MinJungKim.com Braindump v 6.0 Gah. I’m still doing this?

Am I overracting or is this totally not cool?

So last night, I was out with some friends at a bar and I wound up putting the bill on my card, takign the cash.

The total for my bill was $136.20
Totally blanking re: for tip I simply doubled the tax and forgot the reality of drinks not being taxable on there.

I’d added a tip of 11.80 to the bill makinh it a total $148.00

The waitress, had asked re: the quality of service and I realized my error and left a $20 cash tip in addition of the 11.80.

So that’s a $31.80 tip on a $136.20 bill. Food & Drinks.

So that’s an over 20% tip for the bill overall on the evening. Which I’d like to think is more than reasonable and fair.

So imagine my surprise when I checked my online statement today and saw that I was being billed for $163.44

That’s an additional $15.44 tip.

So that’s hmmm let’s see - $47.24 tip total on a $136.20 bill.

That’s now a 36% tip.

And while service was fine, good even, I feel very pissed re: this additional billing being done to me and I’ve emailed the establishment and called and left a vmail on the matter for the manager/owners.

Has this happened to you? Am I right be annoyed? Were they expecting a $1-$2 tip per each individual drink being served too?

Insights? Opinions?

You are so NOT overreacting and it’s totally NOT cool.

You have two options:
1. Call the restaurant and tell them they screwed up. You might get a free meal out of it too.
2. Call your credit card company and tell them the restaurant screwed up. They’ll then get dinged on a chargeback and possibly their rate to process credit cards will go up. If you go with option 1, you can threaten option 2.

If you have the receipt you have an even better case. They cannot charge you more than what you signed for.

Yeah, that’s the part that struck me, too — that they charged you for more than you signed off on.

AND after leaving more tip in cash as a way to make up for appearing stingy, which is better for servers, since that’s less that they have to cash out with whomever’s doing receipts that night.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

Turn it over to your credit card company. Most credit card companies don’t research fraud complaints of that size. They will simply refund the customer the money and ding the company.

It’s entirely possible that this was a legitimate mistake. It’s also entirely possible that the waitress/restaurant does this on a regular basis. The credit card companies will never find that unless they have enough customer complaints to find a pattern.

This happens to me every time I’m on business travel. The woman who does my expense reports always points it out to me and says it’s common. More people need to get angry about this and hold the businesses whose employees do this sort of thing accountable. It’s unacceptable human behavior… and it’s fraud! (Or theft or something!) Anyway, it’s very naughty.

This has happened to be at least twice.. mainly because I prefer to leave the tip in cash for THEIR benefit… totaling up the receipts they assume I’m cheap and steal some money from me. Which is fucked, but I’ve also wussed out on following up with them… so that’s my fault…

So, I started writing “CASH” in the tip spot and totaling the amount in the total area (sans tip, which is in cash)… so far that’s worked. Also I no longer use a credit card at Kate O’Brien’s or Cafe Du Nord, and generally prefer cash bars anyway…

Not cool. Head in there and raise hell.

Actually — I had a similar situation. I ran a tab at a local pub the other night, and left with some friends to go eat at a restaurant next door. I accidently forgot to close out my tab.

When I went back for my card — the pub was closed. Luckily I had a meeting scheduled there for the next night — so planned to pick up my card then. I called ahead to let the pub know. Imagine my surprise when I got there to retrieve my card and pay my tab and found not only that the tab had been paid without my authorization (which is really not a big deal)…but that they had also given themselves a VERY generous tip.