A lot of people use a neat trick to make sure they're not getting ripped off like this in a restaurant. Tip some small amount so that the number of cents in the total is equal to the total of the numbers in the dollars.

For instance, if you had a $123 bill, you would tip $0.06, because 1+2+3=6.

Then you can just do that quick check on all of your restaurant transactions on your credit card statement and if something doesn't add up you can look in to it.

Why would you not also call the restaurant and complain? If it is a staff member adjusting tips or writing tips on a reciept without the customers knowledge one would think that the restaurant would want to know.

A TV chef went to jail a couple of years ago because he was caught routinely increasing the tip on credit card receipts at his restaurant. It's probably worth keeping a copy of the receipt until the charge shows up.

I'm curious if this was charge was actually posted to the account yet or still in process.

I ask because most major POS systems (Aloha, Micros, etc) will automatically charge your card the bill + 15% or so (configurable) to make sure you have enough money on the card. Once the transaction is posted to the account and finalized, you will notice the lower amount (assuming you actually left no tip on the card).

If the transaction was posted and finalized, then the only other method of doing this would be for the server to reprint your check and re-sign your slip and add the tip. When a manager performs a "check-out" for the server at the end of shift, s/he would see that there is an anomaly. That is, unless the manager was in on it too and allowed the $5 charge to go through on the system while the paper receipt does not.

Was there a manager available to talk to about the bad service? I would talk to them, then call the regional and/or district manager. Wonder how many other people they have stole money from.

Sorry but if you sat down were served and they had a tip line on the reciept its wasnt a fast food joint.
I would never cross out the tip line. If you paid cash on the table or to the waiter write cash on the tip line.
If you paid no tipe enter none. This will prevent them from trying to rip you off. Always put a $ sign the the amt of the tip. This prevents them from putting a 1 in front of a $2 dollar tip so it ends up $12.
Kudos for you as well for checking your account, most people dont bother.

@Canadian Impostor: 6 cents on a 123 dollar bill. lol good idea though if you don't want to keep all your receipts.

@Canadian Impostor: I hope you mean one should also leave a cash tip and just do this for the CC tip on the bill. Otherwise you'd be leaving a .05% tip in your example, which is kind meager.

@Canadian Impostor: Maybe I just misunderstood your statement, but are you saying that for a $123 meal you only tip $0.06?

Waiters and waitresses don't make alot of money dude, I personally always go out of my way to make sure the tip I leave them is more than fair. Especially if the waitress is cute.

@thekicker: Credit card accounts usually don't show pending transactions to customers so I think it's safe to assume it was actually a final charge. Furthermore, I don't think her credit card company would refund her $5 if the transaction hadn't posted yet.

This kind of thing happens all the time. A waitress at a local restaurant helped herself to an extra $3 after I tipped her in cash. I check my check card online every night for these kinds of things.

TIP = To Insure Promptitude.

I've been using a tipping webapp on my iPhone at restaurants that automagically calculates the tip such that the total is a palindrome.

@greensmurf: I don't think it's necessary to write "cash" if you already wrote the total. I think a line through the tip should suffice.

If the waiter does add on extra money then you might be entitled to a free dinner. The transaction was not a "bona fide" transaction, therefore she is entitled to a full chargeback. At least that's my interpretation.

@KenSPT: Uh, I think he/she meant if you're going to do the same thing and leave a cash tip, then put an extra 6 cents on the card.

@Blueskylaw: Sorry to destroy your acronym, but it would be "ensure" not "insure." :-)

@thekicker: Are you sure that's "most" systems or did you just make up the data? Visa specifically discourages that practice (because it's rude).

@KenSPT: It's been proven that higher tips == more sex.

@hi: @BayStateDarren: @ecwis: I may be incorrect but here is my thinking. Regardless of the amount you tip, put an amount in such a way that the numbers on the right hand side = the total of the right hand side.

