Is this restaurant taking the mick, or are we just naive?

[IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads]

DH had a £100 voucher for a local restaurant.

We went tonight and ate/drank £76 on food and drink.

They initially refused to give us change (fine, I wasn't expecting cash change), or a smaller voucher for what we hadn't spent/ annotation on the original voucher for what we had left.

They did finally give us cash change as a goodwill gesture since we were unaware (doesn't say anything on their website or on the voucher).

Is this normal? They've been paid £100 for the voucher, they were essentially planning on picketing £24 that they'd been paid.

Or should be have forced ourselves to have had another bottle of wine ?🤣

I've never had a restaurant voucher before, but a local bookshop just writes on their vouchers how much you have left to spend if you don't spend it all at once.

[SD1978]

@ReleasetheCrackHen as someone also on minimum wage I don't tip someone who has done their job. In the same way I don't get tipped by patients when I've given them a shower they've really enjoyed. It's not a thing in UK and shouldn't be.

[Nanaof1]

@GoldAsGreen

You could have asked for another bottle of wine and taken it home with you?

In my eyes, the voucher is the gift. It's for you to enjoy food and drink up to the value of the voucher and if you don't spend the lot then the restaurant keeps the difference.

LOL! No, if someone has a $100 for a place and they only spend $76 of it, under no circumstance ever, should the restaurant or store be able to keep the difference. FFS!

[MolkosTeenageAngst]

@ReleasetheCrackHen

No, I was thinking more along lines of having a couple coffees for about £8 and then leaving the rest £16 as a tip.

Leaving a tip out of the voucher wouldn’t be possible at a lot of places, you’d either need to give cash or use your card. Leaving a tip from a voucher would just give the money to the business owners, it would be unlikely to end up with the wait or kitchen staff as most places wouldn’t have the means to separate the part of the voucher that was tip from a voucher, as the £100 would have been paid months ago when the voucher was bought.

Also £16 is still a 20% tip which is way over what most people are going to give in an average restaurant.

[Nanaof1]

@Livinginanotherworld

On a £76 bill the tip would have been around £15 for a start, so hardly much left, if you’d had a coffee each you could have called it quits.

I thought the UK didn't have a big tipping culture? Why would you tip more than a courtesy tip when the workers are getting paid a decent wage?

I want tipping to go away in the US. I'd rather pay a bit more for my meal and not have to feel the need to leave a large tip.

[Womencanlift]

We have always considered vouchers that we are gifted for restaurants as a “use it or lose it” scenario, whether that is actually part of the T&Cs, who knows. So there would be a few additional cocktails at the end to use up the amount

I am impressed that you got all that and still had significant change out of £100 OP. While I don’t think they should have given you cash, I do think you should have the remainder to spend another time.

[ReleasetheCrackHen]

@MolkosTeenageAngst

Leaving a tip out of the voucher wouldn’t be possible at a lot of places, you’d either need to give cash or use your card. Leaving a tip from a voucher would just give the money to the business owners, it would be unlikely to end up with the wait or kitchen staff as most places wouldn’t have the means to separate the part of the voucher that was tip from a voucher, as the £100 would have been paid months ago when the voucher was bought.

Also £16 is still a 20% tip which is way over what most people are going to give in an average restaurant.

Most POSs used by restaurants can indeed separate out tip from food when paying with a voucher. In fact, it will soon be a legal requirement that all businesses must be able to separate the tip out on all cashless forms of payment to distribute to staff. So, most restaurants if they haven’t already upgraded their POSs, they will be scrambling to do so.

[MrsClatterbuck]

Last year we were given a £100 voucher as well for a local restaurant. We went for lunch on a Sunday spent just over £50. They gave us a new voucher for the remaining balance as a matter of course.

[SayHi]

Usually you don’t get any change with vouchers, either in voucher or cash form.

They say on the back of them that no change will be given.

If I have a voucher I usually go over and pay the difference or buy something to make it up to the correct amount.

I’ve never had a good voucher though but I’d expect it to have the same rules as a normal voucher.

[DreamTheMoors]

@MrsMikeDrop

I never tip unless service is exceptional. I don't live in the US and I don't want to, tipping is dumb

What’s ”dumb” is not paying servers in the U.S. a living wage.

I’d wager you didn’t know that or take the time to find that out, @MrsMikeDrop

You were just eager to insult a place you don’t know, will never visit and which has no effect on your life whatsoever.
Amirite? Of course I am.

[SleepingStandingUp]

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads

A very small tip. The service was very good until we came across this unpublished voucher policy.

So the service was very good, but you only left a small tip because management wouldn't give you change?

[jellyminelli]

"Usually you don’t get any change with vouchers, either in voucher or cash form"

Where've you been?! Most of them take the exact amount you've spent off 😄

[AlfietheSchnauzer]

@jellyminelli

"In my eyes, the voucher is the gift. It's for you to enjoy food and drink up to the value of the voucher and if you don't spend the lot then the restaurant keeps the difference."

