figmentPez
Staff member
No, I just need to stop reading Reddit discussions about anything to do with politics, money, relationships...
It's about a reddit post about a restaurant that said "we're a no tipping establishment" but had a 16% fee. AKA a mandatory gratuity but instead of going to the waitstaff it goes to the owner of the restaraunt.
This:
And yeah my take is that you should factor in all costs into prices. If your restaurant can’t exist without a 16% fee, then you should have to raise your prices 16%.
Y’all are welcome to be annoyed by this, but there are numerous studies that show consumers prefer this overall. People consistently, overwhelmingly say that restaurants with higher prices per dish are less desirable than ones with a fee added at the end. Does it make sense to me? No. But it’s still true.
You're not wrong. But when stuck in Australia for 18 months, I did not miss tipping. I, at least, will always advocate up front pricing and liveable wages for restaurant staff.
figmentPez
Staff member
Yes, and people prefer to see lower advertised prices for cable bills, only to be charged hidden fees. Same for concert tickets, rentals, etc.
People are bad at math and will preferentially choose to be deceived.
That doesn't mean it's a good thing, or that it should even be legal. We have laws against a whole host of predatory business practices that were, once upon a time, accepted as the norm because people willingly chose them. That's how scams work. They're appealing to people. People choose them even when they should know better, but they get made illegal because we don't want to have people getting scammed on a regular basis because of common flaws in reasoning.
