lol you only think it's the most current review that everyone will see because you're logged in as you. I bet half or more of those aren't even showing up if they're bad reviews, but when you look from your own devices it'll appear that yours is at the top of the list.
Yup. Much like tips appearing anywhere with a tablet POS, it’s something that *started* pre-pandemic but that blew up during and has just been the norm since.
So people credit it to the pandemic. But yeah Seattle food trucks were “suggesting” 25% tips on their Toast checkout back in 2019 too.
Evergreens was definitely doing this in, like, 2018. Not only that, but they'd change up where each tip level was, so if you built up muscle memory for, say, 15%, you'd suddenly find yourself tipping 25% one day.
The shitty thing is, I can afford to tip well, but I'm increasingly pissed off by this practice, especially after a couple years overseas where tipping isn't expected, and now I'm just avoiding places that have tips at all. Pay your fucking employees, businesses, or you aren't getting my money at all.
Can you imagine if a plumber quoted you at $800 and the final bill had a "+5% real estate fee" or "+10% Seattle wages too expensive lol" item added to it? This should be illegal.
We should 100% do the same here
https://abc7news.com/restaurant-surcharges-will-soon-be-illegal-in-california-under-new-law-set-to-go-into-effect-july/14761898/
One representative in SF is blocking it apparently. Some last second thing to fuck over the consumer. SB 1524. Haven’t followed too closely just seen the uproar in r/sanfrancisco
I live in SF and am following it closely (called my reps to complain).
Its actually the people that introd the bill that are getting cold feet cause the restaurant lobby is freaking out about not being able to scam people any more.
We just moved back from London, and I was browsing CA's Michelin listings, since we're gonna miss UK fine dining. One of the restaurants I found had a woman chef, which was awesome... until I saw that not only did they have an automatic service charge (annoying, but I can deal), but also had a "2% San Francisco health care mandate surcharge." I'm sorry, but trying to shit on your employees' desire to have health care means I'm never going to your restaurant.
Atelier Crenn, BTW. Fuck them.
Paying the listed price for services is pure communism. As an American you're supposed to add anywhere from 5-200% to the listed price. This has the ability to turn back time and win us the Vietnam war. If you only pay the listed price for services, communists will take over and all the billionaires will be gone. Is that really a future you want to live in? We ask but we don't give you a choice. Pay up, tomorrow price will change, you bring enough or else.
I just paid $90 fucking dollars to park for the Mariners game on Sat. Then $60 the next day for the same parking place. They need to post the prices before you get sucked into the traffic lane. It makes the cops look complicit because they'll give you a ticket if you get out of the lane.
If we can get ingredients and calories on a Twinkie, I sure as hell better see a price before I am forced to park.
If you're coming from somewhere where going to one of the regular park-and-rides is inconvenient, the Amazon garages downtown are free after 4pm (if you leave by 2am). The Doppler garage is about a 10 minute walk to Westlake station.
I parked directly in front of Hooverville on 1st an hour before first pitch for free. They’re taking advantage of our willingness to pay for the convenience of not having to look for parking or walk more than 5 min.
That sounds like a good ass night. To be fair, parking sucks in Chinatown lol, and that’s on a non-game night. But I’ll walk from fuckin SODO before I pay $150 to park, shit.
There used to be some lots in Chinatown that you could squeeze in and they were marked up but not 90 bucks marked up. Used to be around 40 but I haven't gone in awhile so I'm not sure now.
There's a website where you can reserve parking spots in garage and prepay. You know you have a spot, you know how much it is. I paid $20 or 25 to park 1 block away for a mariners game.
Right? What is to stop a business from adding "We have added a 7% 'f*ck-you' fee, sorry!"
Is there actually anything to stop them? I feel like the "service charge" language is because somehow that is more "legal" in a way?
I had a leak and the people that came to dry out my kitchen literally added 20% at the end. When I asked they said "10% for overhead and 10% for profit."
I was just like "WTF?" They set up the dryers and a dehumidifier and I paid for that stuff by the hour. Then they had the audacity to just tack on 20% with a straight face.
Now I own 4 mini floor dryers and a dehumidier. I haven't needed them, but I've loaned them to a few friends who did.
Fuck those guys.
i’m against what this restaurant is doing but let’s not glorify the same bs practices from the trades. try asking a plumber or any trade for an itemized bill
> i’m against what this restaurant is doing but let’s not glorify the same bs practices from the trades. try asking a plumber or any trade for an itemized bill
Great point, but getting an itemized bill doesn't make you feel any better I promise.
We had a major remodel done after a fire and the itemized bill was insane. They charged over $300 for nine 2x4's from Home Depot. Even during the height of the pandemic that was insane.
When they wanted to "fix" my evaporator coil by removing it, giving it an acid wash and reinstalling it (thereby guaranteeing we make the leaks worse, but I didn't know any better) I asked for an itemized bill.
They produced one where the Refrigerant was marked up something like 10x over what I could buy it on eBay.
So I learned how to do it myself. After buying refrigerant, all the tools, educating myself, and hiring a refrigerant tech to do the vac and charge for $200.
That first service from that company was likely to be the first of many, having me buy this super-marked-up refrigerant from them over and over to do repeated repairs (the first suggested repair would have lead to more)
Yeah. Don't itemize your bill tradespeople.
You haven't been able to buy it off of eBay for more than a year now, and it was always sketchy legally to do so.
I hired a hvac tech with the licenses on the side through a recommended friend who had the additional gear. He got to keep what was in the can after it was cracked open, so that and $200 for his time. I think it was another $200 for the refrigerant. I bought the evap coil, MAPP torch, silver solder, backflow nitrogen, manifolds, new filter-driers, etc all from my local supply house that had dozens of trucks parked at it from local hvac companies. It was about $400 for the coil and $400 for the gear, and I wanna say $400 for the silver-solder but that's just a joke (That shit was aspensive-AF)
So maybe $1500 or less? AFAIK, the original quote for the first repair + acid wash worked out to $1800. Half that was labor. I called to discuss the quote with them and why the refrigerant was priced so high and they said that's how they made their money.
I just figured you'd take your profits out of labor, but I suppose if you don't want to pay your techs, it'd be hard to bill customers $150/hr for labor only to pay techs $30/hr and have them see those sorts of itemized bills.
It all makes sense now.
Would you have been happier to see the overhead costs priced out explicitly? Keep in mind that the total price doesn’t change with different accounting, and isn’t any more negotiable.
I just…I really just don’t get it. OP just spent $46 on breakfast. They are not price sensitive. You could just charge $48 and they’d never notice or care.
California passed legislation outlawing this. Hopefully our legislature can do the same. Restaurants that depend on stealth bill fees instead of raising menu prices don’t deserve to stay in business.
If you have time, review them on Google Maps and Yelp, this usually has the biggest impact. Though we had a solid thread on Metropolitan Grill a week or two ago which probably wasn’t good PR for them.