What a load of old shite. My kids got greggs vouchers for Xmas. The breakfast deal is £2.70 for a bacon butty and a drink. Should they just say, ah you keep the rest of the tenner greggs, I've had my fill. I'll put out of my pocket money next time

Bizarre 😅

Greggs vouchers for Xmas?!?!?!?! God how joyless

[AlfietheSchnauzer]

@MichelleScarn Police?!?!? Pleeeeeeease link if you can remember which thread it was??

[Fraaahnces]

I wonder if it was the waitress/server who couldn’t work it out or a dodgy policy… I don’t live in uk but it wouldn’t fly in Aus. Can’t understand why it didn’t occur to her that a new voucher was the solution.

[bitnervousaboutthis]

@SleepingStandingUp we don't have to tip in the U.K. it's a choice not something anyone should attempt to shame another for not doing

[MrsMikeDrop]

@DreamTheMoors

What’s ”dumb” is not paying servers in the U.S. a living wage.

I’d wager you didn’t know that or take the time to find that out, @MrsMikeDrop

You were just eager to insult a place you don’t know, will never visit and which has no effect on your life whatsoever.
Amirite? Of course I am.

No. I agree that is dumb and that they should just be paid properly in the first place to save the hassle. It's really inefficient. I thought everyone knew that's the reason for tipping in the US. And yes I have visited a few times 😐

[XiCi]

@Usernamen

There’s no tipping culture in the UK. There’s sometimes service charge of 10-15% automatically added to the bill (which is technically optional). There is no need to tip outside/above that, although you can if you want to, of course.

There’s NMW here so staff don’t rely on tips in the same way as in the States.

There is a UK tipping culture in that virtually everybody leaves one unless the service has been dreadful. I don't think I've ever eaten out with anyone that hasn't left a tip at a restaurant

[MichaelAndEagle]

@AlfietheSchnauzer

Greggs vouchers for Xmas?!?!?!?! God how joyless

I'm sure it wasn't their only present....!

[AdobeWanKenobi]

@AlfietheSchnauzer

Greggs vouchers for Xmas?!?!?!?! God how joyless

Oh god yes!!

fancy giving kids something practical they’ll use instead of random plastic crap that will end up in landfill. Fucking heartless.

[whynotwhatknot]

id expect to be in the t and cs if they dont give you any change be it vouchers or cash

[BonnieBobbin]

My teen would love a Greggs voucher! I didn't know they existed.

As to the OP, lots of places expect you to use the voucher on one occasion but it's fine to ask them to clarify if it's not clear in their Ts&Cs.

[Womencanlift]

@XiCi

There is a UK tipping culture in that virtually everybody leaves one unless the service has been dreadful. I don't think I've ever eaten out with anyone that hasn't left a tip at a restaurant

Do you mean tipping in addition to the service charge? Because I don’t know anyone who would do that. It tends to be one or the other

[Canwesleepyet]

I’ve worked in hospitality for many years and have actually never had anyone not spend a whole voucher at once - usually they are for a smaller amount, or if a large voucher it tends to be a bigger party of people or a couple who will have steaks etc and spend the full amount. We don’t have a policy that the voucher has to be spent at once, people just always do. If it’s a chain restaurant they may not have known how to issue another voucher or give change in a way that wouldn’t leave the tills out of balance - as the vouchers are paid to head office and deducted as a credit through a portal. Having said that, where I work, we would have sorted a new voucher or given change and worked out how to balance it later! It does depend - there may not have been a way to reissue a new voucher through their system while ensuring the original money from the voucher “pot” was allocated to the new voucher if that makes sense. It’s likely that it’s the first time someone has asked and they weren’t sure - hopefully they will find out so they know going forward. On our system the till will not print a voucher code until a card payment for the voucher amount has been put through and there is no way around this.

If you didn’t get a new voucher it may be worth sending them a polite email asking if it would be possible to reissue a voucher explaining that this policy wasn’t listed anywhere. Emails or calls/visiting in person after the fact will always get better results than a negative review - once they have already had the negative review they will be trying to avoid there is little incentive to rectify it! (Assuming you don’t email first before leaving a negative review).

[Ferferksake]

It depends on the type of voucher. Sometimes places give away a voucher as a raffle prize or something. If it was that type of voucher I wouldn't expect anything in return for the balance, but then they normally put the "cannot be exchanged for..." etc. If it was a gift card that somebody had paid cash for, then yes, I'd expect them to mark the card as £xx spent on 1st July, balance remaining £xx.

[IamnotHWhittier]

We have had restaurant vouchers before and they have always simply deducted the spend on the voucher leaving the remaining as credit.
One restaurant had nothing for vegetarians at lunch or dinner but did do lovely breakfasts so we spent the money over many visits there just on breakfasts.