AIBU to request a service charge is removed before service?

[Globules]

Went to a lovely restaurant yesterday. We began by ordering at the table using the app. We expected to pay before recieving our food.

The app automatically added a 12.5% service charge to the order. There was no option to remove it.

So I went to the bar and ordered. The server put the order through the app I'd just used, therefore the total was the same. I asked her to take off the service charge. She seemed surprised, but did so.

Inside I was thinking I haven't had any service yet, how can you charge me for it now?

The server poured the 2 drinks at the bar. I carried them to our table. Another server carried our plates of food 3m from the hatch to the table.

There was no other interaction with servers at all. The servers were pleasant enough, but 20 seconds of announcing food was all it amounted to.

The food was really tasty but nothing service wise to justify the £7 service charge they asked for upfront, before you'd even experienced the service!

It depends, but you come across as the type of person who would call mediocre or indifferent service bad. You sound hard work.

The sort of person who would ring up the Council for something on a Friday afternoon! Ugh!

Wrong attitude again!

Absolutely not!!! There's lots of people who work for minimum wage who do not receive tips (and have no option to get a tip). We are not America and this forced tip is going to turn the restaurant industry into something like theirs. Tips in bars/ restaurants are based on exceptional service, not on wages.

I'm not, read my post again. If everything was ok, I add a tip when I order desserts

I'm not. 😉

Indifferent service is indifferent to me.

Who else are you tipping? Nursery assistants, retail workers, hospital cleaners?

Do the people working for minimum wage in Spoons not deserve tips 🤔

Why Spoons over all other min wage jobs? Should my grandparents carers be tipped for every meal they provide?

Well if we are going to insist on tipping wait staff then why can't everyone else who works hard get a tip too?

Oh no! Ive displayed the wrong attitude to @CremeEggThief AGAIN!!! Bricking it , I am...

Naughty, naughty vairy naughty..
as the song goes…
😆

This absolutely boils my piss. It mainly happens to us in London. The one cheeky fucker added service charge and a 10% tip on the bill, I thought dh was going to have an aneurism he was so angry. They’re banking on people not checking their bills.

@marcyhermit The staff in Spoons just deliver to your table. You order on the app and they just throw it at you when it’s ready. Why would you tip them? It’s like a conveyer belt of service.

Same as the place the OP went to so why should the tipping rules be different?

@Globules Out of interest, did you leave a tip?

And we cant have people bothering council workers during their working hours can we? 😂😂😂

Nope not for people working minimum wage or part-time jobs.
You should always tip if you can afford it.

Tons of people work minimum wage jobs or part-time. Very few are getting tips to make up their wage. What is so special about restaurant staff that they should get extra because they bring your food to you with a smile as opposed to e.g. the shoe shop staff who measure your child's feet with a smile and bring you six pairs of shoes for a reluctant toddler to try on? Also, do you only tip part-time staff who struggle to get more hours or all the part-time staff who choose to only do a couple of shifts a week?

Ah but would @CremeEggThief give a tip to those council workers for picking up tje phone on a Friday afternoon I wonder ( regardless of the fact that it would probably breach some policy to accept tips from the public)

Loads of people work very hard for NMW and their jobs don't lend themselves to tips.
I absolutely hate the way that restaurant's assume that you should leave a 10 or 12.5% tip automatically when 9 times out of 10 the service is mediocre at best. Tipping is discretionary and should remain that way.

I ate out twice last week and one I left a tip on the table and the other one I didn’t because I went to the bar to order my food

I’m a pretty generous tipper ( I think )
but I will always ask for the service charge to be removed

I just cant get over why ringing a (public, no less) during their opening hours makes them a "sort of person" 😂😂

I don’t understand why @Elektra1is tipping Estate Agents unnecessarily, while berating posters on Mumsnet for not tipping, because her daughter is struggling to make ends meet…….

But in this country we have a minimum wage?
Servers will be paid a minimum wage regardless so why should a tip be paid on top? Being waiting staff is not a skilled job at all it's regularly done by teenagers with no work experience at all, I don't see any reason it should be paid at more than minimum wage. It's just an Americanism that has caught on here, few people seem to understand that tipping occurs in the US because many states have either no, or a very low, minimum wage, so actually without tips waiting staff really are barely paid
That's not the case in the UK.
I don't tip.

I’m judgemental about Spoons in fairness. Not the clientele or pricing but the politics.

Service charges are split between waiters and kitchen staff. Unless you cooked your food yourself, you should pay it.