So if the bill is $123 a 20% tip is roughly $25. But instead of tipping $25 you would tip $25.13. A $25 tip puts your total at $148 and 1+4+8=13. Thus your total bill would be $148.13

Personally I have never had any problems with servers adding extra tips to the bill.

To add insult to injury, the waiter made them show the receipt on the way out the door.

NO!

Bill = $123.00
Tip = $ 24.00
Checksum = $0.12

Total Charged = $147.12

That palindrome things sounds adorable. Probably not worth buying an iPhone though.

Sometimes when I tip at a restaurant, I see the bill come out of my account (debit) the next day, but no tip for a few days, then the tip comes out separately. Has anyone ever heard of that? Any idea of why it might do that?

@KenSPT: Let's head this off before anyone else starts the dreaded "tip or don't" meme.
Canadian Imposter meant that you should calculate your tip as usual, but add just enough extra to make the cents represent the sum of the dollar digits.
So on a $10 meal it would go like this, I'll use 15% tip as an example.
$10 meal + $1.50 tip = $11.50, we'll round it to $12.00 so that the cents are zeroed.
Next we sum the whole dollar digits: 1 + 2 = 3, so we tack on $0.03 for a grand total of $12.03.
This makes the tip $2.03, or in this case slighlty over 20%. This little trick works better on larger food bills since the cents column futzing will have less of an effect on the tip percentage.

@ecwis: In U.S. English, at least, it's either:

For the more general senses, ensure is more likely to be used, but insure and ensure are often interchangeable, particularly in U.S. English: bail is posted to insure that the defendant appears for trial | the system is run to ensure that a good quality of service is maintained. [Oxford American Dictionary]

Was it the Bennigans on Rte 22 in Springfield? Next to the Barnes and Noble? I used to eat there all the time before I got violently ill from a hamburger. Urgh.

@Blueskylaw: *sigh* [www.snopes.com]

Holy crap, this is way more math than I want to deal with in a comments section, much less when I'm eating out. Whoo boy.

Wait a sec! "A little tale to remind you to keep an eye on your credit card statements from reader Rebecca."

I have never gotten any of my credit card statements from reader Rebecca! Is someone stealing my CC statements out of my mailbox! DANGIT!

(sorry... long day and I am just moments away from having to sit through 3 hours of "mandatory" harassment training.)
Hell, I've never even gotten any pre-approved offers from reader Rebecca. :-(

The kicker, of course, is that by occasionally stealing money from customers and making them resort to these digit-adding practices, they actually get MORE MONEY! What a country!

@jtheletter: Yeah, I figured I just misread it, but it's the internet ... I have to accuse people of things, it's a rule. :-)

I've had it happen several times in the past. Once I had really bad service at applebees. Only seen my waitress twice and she took forever as in I was there over an hour waiting on just a meal. I gave her a dollar tip. She turned it into 11.00. I got two free meals for two from applebees when I came by in person with my receipt to complain to the manager. I continue to bitch at my girlfriend and friends when they right the tip amount in and leave all of their receipts.

@thekicker
"I ask because most major POS systems (Aloha, Micros, etc) will automatically charge your card the bill + 15% or so (configurable) to make sure you have enough money on the card. Once the transaction is posted to the account and finalized, you will notice the lower amount (assuming you actually left no tip on the card)."

This is a possibility, but Visa has mandated that all restaurant POS systems stop authorizing for anything more than the total of the check. Visa guarantees up to 20% over the total of the check to the restaurant whether the customer has the funds or not.

This mandate was put in place precisely because the rise of internet banking was causing huge numbers of complaints when people who had paid cash for their tips went home and saw the authorization for a different amount than what they should have been charged.

The majority of Micros systems now have the correct tip authorization settings in the system.

@The Original Poster:

When you initiate a charge-back with your credit card company it DOES penalize the merchant, sometimes severely. Depending on their merchant arrangements and how your bank handles it, your bank will often charge-back the entire amount of the transaction, and hit the merchant with a charge-back fee of anywhere from $20-50. In addition the merchants credit-card processor may also hit them with a charge-back fee.

