To think restaurants shouldn't be allowed to add service charges?

[Precipice]

Prices are listed on the menu. Maybe the menu has a tiny tiny print somewhere about service charges being added (or maybe it even doesn't!). When it comes to the bill, there it is.

You're already paying for the service in the cost, just as you're paying for someone to prepare whatever you're ordering if it's being prepared, and for the fact that you're there in a restaurant at all.

AIBU to think that if restaurants want to charge you 10 percent more for everything, they should raise their actual prices by 10 percent openly?

Oh dear oh dear. Thanks for putting me right 🙄

I always leave a tip but I did live in America in the 1990’s so I guess I am just accustomed to it. However, if the service has been bad then I don’t but that very rarely happens. I always leave cash on the table though and I ask for the service charge to be taken off the bill. Also in hand car washes I always leave a cash tip directly to the person washing my car out of sight of the owner or boss. You’d be surprised how many workers are exploited and often they are forced to work many hours overtime with no pay. Exploitation of low paid workers happens a lot in the UK.

You're welcome.

Did you just want to have your say with nobody replying to your post? Or only posters agreeing with you? You're extremely tone deaf given the cost of living crisis and that people might generally be tightening their belts. If they can afford to pay the stated price in a restaurant then they can afford to eat there.

Versailles2023, that's appalling. There's been a lot in the press lately about trafficked workers. I check in with this organisation for updates as I work in an industry where it's easy to hide workers from view - www.slavefreealliance.org/

Absolutely not @LyingWitchInTheWardrobe loads of people have responded to me. None of them quite as ridiculously condescendingly as you though 😂 The irony of you telling me I have no right to my opinion in that snotty tone has made my evening!

I work hard in a school
I'm paid minimum wage
Nobody gives me tips !!!

There's times I wish tipping and service charges would just be stopped and prices increased to cover a better wage (not that many employers will actually pass it on, they'll tell you that's why, but they will still pay nmw) because the attitude towards serving staff shines right through on threads like this, and it's used as a stick to beat service staff with - especially the service charge fiasco, because it's highly unlikely the person serving you is the one who made the decision to add it by default, yet they're the ones being accused of making people feel awkward when it's asked to be removed, the one that explanations are demanded from.

In all honesty I prefer a good review or just being treated with a bit of respect to a tip, because it feels more genuine, and there's definitely people out there who treat you appallingly as serving staff and then chuck £xx on the table to 'pay' for belittling and humiliating you, and think that's ok, because all we're bothered about is the tip.

It honestly feels at times that although you're in the job because you like people and like facilitating them enjoying themselves, you're seen as the enemy as well as not really worth a lot as a person. Really demoralising and doesn't lend itself to getting good service.

Maverickess, Absolutely you should be paid a proper wage, everybody should. If restaurateurs would just price properly, put the right charge for the product and running costs and include decent wages (without the need for tipping or service charge), it would be easier for everybody.

I've seen customers making and leaving a terrible mess on their tables. I don't know whether they tip or not but, there's not a tip that would make up for having to clean up after people like that. Nor put up with rude behaviour. Nobody should have to.

Some places pool all the tips and spilt them up and I do not like that. A tip is to reflect the service at our table I feelmand I prefer to leave a cash tip.

I usually ask for it to be removed telling them I'd prefer to leave a cash tip of my own choosing.

Is that not factored into the price of having a meal?

I don't tip for a glass of water I tip for excellent service only and an amount of my own choosing not a service charge added to the bill.

I saw this online a while ago. It’s from a restaurant in Indianapolis.

PriamFarrl, that's it in a nutshell. The tipping culture is unfair to other workers also on minimum wage and it just lets employers off the hook when it's their responsibility to pay their staff properly.

I manage a restaurant and I am on £10/hour, other staff are on minimum wage. It will be going up to £11 when the minimum wage goes up to £10.50. We would love nothing more than to be able to pay staff more.

we are getting destroyed by costs, business rates going up £14k in one year, wage increases, gas and electric, quadrupled compared to last year.
the owner doesn’t take a wage out any more.
the brewery have upped prices of everything. Cellar gas has gone through the roof, the VAT bill is killing us.
rent bill gone up, insurances are going up….
Food prices are through the roof. Vegetable oil has gone up £17 a drum since this time last year. We go through 5 a week sometimes more. We are just scraping by week by week at the moment.

Where I work tips go to staff who have worked that day, we pool them. Housekeeper, pot wash, chefs, everyone who has worked that day gets a cut.
it usually adds £1-£2 per hour extra.
big tables are a lot more difficult and demanding than lots of smaller tables hence I know why usually bigger tables get service charge out on.
we don’t put a service charge on. But it is being debated as often now people assume the price has the service charge included and we’ve noticed a drop.
our reviews always mention the quality of service and friendliness of staff.
we are debating how to move forward with this, however I don’t want my staff getting complacent and not giving the service required as service charge included.

