[flyingshelf]

The worst part of restaurant fees are the people (both owners and somehow the patrons) that will justify the existence of the fee as if it's too difficult to just print the final price in the menu.

I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.

To me this is clearly deceptive practice.

[mschuster91]

> I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.

In Germany and Croatia, there is no % at all, the prices are final and include all taxes and fees by law and no one will bat an eye if you pay straight cash - however I personally always tip around 10%, simply because I was happy about that when I worked in hospitality myself.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

It’s not just Europe, most of the developed world works like this. Except for the United States

[curation]

and canada

[anilakar]

When I was in high school my German teacher taught us to tip by default by rounding up and paying with exact change. Is that still a thing when everyone is paying with card?

[Lev1a]

I'm German and in the rare instance I eat out in an actual restaurant, I still do that "rounding up" if I've been happy with the service. Cash or card is not really an important factor for that scenario.

Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.

Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.

[mschuster91]

The secret for Döner is to tell the Dönermann beforehand that you'll tip, then it usually results in a bunch of extra meat!

[zbentley]

My friend, you have reinvented something called a “purchase”.

[germanier]

Yes. Usually you tell the waiter the final round amount including tip you want to pay and then they start the card transaction with that.

Paying in cash is still common at German restaurants though.

[Teever]

What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee? Or asks for resolution by a neutral third party like law enforcement?

Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.

[AlecSchueler]

> if people simply DDOS

DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.

[Teever]

This is an odd response. I've been to countries that have special tourist police trained in english who frequent tourist locations to prevent this kind of behaviour.

I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.

Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.

[flyingshelf]

I'm afraid that police wouldn't do a thing if a practice is widespread and accepted by most. Legally speaking it's not a scam because it's not a hidden charge.

The 3% credit card charge on the other hand... but I'd rather pay cash than confront the poor cashier.

I will just respond with a 1-star review.

[AlecSchueler]

The police are paid and trained to organise against crime. That's quite different than disconnected tourists beginning to organise, which was the idea I responded to.

[flyingshelf]

It's printed on the menu so it's effectively legal, just dishonest.

> What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee?

Just about what would happen if you refuse to pay the bill, most likely you'll end up being shared on some Facebook group or worse.