Restaurants fight back against the FTC crackdown on 'junk fees' as diners balk at new charges
Restaurants fight back against the FTC crackdown on 'junk fees' as diners balk at new charges
The FTC is trying to crack down on "junk fees." Restaurants are fighting to keep fees and surcharges on their checks.
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.”
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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.
Exactly. Perfect example: Microsoft 360 pricing.
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!”
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.
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.
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.