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.”
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.
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’ve been visiting Brazil the past couple weeks and this is something I see here, it’s so nice to not have to arbitrarily round up prices in my head to figure out the true cost before going to the register. I’ll miss that when I get back home.
Agreed. The counter argument is that every state and county has different tax rates. One valid reason taxes that are percentages.
But the register can deal with all of that just fine.
This shit is just as abd in Japan. So many places have bullshit seating fees or they make you buy cabbage as an appetizer or something.
Taken the practice from host clubs and just ran with it.
The weirdest one has been watching the “15%+ service fee” go from groups of 8 to 5 in only 2 years.
Also an easier way to alleviate junk fees would be to remove credit card transaction fees.
You know the thing that banks have been exploiting for decades to make profit out of virtually nothing.
It’s like paying for gamepass but for every time you open the game.
And don’t come in here saying that it covers PCI DSS requirement. This technology is cheaper to run than a rassberrypi mining dodgecoin.
There are quite a few places around me that add a service fee for everyone. I don’t frequent those places. Which is sad because some of them actually have good food.
Just make people pay the fee when they dine and you will see how many switch to other payment options
They should have started cracking down years ago when restaurants started charging “delivery fees” that the delivery drivers didn’t get.
The credit card fee is the only one I don’t mind. CC fees siphon a lot more money out of what we pay than people think. It’s unfair that restaurants/stores have to take that hit because the CC industry has been successful in making credit cards ubiquitous.
All those rewards we get as consumers for using CCs come straight from the vendors pockets, and the banks get a much larger cut of the fees than they “give” back via rewards.
There is no reason why credit card fees need to be so steep in the digital age. And most vendor agreements require that vendors aren’t allowed to charge a separate CC fee to cover the cost to them, so they instead have to raise prices on all (cash) customers through a menu price hike.
It’s the same kind of bullshit as Apple requiring that app owners are not allowed to sell their app on other platforms for less than their Apple Store price.
Yeah. I used to work at a retailer that had a credit card for the business. People think the incentive for the business is to get the $80 commission for signing up new people. And while that’s nice, the real reason for us was that processing fees were waived at our store for anyone using the card.
That’s why you’ll get get more “points” for using the card at the retailer than you do elsewhere. That 2-3% back or whatever is way less than the processing fee the business would otherwise be paying.
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 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.
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.
Bring exact change in cash and be on your merry way
Why were you down voted? I like the idea, and why do I need to tip a fuckin barber? He’s doing his job down to the letter and is being payed for it.
Avoiding awkward forced interactions like this is the primary reason I cut my own hair. Otherwise, would be fine contributing to that part of the economy.
I have never left 15% and if I’m not happy with the service 10% or lower.
I’m sure your server will understand. They’re usually the ones in charge of decisions like these. /s
I hope they do understand, and quit. Workers need to stop working for shit employers.
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.
You’ve clearly never worked as or known anyone working as a server holy shit lmfao
“Restaurant operators say the fees keep their menu prices lower, improve employee compensation and are better for customers.”
HA!!! *but we want it this way so people don’t realize how expensive their meal will actually be until they’ve already eaten and it’s too late. We want to hide our profit grab in innocuous fees that visually feel like non-negotiable taxes they are just used to paying without objection!!!"
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It’s bait and switch. You display prices to attract customers (think how restaurants display their menus out front or online) and then raid them with add-ons at bill time.
bait and switch
Aka fraud
It’s only fraud when the plebs do it, to business owners it’s “strategy” /s
Sometimes the fees are in small print somewhere on the menu. I suppose that gives the restaurant some legal protection, although I’m still totally on the “menu prices must actually show how much that food costs” team.
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!
Give me the real price or I will go elsewhere.
How enforceable are these fees? Like if I sat down, ordered from the menu with whatever set prices they had in the menu, get back a bill with fees added on that I never agreed to, what would happen if I just refused to pay those fees? Like I’m not coming back either way, so don’t care if they ban me, but can a restaurant tack on whatever they want and the police would treat it as a non-payment of what’s due or is the legal obligation only for the food ordered plus reasonable expectations added on (such as taxes, though personally I also believe they should be included in the advertised price)?
If it is listed on the menu, you must pay it. I can see if it’s not mentioned that you could make the case it’s BS, though
Get rid of banks processing and merchant fees to start. Banks can make it by just fine without those.
Note that by “stay out of the fight” the article means “stay out of the Biden administration’s crosshairs” which actually means something different.
Restaurants are seconds away from charging a per-bite subscription to their menu. 30 bites per month individual plan or shared 150 bites per month family plan
- Any large bites count as 3 bites
- All bites where you open your mouth are categorized as large bites.
- Uneaten food is evaluated by our proprietary AI and given a remaining bite count (which is then doubled and subtracted from your regaining monthly bite total as a penalty).
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/24/restaurants-fight-ftc-junk-fee-crackdown-over-surcharges.html