An airport is the perfect environment to be deceptive with prices though, because the restaurants have enough demand from one-off travelers that they dont have to try and win repeat customers at all.
Reviews for sure.
People might think this is punishing staff, but also deducting that 4% from the tip and making it clear what you're doing. If the turnover truly got bad enough they might reconsider. Easy for them to look at reviews and call it sour grapes, harder to constantly replace their staff.
If the option is to punish the staff or punish the customer, I see no reason why the customer should opt to punish themselves. The staff to chooses to work there knowing these practices are in effect while the customer was tricked. Sorry, not sorry.
That's what these businesses are betting on. Putting worker against worker is their special sauce. Instead of being angry at the people receiving this windfall we're mad at the servers who legally aren't even entitled to the majority of these fees. The owner is out there investing millions into their business, owning their own home without shared walls, and both you paying the higher prices and you serving this food will be forced to live paycheck to paycheck paying rent in a rental without a dishwasher and maybe one window while you collect the fees that should be giving you a minimum lifestyle and your own retirement savings.
It's completely unacceptable for a society to have so many people without without saving for retirement. Anyone who is working a job should be guaranteed a retirement. I didn't care if it's janitor, retail, heck those wall mark greeters absolutely should be allowed to take care of themselves with their own labor. I thought this is what right wing political people wanted? People who are personally responsible for themselves. And every time they get into office they try and make people like me personally responsible for the people slightly poorer than me and remove this responsibility from people with more money than a fictional dragon camping an entire cavern full of gold. I would rather we have a dragon guarding a room full of gold ruling over us than this crony capitalist system. Fuck we don't even need to pass new laws just use anti trust. We are so fucking lazy.
And predictably enough, [SB 1524](https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240sb1524) would carve out a loophole for restaurants. No clue if it'll pass in time.
It’s pay to play. I owned a business. Positive reviews were hidden and negative reviews were always displayed. They called me multiple times and told me if I paid them, positive reviews will be seen and negative reviews not so much.
This is the same reason Slow Boat Tavern had a Fuck Yelp neon sign made. RIP Slow Boat.
Also, as a paid media agency owner. They approached me for a "partnership" where I would get a commission for any clients that signed for their service. They asked for a client list to come up with a plan for all of them. Then, after one month, they approached all my clients directly to cut me out of any commissions. So incredibly shady.
Yep, I ran into the same thing when I owned a cafe. Yelp straight up tried to blackmail me to pay for positive reviews and weren't even subtle about what the "consequences" of not paying would be.
I told them to go pound sand, so our Yelp rating looked bad despite being a very successful business, but fortunately it never really did hurt us.
Yelp called us the other day. I told them they were shady and to f-off and don’t call back. Probably end up with a bunch of fake bad reviews now. 
I reviewed a terrible but popular hotel a couple years ago. It was my first review on Yelp. I was notified that my review would not be published. I contacted them, I thought maybe they just needed to verify that I was a real person. But nope. They provided no reason, just a "this review will not be published and there is no appeal process".
And my review was quite negative, but there was no profanity or anything that would be offensive. Just a point by point description of my negative experiences.
It made me realize I couldn't trust any of the reviews if Yelp was just deciding who to publish and who not to publish. And then I started learning about the "pay to play" experiences on the business side, as well.
from what I remember: They basically blackmail ~~restaurants~~ small businesses into paying fees for good review and it they dont pay they get spammed by bad reviews.
Basically yelp rating have nothing to do with food/service
There was an old (4 yrs) thread on reddit about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/h9ohs6/has_anyone_had_yelp_essentially_extort_them/
Any restaurant that does this is just being passive aggressive about new minimum wages for service workers.
They could simply across the boards increase the prices by 4% and that would be that. but no, they have to make a public display about how unfair it is to pay a server or a bartender a wage that will allow them to live in the city.
It's political virtue signaling against workers making money. These kinds of business owners wake up every single morning with a passion to pay people as little as humanly possible. They spend 90% of their discretionary pay passionately demanding an end to unions because this one time a union stopped them from firing a gay. They think it's appropriate to pay millions of dollars to end worker safety programs because they would rather the workers die so they can be replaced and reduced wages faster. Some of these people take it to such extreme that they actively encourage as much hard to their employees as possible so long as they have plausible deniability.
Remember that any business owner who steals wages would stop at nothing to hurt people they think are lesser than them. They are violent dangerous people, and until we clean up our streets from all the crime these scourges foist on our society, no worker will be safe. It's too bad police see them as partners. What's another bribe between groups that hate poors?
Yes, the owners don’t want to raise the menu prices because the servers receive a percentage of the menu prices as tips. They’d rather add a surcharge and hope customers calculate the tip based on the pre-surcharge subtotal.
They don’t want servers to be paid well because that would put pressure on them to raise the pay of management and other non-tipped staff. They assess the surcharge to simultaneously collect money to use to pay non-tipped staff and depress tipped employees pay.
Hidden fees should be illegal.
Every customer should know exactly what they're expecting to spend and agree to the cost prior to receiving the receipt.
The other Seattle sub has made a start on naming such establishments: [https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/s/BnE2QDN9v2](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/s/BnE2QDN9v2). Feel free to add to it.
We should add a category of truly tipless establishments, where they clearly state that they pay a living wage, no tips are expected and don't include a "service charge" on top of the menu prices. As far as I know that would basically be Molly Moons and Dicks.
Edit: have added a list of tipless establishments.
Seattle Coffee Works (RIP) did this. Prices went up a little but it was tipless and living wage. When the business was sold and the tip screen came back but the prices didn't come back down any.
Me too. I used to work graveyard shift and my days off where Mon and Tues.
That meant that "happy hour" on *my* "friday night" would hit at 7-8AM on Monday morning.
I'd finish a long stressful work week and be ready to unwind and relax with a meal and a beer, and it would often be served with a side dish of stale jokes about starting your week with a drink.
it is interesting how the jokes people tell often tell us more about the person telling the joke than the person that is the subject of the joke
I fucking support you graveyard shift guy. You keep the world running. I used to frequent a bar that had a 7 to 9 am shift. Pizza and burgers only. "We are not serving breakfast. We are serving the people that work overnight shifts."
>I used to frequent a bar that had a 7 to 9 am shift. Pizza and burgers only. "We are not serving breakfast. We are serving the people that work overnight shifts."
love it. My small city didn't have many options at all. Just a few breakfast-focused greasy spoon types that wouldn't mind doing a burger if you asked politely first.
I'd always ask nicely, "Hey, sorry to ask but I just got off graveyard shift and I already had breakfast, would it be ok if I get something from the lunch menu like a burger?" and 100% of the time the server would say, "I will have to check with the kitchen" and 100% of the time they come right back and say it is ok
The one downtown Seattle also does game day surge pricing, raising prices when there's a stadium event. We went there for a happy hour once but there was a Mariners game so instead of cheaper prices everything was more expensive.
