If it goes to the house using 18% is sending a bad signal… Something like 10% would give a different signal.
That’s most likely correct.
I agree. And, my response to that is that I am sure they could very easily program that to not offer those “suggested amounts” if they wanted to.
That leads to another pet peeve, namely that restaurants seem to think their patrons are too dumb to figure out how much they want to tip without those “recommendations,” plus that most of the time those “recommendations” include the tax in the tip calculation.
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Fair enough, I would like to ask the owner/manager if both the “service fee” and the tip go to the server.
I agree with you, but this kind of stuff is not going away. It will keep appearing more and more.
It’s the same with hotels now. Between the ridiculously high taxes and the “resort fees,” 
the actual amount paid is a ton more than the nightly rate.
When I was at the Bills - Rams game earlier this year I didn’t feel like standing in line for food, and the only thing available with no line was a young man standing in the concourse selling bags of popcorn for $11. I get that food is overpriced at the stadium, but not only did the card reader have a field for a tip, the vendor said that any tip would be appreciated. To this day I don’t know what type of service he provided me to deserve a tip.
Good idea. Not only that, I think that just about everybody in this group would have tipped at least 20%. We were not a cheap bunch. They cost themselves a bit with this standard service charge
And, while the service was not sub-par, it was not “above and beyond” either.
Hell, the wife and I went out to eat in St Louis after the swim meet and had bad service and I tipped 18%.
I can’t blame the hotels for the taxes. They don’t have any control over those. However, I agree with you 100% about “resort fees.” They are bullshit too and should be included in the overall rate. Still, if the resort fee is disclosed in advance and I know about it when I book the room, I really can’t complain. Most hotel sites will show you the full rate before you finalize it, just as most airline sites will show you the full cost, including taxes, before you finalize the purchase.
The hotel I was at in Hawaii had a resort fee. In this case this was for business and somebody else made the reservation, but on curiosity I checked the hotel’s web site and it listed all “taxes and fees” in the rate summary when making the reservation.
The biggest issue I have seen with resort fees is with opaque sites like Hotwire and Priceline and other consolidator sites, where resort fees aren’t shown and you don’t know about them until you arrive and get hit with them. This is from Priceline’s site:
https://www.priceline.com/help-page/submenu/81/461/what-taxes-and-fees-will-i-pay?vrid=55f184b6657d46c760d69bb862c4ba27
Depending on the property you stay at you may also be charged (i) certain mandatory hotel specific service fees, for example, resort fees (which typically apply to resort type destinations and, if applicable, may range from 10 to 40 USD or its equivalent per day), energy surcharges, newspaper delivery fees, in-room safe fees, tourism fees, or housekeeping fees and/or (ii) certain optional incidental fees, for example, parking charges, minibar charges, phone calls, room service and movie rentals, etc. These charges, if applicable, will be payable by you to the hotel directly in local currency at checkout. When you check in, a credit card or, in the hotel’s discretion, a debit card will be required to secure these charges and fees that you may incur during your stay. Please contact the hotel directly as to whether and which charges or service fees apply.
The advice to contact the hotel directly is a load of BS for a “special deal” where you don’t know the exact hotel until you have made a non-cancelable reservation.
Just on a lark, I just looked at the bill. The amount for the meal, excluding the service charge and tax, was $76.25. Like I said, I would have tipped 20% and rounded-up, and being the generous guy I am I would have rounded up $15.25 to $16. Had the service been better, I would have added a bit more. They shot themselves in the foot with this mandatory service charge.
Like I said, the whole point is to hide the real rate. With consumers having access to lots of info, via the internet, they want to avoid the race to the bottom.
i.e. They want to avoid market competition.
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