Lawmakers want to crack down on “junk fees,” but restaurants are trying to stay out of the fight.
Surcharges or fees covering everything from credit card processing to gratuities to “inflation” have become more popular on restaurant checks in recent years.
Last year, 15% of restaurant owners added surcharges or fees to checks because of higher costs, according to the National Restaurant Association. In the second quarter, 3.7% of restaurant transactions processed by Square included a service fee, more than double the beginning of 2022, according to a recent report from the company.
Opponents of the practice say those fees and surcharges may surprise customers, hoodwinking them into paying more for their meals at a time when their wallets are already feeling thin. Fed-up diners compiled spreadsheets via Reddit of restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and D.C. charging hidden fees. Even the Onion took a swing at the practice, publishing a satirical story in May with the headline “Restaurant Check Includes 3% Surcharge To Provide Owner’s Sugar Baby With Birkin.”
Am I the only one? The whole thing of charging 4% if someone’s paying by credit card, because that’s what it costs to run their credit card, makes perfect sense to me.
Maybe it is because I used to be involved with a business that paid credit card fees. What we eventually wound up doing was publishing prices that were nice round numbers that roughly included the CC fees, giving a discount below the published prices for cash payments, and including a separate 3% CC fee onto custom quotes that were itemized, if people were paying with a card. That seemed like a pretty solid system. But yeah I definitely get it if a restaurant wants to say that there’s a certain percent fee if you’re paying with a card.
“Cost of living adjustment” can fuck off though
Cash has fees associated with it too when you have a business bank account. It’s probably not a as high but might be now that there is so much cashless.
?
What do you mean? Depositing $100 has always credited me $100. There are monthly fees and etc associated with the account sometimes, but they are irrespective of whether you’re depositing cash.
Usually what we would be trying to motivate people towards is ACH instead of credit card (very low fee but still everything automatic, not a pain in the ass like cash is). But idk of any cash fees associated with any business account I’ve ever been involved with.
Page 11 as an example: https://www.chase.com/content/dam/chase-ux/documents/personal/checking/biz-how-your-transaction-will-work.pdf
It’s pretty low comparatively but not usually free.
Add a service fee or an inflation fee if you’d like. I’ll circle it and leave a big fat 0 for the tip. Without it, I’ll leave 20% minimum. Problem solved.
I’m sure your server will understand. They’re usually the ones in charge of decisions like these. /s
You mean the servers that are overwhelmingly opposed to minimum wage laws applying to servers?
The same ones that complain all day about their wage and make >$40/hour with no education or training while not reporting their cash tips to the IRS?
The same ones that just drop off your food, never come back and take 20 mins to process a tab?
lol.
I hope they do understand, and quit. Workers need to stop working for shit employers.
The only employers that are hiring are shit. I’m very worried about the service industry.
I am tired of prices going up AND tips going up. It already was a percentage of a total, and now it’s a higher percentage of a higher total?
I remember 10 percent tip. Was sort of annoyed at 15. At 20 percent with five times the bill it’s gotten way out of hand.
And now my area is trying to normalize 25 percent, with 30 being “good service”.
I am about to say fuck it and go back to 15. It’s either that or never eating out again.
I never advanced from a 10% tip…if I thought the service and establishment justified tipping at all. Otherwise 0% tip.
Tipping is strictly optional; and anyone pressuring you otherwise is an asshat who doesn’t need your business.
Unless your server has to tip out (which they all do) and so by choosing to hit that 0% your server now has to pay to serve you.
I’m tired of tips in general. Every job should pay a liveable wage. Fix the system. The more in the middle class, the more things we can have. Healthcare, education, housing, food, innovation,…etc. Fuck ripping people off so a few assholes can sleep with women just as shallow as them or rape ones that turn them down.
A “quick haircut” sort of place (kind of a barber, sort of , but super-high-volume and just one worker, the owner) that I’ve been using for a while now has a super-annoying dark-pattern in their payment flow. They book appointments, and take in-person payments using Square. After your cut, when you’re paying via their hand-held kiosk with a card, the screen shows you a bunch of huge “tip amount” buttons, and it’s implied that the customer has to choose one of them, while the provider looks on, in order to finish the transaction and leave (probably not true - they’ve already got your CC info by that point). Guess which button is highlighted/pre-selected and front-and-center! That’s right, 20%. If you want to select another tip, or no tip, you have to select another button while she watches you do so. The owner lists all prices on her square website, and it’s those prices you think you’ll be paying when you book an appointment online, but she still feels the need to be tipped. You KNOW that the provider/barber has configured Square to present that UI to the customer. Not quite the same as the restaurant fees scam, but it’s actually more manipulative though, in my view.
THIS is why we need Government OUT OF OUR LIVES (except in the Bedroom and Doctors Office)! If these Regulations go away then OBVIOUSLY Prices will DROP!
We need to go to what other countries do.
No tips, people earn a living wage. And all taxes and percentage fee charges are baked into the price you see.
If something is $99.99 on the sticker/menu, then you pay exactly $99.99
I forget how much I take this for granted until I visit the US. It’s such a hassle, I guess it’s one of those things you just get used to after while to be fair but when you’re not used to it it’s baffling.
It’s purposeful forced mental labor.
They want the customer to be confused, stressed, and ready to just pay to make it all go away. They make the customer do a lot of work to be informed about their products.
Anything where the customer knows the situation and the price is anathema to these dorks.
Yeah, you just always assume you’ll be nickle and dimed.
People bitch about it in food delivery apps, and it is a problem there, but it’s a problem offline too. You just see it immediately on the apps, where if you’re sitting down you don’t realize till after you ate and you don’t care as much.
Ironically seeing the real total up front makes people more angry than if they don’t know till after they ate.
I’m from the US. I assume outright beforehand that any private business I have to deal with is trying to scam me, because in my experience they are. After speaking to a few contenders, you pick the one that comes off as least slimy or do whatever it is yourself if they’re all completely shitty.
My tinfoil hat theory is part of this is because conservatives want to keep people low grade mad at government. Like they keep stuff like “5% tax” highly visible so people see it and get mad, then later they can campaign on how the government is axiomatically bad etc etc.
I mean, the strategy itself isn’t even a conspiracy theory. That’s literally their game plan for dismantling established departments and government branches. The US Post Office is a great example. Conservatives make it harder and harder for them to stay funded every year, all in an attempt to slow down postal service and drive up delivery prices. They intentionally add bloat, cut funding, and increase costs. This is explicitly so they can point at the USPS and go “look at how bloated and ineffective this is! We should privatize it instead!”
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/24/restaurants-fight-ftc-junk-fee-crackdown-over-surcharges.html