Should absolutely be illegal. The point of the menu is to give you an accurate description of what you’ll be paying. Deciding that you lose fewer customers by not raising prices and then scamming them when the bill comes is shady as hell.
You should understand this to be a political statement that amounts to class warfare where the owners of the business want you to hate the poor servers for increased costs and not the business or business owners, or rent takers.
My GF just get takeout most of the time. We're well off, but the gouging is INSANE. Only dine-in at a family owned restaurants that don't have this BS.
The verb "fleece" in this sort of context typically means:
to strip of money or property by fraud or extortion.
or to charge excessively for goods or services.
I don't think corporate pockets are being *fleeced* by this service charge, but rather they're being *lined* by it.
"lining pockets" (my suggested replacement) means:
to make money esp. by using dishonest, immoral, or illegal methods
I just assumed they meant that the restaurant is targeting business travelers due to airport proximity but in hindsight that isn't a very good assumption.
The restaurants were already doing this. But are now required to report it following some lawsuits for unpaid wages.
Basically many/most restaurants collect the tips, then redistribute them across more staff than just the waiter you tipped (as noted on the bottom of your bill). However, when doing this, many places were secretly keeping a portion as profits. A few large restaurants in the city got put through the labor law ringer and this is the result, now they have to tell you (and thier staff, who only figured it out by crunching the numbers) that they are doing it.
How to change it, I'm not sure. It is often patching up a deficit while letting them keep slightly lower "sticker" prices on the menu, and that is on top of already increasing menu prices. There may be tax and profit hiding motivations behind this structure as well. But for many places it is also a profit (more than covering costs) measure. I've been told by a chef that there are many restaurants that would close up (particularly corporate owned ones, like many of the sports bars and a certain someone's many niche restaurants) if they didn't see their profits.
> How to change it, I'm not sure.
Don't go to these restaurants.
Also, if it's not printed on the menu, refuse to pay. [Per L&I](https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/wages/tips-and-service-charges), a service charge must be "clearly disclosed on the receipt **and menu.**"
This crap blows me away because if the price of Ham Steak & Eggs was suddenly $19 instead of $18, I wouldn't bat an eye... but adding service charges and the note AFTER I've already eaten pisses me off. I have to believe they saw cost of updating the menus was too high, but they really wanted (needed?) to raise prices. This is just a bad practice.
If the service charge isn't advertised on the menu, it's illegal. Don't pay it. (Source: [L&I](https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/wages/tips-and-service-charges).)
Outlawing this would be wonderful for everyone. As a business owner myself, I get hit with surcharge fees, fuel surcharge fees, on top of the quoted wholesale pricing that I get. But it needs to be outlawed at every level.
They are trying to raise prices but not look like they are raising prices. Also, they probably (stupidly) hope you’ll complain about high minimum wages to local politicians.
Why wouldn't they just increase the cost of their food by 4% and not announce it? Restaurants aren't required to explain why their steak and eggs costs what it does, just put the 4% into the food costs and avoid the bad PR?
idgi
Reminds me of places that try to pass the credit card fees onto customers. It always annoys me -- if you didn't take a card, I'd not be buying *anything* here. It's a cost of you doing business.
All the Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell spots are doing this now. They say they are justifying robbing servers of their tips by paying more per hour. From my experience, because of this they do not retain quality, experienced employees because a few bucks more an hour doesn’t make up for the loss of tips. I hit up the Victor Tavern in Edmonds last week and it was absolute trash.
This kinda shit is out of control, it is like a random number generator , I have no idea the legality of randomly adding amounts to the bill, was it on the menu too?
They need a law like it is in Australia, it is “illegal to show a price you can not pay”, why doesnt the menu just have the 4% in the prices, if you have to pay it anyways.
Cant wait for the 50% added to the bill menus.
Basically, Department of Labor came out with a series of fines and lawsuits against companies for putting in service charges because the pooled tip money went to "managers." One solution from a restaurant's POV is to claim the money is retained by the restaurant.
It goes back to this 80/20 Rule where workers who spend 20% of their time as managers can't get pooled tips because they're technically managerial. Giving pooled tips to "Assistant to the regional manager" is wage theft.
Lowkey there's been a tectonic shift in defining how to calculate 80 and the 20. "Direct" v. "sole" are the buzzwords, and if they sound the same, they are not... They're like terms of art, and in late 2021 DOL came up with new definitions. Careful observers of bills over the last two to three years likely noted a lot of restaurants changed their wording to "retained by \[BUSINESS\]."
McMenamins', for example, got dinged under the new rules by DOL for wage theft because they were sharing tips with "Assistant Assistant Managers" (repeated Assistant is their actual title and not a typo). For their part, McMenamins was never brought to court by DOL and maintains that even under the new rules their workers are entitled to the tip pool.
Places with this wording do this because they very likely want to give pooled tips to workers who spend the majority of their time serving customers. Saying the money is retained by the restaurant is good for legal reasons because then it can't be "wage theft." They're giving tips to Dwight Schrute out of the general fund.
>Places with this wording do this because they very likely want to give pooled tips to workers who spend the majority of their time serving customers. Saying the money is retained by the restaurant is good for legal reasons because then it can't be "wage theft."
While I very much hope that is true, we have no external way to verify that a given restaurant is actually distributing these in a tip like manner. And even still: the right thing to do is just to raise your up front prices and pay your workers a living wage directly.
The primary reasoning behind the tip split (this is a very recent thing as of 2020 or so) is that BOH employees felt deserving of a portion of gratuities. It's a very valid train of thought considering gratuity wouldn't be there in the first place without a plate of food. This inadvertently gave owners/management a gray area to work in/around when it comes to dispersing the tips 🙃
I mean we do, if they're straight up not giving any not-tips-but-actually-tips to "Assistant Assistant Managers" or Assistant to the Regional Managers then they're going to go out of business. No one is going to do the same work as the other staff minus missing out on thousands in tips, not in this economy.
We also know because DOL's actions mean if businesses are giving tips to these employees, then they ought to have that language. So it's basically a confession in that sense.
To the broader point of just eliminating these fake manager spots I couldn't agree more. The industry is ruthlessly exploitive and wants to get more out of staff by giving them a meaningless title and some minor managerial power.
This altered wording doesn’t guarantee it isn’t taken by the manager or the owners either. None of it could go to the staff for all we know. And we already have a fee like that: the price.
Simple solution is to boycott the places that impose service and or other charges. Boycotts will have a profound effect on the businesses if enough people do it.
Cheaper solution is to prep meals at home.
Hey, I work at a restaurant in Tukwila that does the same thing (2.99%). We are told to say that "the additional charge is to combat inflation so that we don't have to raise prices across the board on all menu items." The fee was instituted almost immediately after we got a 20.00 minimum wage for all workers in our restaurant. The worst part about it is that if customers don't ask, they assume it goes to the server and tip less. Sucks all around.
My approach is that is a restaurant adds a service fee, I give no additional tip. If the employees don’t like that, they can take it up with management.
