Agreed. I visited a pizza place in London a few years back which automatically added a 15% tip to all orders. You had to ask to remove it. Social engineering at its finest; most people won’t ask to remove a tip that’s already been added. I simply never returned; I refuse to support a business that favours tipping culture over higher minimum wages.
This is standard practice in London. Virtually all table-service restaurants (but not pubs) add service charge to your bill, usually 12.5%. (15% sounds excessive, I don’t think I’ve seen that).
You are not expected to tip in addition to the service charge, and by law, staff get paid 100% of any service charge and gratuities with no deductions.
> by law, staff get paid 100% of any service charge and gratuities with no deductions
If only that was true. Staff are only currently entitled to 100% of cash tips - service charges paid by card are not counted, and often form part of the staff's base pay, or go to the owners.
Funny how the Tories can push through sweeping changes to our constitution in a single night, while bills like this take... 7 years just to reach their second reading in the commons.
> "service charges paid by card are not counted, and often form part of the staff's base pay, or go to the owners."
This was true some years ago. But now days, most (vast majority of?) restaurants are compliant with the (upcoming) law and pay out all tips to staff. Source: friends who work in the industry. This issue has gotten significant media attention in the past any any restaurant not paying out tips fairly would get shamed pretty hard!
It’s 15% free extra cash flow for payment processors to calculate fees on, not for the restaurants. Then they might be able to double dip it by transfer fees, or maybe simply hold it and expire it until owners correctly configure some nuisance_feature.
