showing your credit card company the bill, the restaurant doesn’t have to go through the hassle of giving a shit about stiffing people in this fashion.
In those cases, every POS system I’ve worked with adds the gratuity in automatically - you can leave MORE if you want, but the required tip is already included in the subtotal.
That’s either a shitty server or a shitty restaurant, and I’d lean sharply towards the server. Most places, a server enters in their own tips and such, and the signed receipt is saved for disputes. It saves time and energy for the managers, who generally have far more on their plate than most people imagine.
Personally, I would probably dispute it - not because 67 cents matters to me, but because that server has probably done it to a lot of other people, who - like you - at least consider not going back to the restaurant. That screws over the rest of the employees who AREN’T shitty people.
But that’s coming from someone who has seen the damage a single dishonest server can do to a restaurant’s reputation. It took MONTHS to get past the bad gossip after someone added an extra digit to a few groups’ tips. Hell, I had to wait a week to get my $500 tip from a regular buying a round-trip ticket for me because of that ethically-impaired “unpleasant person”.
I was about to chime in with this. Typically, somewhere on the menu, there will be a note that says “Parties of ____ or more will be charged a ___% gratuity.”
The software that generates the receipts might not have a separate template for parties above or below the limit, hence the “suggested” amount. Or perhaps since that receipt was only for two people, it kept the “suggested” amount on the document.
This is why I bring cash to large dinners out. Nobody gets to play shenanigans with my money; I throw mine down on the table and step out. You guys figure out the rest amongst yourselves.
Just about every restaurant I’ve been to has a notice printed on the menu that says, groups over 6 will be charged 18% gratuity, or something like that. I would consider that to be the policy, not the receipt.
Did the restaurant post it’s policy on tips for large parties?
I don’t know. I didn’t look for it or see it. Most restaurants do have that on the menu, though, and they very well could have.
I hate that policy, as it pretty much guarantees lousy service. In this instance, service wasn’t so bad that I would have complained to a manager or paid a lot under 18%, but this type of policy and the steady tip creep bugs me.
Also, I’m surprised it wasn’t already included. Whenever I’m out in a big group, there’s usually a line that says something along the lines of “18% gratuity - $______.” They will still leave a blank for someone to write in an additional tip, but the mandatory gratuity is already factored into the printed amount.
My ex, who worked in food service, always told me to look for that item, so I didn’t end up “double-tipping.” I’ve since told family and friends to look out for that as well.
It was included on the CC slip I was provided. Please re-read the original post. This isn’t a matter of double-tipping. It’s more a matter of the restaurant using “SUGGEST 18%” on the slip instead of “MANDATORY 18%” or something similar.
I guess I have been under the impression that gratuities are discretionary, even if the menu mentions that tips will be automatically added for large groups. I suppose it is dependent on the exact wording, but it’s probable that a menu creates a binding agreement if it includes mention of mandatory tips.
Sorry, re-reading that made it obvious it was incredibly unclear.
At the last restaurant I worked at, a server (heretofore known as “Taylor”) quit at the end of a shift with no warning. Unknown at the time, Taylor had added a zero to many of the receipts for the night - $2 becomes $20, $10 becomes $100, etc., when entering the tips at the end of the night. It ended up adding up to over $300 by the end of the night, and no one knew until a crazy number of complaints from customers about cards being overcharged. The entire thing ended up on a couple review sites, social media, the whole nine yards, and every receipt ended up under a microscope, by both customers and the restaurant management, for weeks.
Fast forward a couple weeks, and one of my regular foursomes came in to visit. After noticing I wasn’t exactly my normal, perky self, they found out one of my best friends (who had also worked with me at the restaurant for a while) had been hit by a car in Colorado and was lying in the hospital, all kinds of banged up, and I was a bit preoccupied. I didn’t notice until the end of the night that they had left a $500 tip instead of the ~$50 that would have been customary, with a note to buy a ticket and visit my friend with it. Well, management found that fishy, in light of recent events, and wouldn’t pay the tip out until they could contact the customer, knowing they were regulars, and I wasn’t exactly starving without the money and willing to wait.
It got sorted out when one of the gentlemen called to find out why the charge hadn’t applied to his card and approved of the tip on the receipt. It could have been worse for me.
As to the OP, I guess I never outright said it: report it. Yes, it’s nothing more than pocket change and not worth the time to complain. But it could very well be a server who’s just a shitty person, and apparently not very bright. Risking theft charges for 67 cents? If it was a simple fat-fingering (been there, done that, fortunately never with the money side) or a random oops, no biggy. It could be a sign of something much worse, which can affect a lot of innocent people.
I think the reasons for mandatory tipping with large groups of people is the diffusion of responsibility phenomenon that often occurs in those scenarios. People are more likely to get hammered and distracted and the server is left with a handful of dollars tossed on the table with no regard to a fair tip.
I would be upset about you being overcharged if you weren’t part of a large party, as it’s likely this was restaurant policy and not the error of the server. Any other scenario would be, IMO, fraudulent.
Call. Ask for the manager. Inquire whether their 18% suggested tip is really a mandatory tip. If he says it’s only a suggestion, tell him your story. Point out this reflects dishonesty even though it’s only a few cents. (Keeping your opinions on mandatory gratuities to yourself! If it’s not a mandatory tip, then they’re not doing THAT and don’t need an earful about it!)
For the record, I think the practice of servers relying on gratuities for the bulk of their pay is an insanely stupid method of business. But if the bit about large parties and required tips was posted before you sat down, I think you’re not going to prevail in either a legal or ethical sense, IMHO, because I think by sitting down and ordering food you agreed to pay the mandatory service charge just as much as you agreed to pay $9 for a salad. The wording on the receipt would not, in my opinion, override the agreement you made at the front end of the meal to pay according to the menu. I think the receipt is so easily explained as a technical glitch, rather than a change to the menu.
Now, I agree that the restaurant has an obligation to give you a correct bill. But I think you’d have a substantial hurdle to show the restaurant actually revising its service policy with the bill.
As an aside, one of the reason I think tipping sucks is that a smaller tip doesn’t actually send a message. A small tip can mean the service sucked, the food was bad, the patron is a jerk, or many other things. I think your dissatisfaction would be best address with a call or email to the manager explaining what needs to be corrected, as opposed to a call to MasterCard about pocket change.