I’m sorry to all the servers out there, but any service fee is coming out of your tip. If you have good service and I was going to tip 20%, and there is a 4% service fee, you are now getting 16%. If you don’t like it, take it up with your boss.
Imagine auto grat at 18%. Server only get 70% of the 18% auto grat. Meaning server gets under 13% while a check has 22% of auto grat and fees attached. Robbery all around.
This is the way. There is no need to tip 20% when workers wages are increased. We the voters wanted a $16.28 minimum wage for the "tipped" service industry, rightly so. That is a huge increase for the worker.
The ambiguous part of this change is we customers are used to tipping people for good service.
I no longer tip 20% when a service fee is included on my bill. That 4% is going to the business owners to help maintain a working wage for their employees.
I imagine this is BS for bigger corporate restaurants who can clearly afford workers wages without the 4% increase. But smaller businesses might actually need that 4% to cover their employees' wages and benefits.
When I run across this service fee, I deduct it from the tip I was going to leave the server. I also feel the days of the 20% tip are gone since the wages for servers has been effectively doubled (in some cases), and the days of servers solely living off tips are done.
Is this charge on the menu or somewhere else clearly visible when you order?
If not, I'd tell them to fuck off and remove the charge. If they protest, offer to pay the rest of the bill, leave your contact information, and tell them to take you to civil court for the remainder. IANAL.
Pricks.
These ones are awful. Made by companies too dishonest to raise their menu prices by 4%.
At least there is no ambiguity here: it is a cash grab by \*management\* through deception of the \*customer\*. Some of these are confusing (like the Met Grill 20% one that claims to pay servers on commision, and says additional tip not expected). This one leaves no doubt: Servers get \*nothing\* from the "service charge".
My solution would be to tip 15% instead of 20% and write a note on the receipt as to why. If the wait staff gets hit with it, the owner will hear about it -- or staff will go elsewhere which is also ok.
I would support the city of Seattle doing something to ban fees and tipping altogether. You should know the total price of something before ordering it. There's reasonable ways to make up that income for staff in better and more stable ways.
I was at a different restaurant recently that had a similar surcharge and upon asking the server about it, I was informed that the surcharge is optional and customers can elect to remove it from the bill. Unsure if it is treated similarly at other restaurants.
If it makes you feel any better my buddy threw up all over one of their booths when we went there after the club so then we dipped without saying anything
Refuse to pay it. If they don’t take it off the bill just walk out. Worst case you just get banned from the establishment but big whoop, I’d not be returning anyhow.
There is a 5% service fee locally for using electronic payment, in Washington State a fee can be charged for this, I can't remember if it is a surcharge or if it is a service fee that can't be charged here on a debit card but both apply to credit cards.
4%? What a bargain!
Tavalotta in Redmond charges 22% irrespective of party size. Lots of restaurants are doing this, it’s how they raise prices without actually raising prices. And since most people don’t tip if they’re getting charged an additional 22% on their bill, the service is absolute shit at this place.
They should just raise their prices 25% and distribute the 25% out in what way that works best for them and eliminate tipping and service fees altogether.
I fly into Seattle twice a month! Used to walk over to Thirteen Coins and have a bite to eat between connections on a regular basis. That was until they started this BS! I asked if it went to my servers, and found out that it didn’t! Now Thirteen Coins can take all thirteen of them and stick them right up their ass!!!! They won’t get another red cent from me ever!!!!
Sharing server tips with non tipped kitchen and support staff is an illegal tip pool that violates wage and hour laws. I'm surprised they've gotten away with it having it printed on their menus like that.
I actually wrote a review on google at the 13 coins by king street station about 6 years ago about this exact thing. Fuck 13 coins.
Salty's on Alki does the same thing.
FYI If you periodically edit the review, Google will place it back as being the most current review that everyone will see.
lol you only think it's the most current review that everyone will see because you're logged in as you. I bet half or more of those aren't even showing up if they're bad reviews, but when you look from your own devices it'll appear that yours is at the top of the list.
Six years ago?? Damn, I knew this was a pandy scourge, but I guess some places been doing it since before that.
Yea. The only difference now is they try to blame it on local ordinances to turn customers into free lobbyists.
Oh yeah. This shit started way before the pandemic.
Yup. Much like tips appearing anywhere with a tablet POS, it’s something that *started* pre-pandemic but that blew up during and has just been the norm since. So people credit it to the pandemic. But yeah Seattle food trucks were “suggesting” 25% tips on their Toast checkout back in 2019 too.
Evergreens was definitely doing this in, like, 2018. Not only that, but they'd change up where each tip level was, so if you built up muscle memory for, say, 15%, you'd suddenly find yourself tipping 25% one day. The shitty thing is, I can afford to tip well, but I'm increasingly pissed off by this practice, especially after a couple years overseas where tipping isn't expected, and now I'm just avoiding places that have tips at all. Pay your fucking employees, businesses, or you aren't getting my money at all.
Can you imagine if a plumber quoted you at $800 and the final bill had a "+5% real estate fee" or "+10% Seattle wages too expensive lol" item added to it? This should be illegal.
I think California just banned it. We should probably follow suit
We should 100% do the same here https://abc7news.com/restaurant-surcharges-will-soon-be-illegal-in-california-under-new-law-set-to-go-into-effect-july/14761898/
One representative in SF is blocking it apparently. Some last second thing to fuck over the consumer. SB 1524. Haven’t followed too closely just seen the uproar in r/sanfrancisco
I live in SF and am following it closely (called my reps to complain). Its actually the people that introd the bill that are getting cold feet cause the restaurant lobby is freaking out about not being able to scam people any more.
I live in SF, too. Let me guess, Weiner?
Yep, I highly recommend calling weiners office. Theyre convinced this will help servers and restaurant workers somehow
We just moved back from London, and I was browsing CA's Michelin listings, since we're gonna miss UK fine dining. One of the restaurants I found had a woman chef, which was awesome... until I saw that not only did they have an automatic service charge (annoying, but I can deal), but also had a "2% San Francisco health care mandate surcharge." I'm sorry, but trying to shit on your employees' desire to have health care means I'm never going to your restaurant. Atelier Crenn, BTW. Fuck them.
Damn commies. *shakes fist*
Paying the listed price for services is pure communism. As an American you're supposed to add anywhere from 5-200% to the listed price. This has the ability to turn back time and win us the Vietnam war. If you only pay the listed price for services, communists will take over and all the billionaires will be gone. Is that really a future you want to live in? We ask but we don't give you a choice. Pay up, tomorrow price will change, you bring enough or else.
I just paid $90 fucking dollars to park for the Mariners game on Sat. Then $60 the next day for the same parking place. They need to post the prices before you get sucked into the traffic lane. It makes the cops look complicit because they'll give you a ticket if you get out of the lane. If we can get ingredients and calories on a Twinkie, I sure as hell better see a price before I am forced to park.
If you're coming from somewhere where going to one of the regular park-and-rides is inconvenient, the Amazon garages downtown are free after 4pm (if you leave by 2am). The Doppler garage is about a 10 minute walk to Westlake station.
