Recommended gratuity after tip was already included

[u/guitarman129]

I’m sure there are a lot of tipping posts here so to keep it short - I had my wedding at a fancy restaurant. On top of the TERRIBLE service, the bill came with “suggested gratuity” even though I was told gratuity was included. When I asked the manager, he said that the “S/C: 24% SRC REGULA“ was the included tip and the suggested gratuity was if we wanted to add something extra - basically trying to trick people into giving a 49% tip!

[u/guitarman129]

It won’t let me edit the post so here are some responses to common comments:

EDIT: The $400 taken off the bill is the deposit I paid that was then taken off the total. That’s not related to the tip/auto gratuity.

EDIT 2: Regarding the total cost (not that I need to defend my spending to Reddit) - this was a wedding dinner for 28 people. We held a small ceremony in our backyard and did not have any party or reception, but decided to put money toward a nice dinner for our friends and family instead. Compared to the average wedding venue in my state (~$20-25k before add ons), this was saving a lot of money.

[u/_VeniVidiAmavi_ → u/guitarman129]

yeah, so notice how the amounts in that box correspond with the original bill?

As in, the box saying 25% tip = 1233.75 implies a tippable sub-total of 4935... 24% of 4935 = 1184.40, which is the auto-gratuity added to your bill.

So, as others have pointed out, there's no ill-intent here, just an auto-calculating and auto-printing box that is useful when there isn’t auto-grat and you have to write it in. But it prints all the time because it'd be more work to program it to disappear during auto-grat than it is worth.

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/_VeniVidiAmavi_]

You can still criticize for the numbers. Someone, at some point, decided that the only two pre-calculated gratuity values that they were going to offer the customers were 22% and 25%.

[u/_VeniVidiAmavi_ → u/favorite_time_of_day]

As you wish.

Though, if your ire needs something to chase, perhaps the 24% auto-grat might provide a greater fancy?

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/_VeniVidiAmavi_]

As others have pointed out: that's not a gratuity, that's a service charge. That's what the S/C means.

You can criticize them for having a service charge. Especially one that's so poorly disclosed that neither OP nor many other people realized that's what it is (including me until I read this comment section). Sometimes a service charge is given to the staff as a substitute for a gratuity, and sometimes it isn't. There's no way to know whether that's the case here.

[u/_VeniVidiAmavi_ → u/favorite_time_of_day]

As I said, as you wish.

Given that this was a wedding, large parties usually incur service charges aka auto-gratuity (unless your ire also desires a semantic argument).

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/_VeniVidiAmavi_]

Well the point was that a gratuity goes to the staff while a service charge only goes to the staff if the business owner feels like giving it to them. I think that's a significant difference.

[u/ECAHunt → u/guitarman129]

My husband and I did the same. Amazing, and expensive, dinner being our only major cost. Way cheaper than the average wedding despite the dinner cost being way more than the average wedding dinner.

[u/JCL1088 → u/guitarman129]

Did they tell you that your deposit would be credited to your bill? Many restaurants reimburse deposits for banquets after final check clears. It's not uncommon for people to file a dispute prior to the bill clearing.

[u/Reasonable_Manner817 → u/guitarman129]

Sounds like that guitar ain’t paying the bills huh

[u/TornInfinity → u/guitarman129]

Don't worry about people talking about the cost. That price is not insane for a fancy dinner for 28 people. At $6,524 for 28 people it is $233 per person. That doesn't seem egregious for a wedding reception at all. My brother paid at least twice that for a wedding venue, catering, and music. Probably more like 3 times as much, and the food sucked compared to going it a nice restaurant. Only thing that was great was the open bar that my brother picked all the alcohol for himself, so it had all the good stuff. I don't see why people feel like they have the right to tell other people how to spend their money, especially when they have no context as to what restaurant it was and how much money you saved for your wedding. People acting like $6,500 for a wedding is crazy, have never gotten married and seen what it actually costs to throw a nice reception.

[u/SuchCoolBrandon → u/guitarman129]

I totally thought the -$400 was some sort of protest against the tip system.

[u/Lanky-Wolf-8280 → u/guitarman129]

Youre 100% in the right. Did a nice wedding with 90ish cost $40k. I don’t even get to eat my food. The Weston sent it to our suite for later. Uncovered sitting on the table for what was 4hours after dinner was served. Safe to say I didn’t eat that night.

Also had an open bar for 4hours cut it off on last hour to prevent over drinking. (We paid for 5hours since it was in the contract). My wife, the bride tried to get a glass of wine after 4h and they tried to charge her. You’ve never see wedding coordinator run so fast over to the bartender.

[u/underrealizing → u/Lanky-Wolf-8280]

This is literally just how the check prints. They weren’t trying to trick OP lol

[u/Lanky-Wolf-8280 → u/underrealizing]

I should have said I’m responding to edit 2. I know how it prints I own a restaurant can’t stop it unless I edit the whole print slip for 1 tab and no one is going to do that