@BluebellBlueballs a service charge is completely different to a tip.
And no, it's not factored in to the cost of running a restaurant.
If you've ever looked at a restaurants P&L you will see how tiny the margins are on everything.

How is a service charge different to a tip?

They are both discretionary for good service!

You need to factor your costs into your meal prices, not a discretionary annoying charge!

No - a tip is not added to a bill.
A service charge is added and is normally to cover incidental non money making things like tap water/lemon or splitting a bill 6 ways which takes up a waiters time plus reams of till paper.
On the continent it's called a 'coperta' or cover charge - it's to cover those things
For the record we don't charge a service charge and tips are discretionary and paid in full to all our staff including the kitchen. We also pay well above NMW to make sure we keep good staff (although sadly the best are often only with us while at Uni)

That said obviously if you don't want to pay a service charge you don't have to - so you're right in that it's also discretionary

I don't like service charges automatically added. We have 4 DC so feel it's unfair if a service charge is added as we are a family of 6.
It costs enough to eat out as it is! We leave a tip but usually less than 10%.
It does feel stingy to ask it to be removed.
Given how few people carry cash nowadays I do think there should be an option for a tip when you pay by card but tips should be discretionary imo.

There very often is an option on the card machine.

A service charge is added and is normally to cover incidental non money making things like tap water/lemon

Places that have a license to sell alcohol are required by law to provide free tap water. It's customary for places that don't sell alcohol to provide tap water for free as well. If the service charge is being added to cover something that should be being provided for free by law, that's another problem in and of itself.

As for 'the continent', many countries, many customs. Not a thing in Poland, for example, and I haven't seen it in Lithuania either.

OP Do you think Thames Water don't charge me for tap water? Or the veg supplier for the lemon? Or the electric company for the electric to power the ice machine...
I don't know much about Eastern Europe but certainly Italy, Spain, France, Austria have cover charges

It’s one thing for customers to tip you because they feel obliged or because you gave good service.

It’s a whole thing entirely to just add service change onto a bill and expect people to pay it on top of the prices for their food. Not sure where the confusion is?

Of course they charge you for water, but Parliament has legislated to impose a duty for certain premises/businesses to provide tap water. Not liking a law doesn't give an entitlement to ignore the law.

There's no duty to provide ice or lemons. That's a decision made by the business. I've sometimes received them when I asked for 'just plain tap water, without anything in it'.

The point is that some countries in Europe doing something doesn't mean Europe as a whole does something. They speak Romanian in Romania but it would be ridiculous to claim universally that 'they speak Romanian on the continent'. Or, to take another example of customers losing money for no reasonable justification, the fact that in Poland when you pay in cash and they don't have exact change to give you, they'll ask to 'owe you' that (or tell you outright!) (you will not see that penny again, unless maybe it's a small shop and you are a regular and at one point it's in your favour and balances out). It would be silly to claim on this basis that 'on the continent, they don't always give you your change'.

@SFHJ

Similar story here with prices rising and the effect it's having, those of us in management are working harder than ever trying to cover all angles and save some money to keep cash flowing while customers demand higher service in return for higher prices - completely disregarding the fact that everything has risen in price and we're charging more because the raw costs have increased.
I think hospitality is in for a tough few years to be honest, especially off the back of COVID and mandatory closures. People have less money to spend, so they're going to be more choosy about where they spend it.
And bigger tables are more demanding, they use more resources, totally agree, possibly an answer is to introduce a service charge for tables of 10 or above, explaining that they use more resources than smaller tables, at time of booking/arriving?

My employers have said they don't want to add an automatic service charge to bills, but, we too have noticed that a lot of people assume that it has been added too. Some aggressively so because they demand it be taken off before they've even seen the bill. And some seem disappointed that it's robbed them of the chance to feel aggrieved and give you a lecture about how wrong it is even when you don't do it.

@LyingWitchInTheWardrobe

The customer who genuinely thanks me, leaves a good review and treats me like a person will be the ones I welcome back and find a table for at short notice when we're full, or who I go and talk with the chef about accomodating something we don't normally do, who I'll dig out some of our decorations for when it's a special occasion and ask kitchen to do something special with their desert - they're the ones I'll go over and above for, regardless of whether they tip or not.
The ones who try and humiliate me, tell their kids they'll end up like me if they don't try hard at school, accuse me personally of ruining their night/week/life because they don't like the table they were allocated and no others are available or because we ran out of something on a busy day, but leave a large tip are the ones who I won't go over and above for.

Or the ones who look at the bill and ask me if I've heard of the cost of living crisis and how can I justify such prices, nah, hospitality is well known for being paid such massive salaries that I haven't noticed prices rising left right and centre you utter knob.🙄.

I like my job for the most part but service charges are causing an issue between staff and customers that doesn't need to be there.