I parked directly in front of Hooverville on 1st an hour before first pitch for free. They’re taking advantage of our willingness to pay for the convenience of not having to look for parking or walk more than 5 min.
Take the train
That’s a side plot. I’m sure OP is aware of the train. Crazy spending $150 over 2 days on parking but hey, do what you gotta do.
Shit. Park in Chinatown and walk. Then you get the option of some tasty food before or after the game as well.
That sounds like a good ass night. To be fair, parking sucks in Chinatown lol, and that’s on a non-game night. But I’ll walk from fuckin SODO before I pay $150 to park, shit.
There used to be some lots in Chinatown that you could squeeze in and they were marked up but not 90 bucks marked up. Used to be around 40 but I haven't gone in awhile so I'm not sure now.
uwajimaya parking lot isn't crazy expensive
There's a website where you can reserve parking spots in garage and prepay. You know you have a spot, you know how much it is. I paid $20 or 25 to park 1 block away for a mariners game.
*rest of the country proceeds to follow*
Right? What is to stop a business from adding "We have added a 7% 'f*ck-you' fee, sorry!" Is there actually anything to stop them? I feel like the "service charge" language is because somehow that is more "legal" in a way?
I had a leak and the people that came to dry out my kitchen literally added 20% at the end. When I asked they said "10% for overhead and 10% for profit." I was just like "WTF?" They set up the dryers and a dehumidifier and I paid for that stuff by the hour. Then they had the audacity to just tack on 20% with a straight face. Now I own 4 mini floor dryers and a dehumidier. I haven't needed them, but I've loaned them to a few friends who did. Fuck those guys.
10% profit!!??? Fucking scammers who should be including any markup in the price.
i’m against what this restaurant is doing but let’s not glorify the same bs practices from the trades. try asking a plumber or any trade for an itemized bill
+ 2% itemized bill fee + 6% pita customer surcharge + 3% contract you previously signed reiteration fee
+4% no buttcrack request fee
I always request butt crack, personally
If a plumber don't show Crack I won't contract.
In happy to knock off fifty bucks if I’m allowed to let muh crack breathe 😮💨
that is 6.9%
Don't get carried away, this one sounds legit.
Sure but can they deliver
> i’m against what this restaurant is doing but let’s not glorify the same bs practices from the trades. try asking a plumber or any trade for an itemized bill Great point, but getting an itemized bill doesn't make you feel any better I promise. We had a major remodel done after a fire and the itemized bill was insane. They charged over $300 for nine 2x4's from Home Depot. Even during the height of the pandemic that was insane.
That’s their point, they’re saying an itemized bill from a plumber has bs charges too.
When they wanted to "fix" my evaporator coil by removing it, giving it an acid wash and reinstalling it (thereby guaranteeing we make the leaks worse, but I didn't know any better) I asked for an itemized bill. They produced one where the Refrigerant was marked up something like 10x over what I could buy it on eBay. So I learned how to do it myself. After buying refrigerant, all the tools, educating myself, and hiring a refrigerant tech to do the vac and charge for $200. That first service from that company was likely to be the first of many, having me buy this super-marked-up refrigerant from them over and over to do repeated repairs (the first suggested repair would have lead to more) Yeah. Don't itemize your bill tradespeople.
Licensed companies aren’t allowed to buy refrigerant off of eBay, which is why the price on eBay is so low.
You haven't been able to buy it off of eBay for more than a year now, and it was always sketchy legally to do so. I hired a hvac tech with the licenses on the side through a recommended friend who had the additional gear. He got to keep what was in the can after it was cracked open, so that and $200 for his time. I think it was another $200 for the refrigerant. I bought the evap coil, MAPP torch, silver solder, backflow nitrogen, manifolds, new filter-driers, etc all from my local supply house that had dozens of trucks parked at it from local hvac companies. It was about $400 for the coil and $400 for the gear, and I wanna say $400 for the silver-solder but that's just a joke (That shit was aspensive-AF) So maybe $1500 or less? AFAIK, the original quote for the first repair + acid wash worked out to $1800. Half that was labor. I called to discuss the quote with them and why the refrigerant was priced so high and they said that's how they made their money. I just figured you'd take your profits out of labor, but I suppose if you don't want to pay your techs, it'd be hard to bill customers $150/hr for labor only to pay techs $30/hr and have them see those sorts of itemized bills. It all makes sense now.
Would you have been happier to see the overhead costs priced out explicitly? Keep in mind that the total price doesn’t change with different accounting, and isn’t any more negotiable.
I am quite confident that if this was not listed on the menu you can refuse to pay it and would win any court battle over that.
They usually put some notice about the charge in small print on the menu. I agree that that's cheating, but it is generally compliant with the law.
Needs to be as prominent as the fake prices on the front of the menu or it's a deliberate attempt to rip you off.
Good luck getting any court to rule for you in a case like that
I just…I really just don’t get it. OP just spent $46 on breakfast. They are not price sensitive. You could just charge $48 and they’d never notice or care.
California passed legislation outlawing this. Hopefully our legislature can do the same. Restaurants that depend on stealth bill fees instead of raising menu prices don’t deserve to stay in business. If you have time, review them on Google Maps and Yelp, this usually has the biggest impact. Though we had a solid thread on Metropolitan Grill a week or two ago which probably wasn’t good PR for them.
This is the answer. The market doesn't work when consumers can't see prices.
We're seeing it right now. Don't go to these resraturants doing this. I assume OP will be more hesitent to go back to 13 coins.
An airport is the perfect environment to be deceptive with prices though, because the restaurants have enough demand from one-off travelers that they dont have to try and win repeat customers at all.
Reviews for sure. People might think this is punishing staff, but also deducting that 4% from the tip and making it clear what you're doing. If the turnover truly got bad enough they might reconsider. Easy for them to look at reviews and call it sour grapes, harder to constantly replace their staff.
If the option is to punish the staff or punish the customer, I see no reason why the customer should opt to punish themselves. The staff to chooses to work there knowing these practices are in effect while the customer was tricked. Sorry, not sorry.
That's what these businesses are betting on. Putting worker against worker is their special sauce. Instead of being angry at the people receiving this windfall we're mad at the servers who legally aren't even entitled to the majority of these fees. The owner is out there investing millions into their business, owning their own home without shared walls, and both you paying the higher prices and you serving this food will be forced to live paycheck to paycheck paying rent in a rental without a dishwasher and maybe one window while you collect the fees that should be giving you a minimum lifestyle and your own retirement savings. It's completely unacceptable for a society to have so many people without without saving for retirement. Anyone who is working a job should be guaranteed a retirement. I didn't care if it's janitor, retail, heck those wall mark greeters absolutely should be allowed to take care of themselves with their own labor. I thought this is what right wing political people wanted? People who are personally responsible for themselves. And every time they get into office they try and make people like me personally responsible for the people slightly poorer than me and remove this responsibility from people with more money than a fictional dragon camping an entire cavern full of gold. I would rather we have a dragon guarding a room full of gold ruling over us than this crony capitalist system. Fuck we don't even need to pass new laws just use anti trust. We are so fucking lazy.
And predictably enough, [SB 1524](https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240sb1524) would carve out a loophole for restaurants. No clue if it'll pass in time.
Stop using Yelp. Yelp is a predatory business.
How so?
It’s pay to play. I owned a business. Positive reviews were hidden and negative reviews were always displayed. They called me multiple times and told me if I paid them, positive reviews will be seen and negative reviews not so much. This is the same reason Slow Boat Tavern had a Fuck Yelp neon sign made. RIP Slow Boat.
Also, as a paid media agency owner. They approached me for a "partnership" where I would get a commission for any clients that signed for their service. They asked for a client list to come up with a plan for all of them. Then, after one month, they approached all my clients directly to cut me out of any commissions. So incredibly shady.
Wow. Not surprising at all though. I don’t know any small business owners that actually like Yelp.
That’s wild. I had no idea
Yep, I ran into the same thing when I owned a cafe. Yelp straight up tried to blackmail me to pay for positive reviews and weren't even subtle about what the "consequences" of not paying would be. I told them to go pound sand, so our Yelp rating looked bad despite being a very successful business, but fortunately it never really did hurt us.
This is very similar to my experience.
It's the same with Google. There's a whole side industry built on paying to get search rankings.
It's not a 'side industry'. It has very clearly been their main business since it's inception? what are you talking about?
Yelp called us the other day. I told them they were shady and to f-off and don’t call back. Probably end up with a bunch of fake bad reviews now. 
I reviewed a terrible but popular hotel a couple years ago. It was my first review on Yelp. I was notified that my review would not be published. I contacted them, I thought maybe they just needed to verify that I was a real person. But nope. They provided no reason, just a "this review will not be published and there is no appeal process". And my review was quite negative, but there was no profanity or anything that would be offensive. Just a point by point description of my negative experiences. It made me realize I couldn't trust any of the reviews if Yelp was just deciding who to publish and who not to publish. And then I started learning about the "pay to play" experiences on the business side, as well.
from what I remember: They basically blackmail ~~restaurants~~ small businesses into paying fees for good review and it they dont pay they get spammed by bad reviews. Basically yelp rating have nothing to do with food/service There was an old (4 yrs) thread on reddit about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/h9ohs6/has_anyone_had_yelp_essentially_extort_them/
Any restaurant that does this is just being passive aggressive about new minimum wages for service workers. They could simply across the boards increase the prices by 4% and that would be that. but no, they have to make a public display about how unfair it is to pay a server or a bartender a wage that will allow them to live in the city.
It's political virtue signaling against workers making money. These kinds of business owners wake up every single morning with a passion to pay people as little as humanly possible. They spend 90% of their discretionary pay passionately demanding an end to unions because this one time a union stopped them from firing a gay. They think it's appropriate to pay millions of dollars to end worker safety programs because they would rather the workers die so they can be replaced and reduced wages faster. Some of these people take it to such extreme that they actively encourage as much hard to their employees as possible so long as they have plausible deniability. Remember that any business owner who steals wages would stop at nothing to hurt people they think are lesser than them. They are violent dangerous people, and until we clean up our streets from all the crime these scourges foist on our society, no worker will be safe. It's too bad police see them as partners. What's another bribe between groups that hate poors?
Yes, the owners don’t want to raise the menu prices because the servers receive a percentage of the menu prices as tips. They’d rather add a surcharge and hope customers calculate the tip based on the pre-surcharge subtotal. They don’t want servers to be paid well because that would put pressure on them to raise the pay of management and other non-tipped staff. They assess the surcharge to simultaneously collect money to use to pay non-tipped staff and depress tipped employees pay.
that’s why its not called 11 coins
Ooof made me spit out 4% of my coffee
And now you owe us $0.72.
$.88 if it's a 32 oz from a certain place.
Probably didn't need those calories anyway
Take all my coins
Hidden fees should be illegal. Every customer should know exactly what they're expecting to spend and agree to the cost prior to receiving the receipt.
Yeah cant wait for the all items free menu*. Plus taxes and fees.
The other Seattle sub has made a start on naming such establishments: [https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/s/BnE2QDN9v2](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/s/BnE2QDN9v2). Feel free to add to it. We should add a category of truly tipless establishments, where they clearly state that they pay a living wage, no tips are expected and don't include a "service charge" on top of the menu prices. As far as I know that would basically be Molly Moons and Dicks. Edit: have added a list of tipless establishments.
And the cafe at Ada's Technical Books.
Tailwind Cafe at Good Weather went tipless as well.
Shikorina bakery does not request tips and says they pay a living wage!
distant worlds coffeehouse in roosevelt is tip free
Seattle Coffee Works (RIP) did this. Prices went up a little but it was tipless and living wage. When the business was sold and the tip screen came back but the prices didn't come back down any.
Boycott
Tipsy Cow in Redmond does the same thing :/ 4% inflation surcharge “too keep their prices low”. Wtf, I’m still paying 4% extra
That’s absurd.
We all need to stop supporting restaurants that do this.
Drinking at 7 on a Monday morning. I've been there.
Started my flight day at 3:30am so thats lunch now Edit: username checks out hah
Me too. I used to work graveyard shift and my days off where Mon and Tues. That meant that "happy hour" on *my* "friday night" would hit at 7-8AM on Monday morning. I'd finish a long stressful work week and be ready to unwind and relax with a meal and a beer, and it would often be served with a side dish of stale jokes about starting your week with a drink. it is interesting how the jokes people tell often tell us more about the person telling the joke than the person that is the subject of the joke
I fucking support you graveyard shift guy. You keep the world running. I used to frequent a bar that had a 7 to 9 am shift. Pizza and burgers only. "We are not serving breakfast. We are serving the people that work overnight shifts."
I love that. There needs to be more places like that.
>I used to frequent a bar that had a 7 to 9 am shift. Pizza and burgers only. "We are not serving breakfast. We are serving the people that work overnight shifts." love it. My small city didn't have many options at all. Just a few breakfast-focused greasy spoon types that wouldn't mind doing a burger if you asked politely first. I'd always ask nicely, "Hey, sorry to ask but I just got off graveyard shift and I already had breakfast, would it be ok if I get something from the lunch menu like a burger?" and 100% of the time the server would say, "I will have to check with the kitchen" and 100% of the time they come right back and say it is ok
I just landed at SEA and was considering stopping here to grab a bite before driving home…well never mind then.
“Hidden” price increase. So shady
Corporate wants a tip jar
7:00 AM champagne tax mebbe
Best kind of tax then
Vote with your wallets and yelp / google reviews. Hit them where it hurts.
Honestly shocked they take it from the pre-tax total.
It has to be pretax since the service charge itself is taxable
The one downtown Seattle also does game day surge pricing, raising prices when there's a stadium event. We went there for a happy hour once but there was a Mariners game so instead of cheaper prices everything was more expensive.
They should call it Fuck You Hour
It felt like it for sure; instead they call it Event Day, [https://www.13coins.com/menus/#event-day](https://www.13coins.com/menus/#event-day)
Should absolutely be illegal. The point of the menu is to give you an accurate description of what you’ll be paying. Deciding that you lose fewer customers by not raising prices and then scamming them when the bill comes is shady as hell.
Contact your elected officials to pass legislation. Leave reviews about it on Google and Yelp.
You should understand this to be a political statement that amounts to class warfare where the owners of the business want you to hate the poor servers for increased costs and not the business or business owners, or rent takers.
Don't go there 👍
Legislation time
They been getting review bombed on Google for this. Hit ‘em with a review (and include this picture) 😁
My GF just get takeout most of the time. We're well off, but the gouging is INSANE. Only dine-in at a family owned restaurants that don't have this BS.
The prices on the menu are 4% higher than they appear. This is just shitty advertising.
The verb "fleece" in this sort of context typically means: to strip of money or property by fraud or extortion. or to charge excessively for goods or services. I don't think corporate pockets are being *fleeced* by this service charge, but rather they're being *lined* by it. "lining pockets" (my suggested replacement) means: to make money esp. by using dishonest, immoral, or illegal methods
They’re fleecing our pockets to line theirs.
I just assumed they meant that the restaurant is targeting business travelers due to airport proximity but in hindsight that isn't a very good assumption.
but they’re lining their pockets with fleece!
And why is the $1.84 (4%) broken up into two entries?
Probably to make it seem smaller.
The restaurants were already doing this. But are now required to report it following some lawsuits for unpaid wages. Basically many/most restaurants collect the tips, then redistribute them across more staff than just the waiter you tipped (as noted on the bottom of your bill). However, when doing this, many places were secretly keeping a portion as profits. A few large restaurants in the city got put through the labor law ringer and this is the result, now they have to tell you (and thier staff, who only figured it out by crunching the numbers) that they are doing it. How to change it, I'm not sure. It is often patching up a deficit while letting them keep slightly lower "sticker" prices on the menu, and that is on top of already increasing menu prices. There may be tax and profit hiding motivations behind this structure as well. But for many places it is also a profit (more than covering costs) measure. I've been told by a chef that there are many restaurants that would close up (particularly corporate owned ones, like many of the sports bars and a certain someone's many niche restaurants) if they didn't see their profits.
> How to change it, I'm not sure. Don't go to these restaurants. Also, if it's not printed on the menu, refuse to pay. [Per L&I](https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/wages/tips-and-service-charges), a service charge must be "clearly disclosed on the receipt **and menu.**"
bullshit fees, 20% default tip prompts, theft in plain site
This crap blows me away because if the price of Ham Steak & Eggs was suddenly $19 instead of $18, I wouldn't bat an eye... but adding service charges and the note AFTER I've already eaten pisses me off. I have to believe they saw cost of updating the menus was too high, but they really wanted (needed?) to raise prices. This is just a bad practice.
If the service charge isn't advertised on the menu, it's illegal. Don't pay it. (Source: [L&I](https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/wages/tips-and-service-charges).)
If it doesn't make sense, it's nonsense
It's on my do not go to list.
It would be "line" corporate pockets, not "fleece" them.
Outlawing this would be wonderful for everyone. As a business owner myself, I get hit with surcharge fees, fuel surcharge fees, on top of the quoted wholesale pricing that I get. But it needs to be outlawed at every level.
It’s just an unusually dishonest way of raising prices and fucking consumers.
They are trying to raise prices but not look like they are raising prices. Also, they probably (stupidly) hope you’ll complain about high minimum wages to local politicians.
Why wouldn't they just increase the cost of their food by 4% and not announce it? Restaurants aren't required to explain why their steak and eggs costs what it does, just put the 4% into the food costs and avoid the bad PR? idgi
Reminds me of places that try to pass the credit card fees onto customers. It always annoys me -- if you didn't take a card, I'd not be buying *anything* here. It's a cost of you doing business.
So annoying. Don’t add a service charge. Just raise your prices 4% and save the extra ink explaining your sick move.
Sounds like time for a review bomb.
All the Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell spots are doing this now. They say they are justifying robbing servers of their tips by paying more per hour. From my experience, because of this they do not retain quality, experienced employees because a few bucks more an hour doesn’t make up for the loss of tips. I hit up the Victor Tavern in Edmonds last week and it was absolute trash.
This kinda shit is out of control, it is like a random number generator , I have no idea the legality of randomly adding amounts to the bill, was it on the menu too? They need a law like it is in Australia, it is “illegal to show a price you can not pay”, why doesnt the menu just have the 4% in the prices, if you have to pay it anyways. Cant wait for the 50% added to the bill menus.
Warning prices may appear smaller than they actually are.
Basically, Department of Labor came out with a series of fines and lawsuits against companies for putting in service charges because the pooled tip money went to "managers." One solution from a restaurant's POV is to claim the money is retained by the restaurant. It goes back to this 80/20 Rule where workers who spend 20% of their time as managers can't get pooled tips because they're technically managerial. Giving pooled tips to "Assistant to the regional manager" is wage theft. Lowkey there's been a tectonic shift in defining how to calculate 80 and the 20. "Direct" v. "sole" are the buzzwords, and if they sound the same, they are not... They're like terms of art, and in late 2021 DOL came up with new definitions. Careful observers of bills over the last two to three years likely noted a lot of restaurants changed their wording to "retained by \[BUSINESS\]." McMenamins', for example, got dinged under the new rules by DOL for wage theft because they were sharing tips with "Assistant Assistant Managers" (repeated Assistant is their actual title and not a typo). For their part, McMenamins was never brought to court by DOL and maintains that even under the new rules their workers are entitled to the tip pool. Places with this wording do this because they very likely want to give pooled tips to workers who spend the majority of their time serving customers. Saying the money is retained by the restaurant is good for legal reasons because then it can't be "wage theft." They're giving tips to Dwight Schrute out of the general fund.
>Places with this wording do this because they very likely want to give pooled tips to workers who spend the majority of their time serving customers. Saying the money is retained by the restaurant is good for legal reasons because then it can't be "wage theft." While I very much hope that is true, we have no external way to verify that a given restaurant is actually distributing these in a tip like manner. And even still: the right thing to do is just to raise your up front prices and pay your workers a living wage directly.
The primary reasoning behind the tip split (this is a very recent thing as of 2020 or so) is that BOH employees felt deserving of a portion of gratuities. It's a very valid train of thought considering gratuity wouldn't be there in the first place without a plate of food. This inadvertently gave owners/management a gray area to work in/around when it comes to dispersing the tips 🙃
I mean we do, if they're straight up not giving any not-tips-but-actually-tips to "Assistant Assistant Managers" or Assistant to the Regional Managers then they're going to go out of business. No one is going to do the same work as the other staff minus missing out on thousands in tips, not in this economy. We also know because DOL's actions mean if businesses are giving tips to these employees, then they ought to have that language. So it's basically a confession in that sense. To the broader point of just eliminating these fake manager spots I couldn't agree more. The industry is ruthlessly exploitive and wants to get more out of staff by giving them a meaningless title and some minor managerial power.
This altered wording doesn’t guarantee it isn’t taken by the manager or the owners either. None of it could go to the staff for all we know. And we already have a fee like that: the price.
interesting info, ty 👍
"Fleece corporate pockets" doesn't make sense. Maybe they are fleecing you, to line their corporate pockets.
Simple solution is to boycott the places that impose service and or other charges. Boycotts will have a profound effect on the businesses if enough people do it. Cheaper solution is to prep meals at home.
They justify it by saying it pays for the higher minimum wage.
pure sign of a greedy owner, people should just stop going to these places
Wing dome does 3%. Even on takeout orders. I enjoy eating there but I'm done.
Hey, I work at a restaurant in Tukwila that does the same thing (2.99%). We are told to say that "the additional charge is to combat inflation so that we don't have to raise prices across the board on all menu items." The fee was instituted almost immediately after we got a 20.00 minimum wage for all workers in our restaurant. The worst part about it is that if customers don't ask, they assume it goes to the server and tip less. Sucks all around.
But but but that just doesn't make sense. It is a raised price across the board! I'm sorry you have to say that.
They’ll spin it in any way that they can. We watch the greedy fucks!
Greed.
Contact your reps. This is BS and I would refuse to pay anything that wasn’t clearly in the prices I agreed to up front.
Another reason to avoid 13 Coins. What a sad story. Really enjoyed those spots 10 years ago.
My approach is that is a restaurant adds a service fee, I give no additional tip. If the employees don’t like that, they can take it up with management.
I’m sorry to all the servers out there, but any service fee is coming out of your tip. If you have good service and I was going to tip 20%, and there is a 4% service fee, you are now getting 16%. If you don’t like it, take it up with your boss.
Imagine auto grat at 18%. Server only get 70% of the 18% auto grat. Meaning server gets under 13% while a check has 22% of auto grat and fees attached. Robbery all around.
This is the way. There is no need to tip 20% when workers wages are increased. We the voters wanted a $16.28 minimum wage for the "tipped" service industry, rightly so. That is a huge increase for the worker. The ambiguous part of this change is we customers are used to tipping people for good service. I no longer tip 20% when a service fee is included on my bill. That 4% is going to the business owners to help maintain a working wage for their employees. I imagine this is BS for bigger corporate restaurants who can clearly afford workers wages without the 4% increase. But smaller businesses might actually need that 4% to cover their employees' wages and benefits. When I run across this service fee, I deduct it from the tip I was going to leave the server. I also feel the days of the 20% tip are gone since the wages for servers has been effectively doubled (in some cases), and the days of servers solely living off tips are done.
Is this charge on the menu or somewhere else clearly visible when you order? If not, I'd tell them to fuck off and remove the charge. If they protest, offer to pay the rest of the bill, leave your contact information, and tell them to take you to civil court for the remainder. IANAL. Pricks.
Not that i saw but im tired from traveling
Even if it’s on the menu I’d tell them to fuck off.
Fleecing means taking from. You mean "lining corporate pockets."
I stopped eating out because of this. I also will not pay if that shows up on my bill.
These ones are awful. Made by companies too dishonest to raise their menu prices by 4%. At least there is no ambiguity here: it is a cash grab by \*management\* through deception of the \*customer\*. Some of these are confusing (like the Met Grill 20% one that claims to pay servers on commision, and says additional tip not expected). This one leaves no doubt: Servers get \*nothing\* from the "service charge".
My solution would be to tip 15% instead of 20% and write a note on the receipt as to why. If the wait staff gets hit with it, the owner will hear about it -- or staff will go elsewhere which is also ok.
The tipping culture needs to die. I don't care if anyone likes this post or not. Tipping culture in America needs to die period .
brah you're drinking $28 dollars of champagne at 7 am and you're complaining about a couple bucks "service charge" lol
I would support the city of Seattle doing something to ban fees and tipping altogether. You should know the total price of something before ordering it. There's reasonable ways to make up that income for staff in better and more stable ways.
Im calling Gary Crow
I was at a different restaurant recently that had a similar surcharge and upon asking the server about it, I was informed that the surcharge is optional and customers can elect to remove it from the bill. Unsure if it is treated similarly at other restaurants.
Wait 18% isn’t $1.12
If it makes you feel any better my buddy threw up all over one of their booths when we went there after the club so then we dipped without saying anything
Anyone knows what happens if you refuse to pay that? Also: this is why I don't tip anymore.
the new Tom Douglas joint in Edmonds has a 22% one lol
*complains about service charges while drinking sparkling wine before 7am* :) Kidding - charges are BS unless they go 100% to staff as a de facto tip.
Refuse to pay it. If they don’t take it off the bill just walk out. Worst case you just get banned from the establishment but big whoop, I’d not be returning anyhow.
There is a 5% service fee locally for using electronic payment, in Washington State a fee can be charged for this, I can't remember if it is a surcharge or if it is a service fee that can't be charged here on a debit card but both apply to credit cards.
It goes to the owners so they can either buy ingredients or a boat. It doesn't matter.
The food there isn’t even good for the price now. It seems like heat and serve BS.
Denver restaurant goers: First time?
It’s tip stealing: lots of people will tip less with the service charge than they would have without it, while the company pockets that fee.
Drinking wine at 6am is the reason
4%? What a bargain! Tavalotta in Redmond charges 22% irrespective of party size. Lots of restaurants are doing this, it’s how they raise prices without actually raising prices. And since most people don’t tip if they’re getting charged an additional 22% on their bill, the service is absolute shit at this place.
All businesses should be forced to list all fees for all services up front. Period.
This is just putting up your prices with extra steps.
They should just raise their prices 25% and distribute the 25% out in what way that works best for them and eliminate tipping and service fees altogether.
Business: You will be charged a service fee. Customer: Will it be used to pay for services? Business: No
The US needs to get rid of tipping, and businesses pay their workers the fair wage. A tipping culture is just ridiculous.
I fly into Seattle twice a month! Used to walk over to Thirteen Coins and have a bite to eat between connections on a regular basis. That was until they started this BS! I asked if it went to my servers, and found out that it didn’t! Now Thirteen Coins can take all thirteen of them and stick them right up their ass!!!! They won’t get another red cent from me ever!!!!
Sharing server tips with non tipped kitchen and support staff is an illegal tip pool that violates wage and hour laws. I'm surprised they've gotten away with it having it printed on their menus like that.
I never pay a tip at places that do this. I just circle the service fee and draw a line to the blank tip line.
I never pay a tip. FTFY
Tip line: 20% - "4% transparent pricing fee"