This isn't to make you feel sorry for the merchant, since if they charged you incorrectly, they deserve a slap on the wrist, but chances are they are feeling the pain. Equally chances are they don't know WHY they're feeling the pain, unless you contacted them and complained.

Yes, please, NOT THIS TIP WAR SHIT AGAIN!

@ekthesy: Wait, the one across from the horrible Auto-Land? I actually like that Bennigans :/

@gamehendge2000: +1

@Michael Belisle: Ensure is correct. A tip does not insure anything, it is payed after the fact.

A tip is a discretionary award for excellent service. That's the way I look at it. If I'm not happy with the service I received, I tip very little or none at all. I've tipped anywhere from as low as 0% to as high as 25% (at Chili's, of all places) for exceptional service. So as you see, I'm willing to pay for excellent service. I will NOT, however, pay for crappy service, and I shouldn't. Neither should you, your parents, or anyone else who pays for a service. Delivery people in NYC hate that I actually factor in the service I received when I calculate tip, but I approach tipping as an award for excellence, not a handout.

I don't care if you make $2.50 an hour, if you take it out on the customer (i.e. bite the proverbial hand that feeds you) then you deserve to make that little. Suck it up and provide excellent service or get another job.

It should be a law that if someone tries to charge you 1 cent more than authorized the place will get paid nothing and they have to eat the loss and you have the right to file a chargeback for the entire amount. It's never acceptable for anyone to charge me $15 when I authorized $10.

@KenSPT: Good waiters and waitresses make more than enough. Bad ones whine that they don't.

I normally tip in cash and write "On Table" in the tip section of the bill. I rarely confirm the amounts charged, though. This is the sort of thing where I'm sure 9 times out of ten, your serve is totally honest and 9 times of ten that they are dishonest, they still don't do it to you, but I'd certainly be outraged if I ever found it happening to me.

I’ve only received prompt service at Bennigan’s (any of them) when sitting at the bar (whcih is rare, since I don’t drink or smoke). Has anyone had good service experiences there?

Another thing to watch out for is a server who takes items off the tab of a cash customer and puts it on the tab of a CC customer, then pockets the cash. Especially if that CC customer is with a lot of people and has been drinking. My wife used to work for a Micros dealer and you'd be shocked at how often this happens.

@Blueskylaw: Is that even a word?

I usually ask for the bill, cross out the Tip line, and let the server pick up my credit card/bill. By the time the server comes back for my signature, I have a cash tip sitting on the table in plain view for him/her to see. I haven't had any problems.. so far.

@Michael Belisle: Your excerpt shows that the two words are often interchangeable, not always. I found a more helpful excerpt from The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style.

A person assures (makes promises to, convinces) other persons and ensures (makes certain) that things occur or that events take place. Any predicate beginning with that should be introduced by the verb ensure, if the verb is in the active voice. Insure should be restricted to financial contexts involving indemnification; it should refer to what insurance companies do. Ensure should be used in all other senses of making certain.

Also, from Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage

Insure is restricted to the meaning 'protect by insurance' (Are you insured? / We had better insure the new paintings).

@ecwis: "Credit card accounts usually don't show pending transactions to customers so I think it's safe to assume it was actually a final charge."

Uh, seriously? All five of my credit cards show pending transactions.

It'd be pretty inconvenient if your credit card companies decided to hide such info from you.

I'm going back to using only cash. There are too many ways for people to take advantage of you using electronic payment systems. Also, keeping you money in a mattress keeps you free of banking abuses: BoA!

New Jersey + Bennigans

Great combination!

@Andronicus1717: A tip doesn't ensure anything either.

If I understand Canadian Imposter correctly, the math works something like this.

Meal = 118.53
Tip = 12.54
Total = 131.07

What's in the numbers?

1 + 3 + 1 = 7

You just look at your resturant totals on your credit card bill, and in any instance where the dollar ammount does not match the last number in the cents column, you know there's funny business going on.

Its not easy math to do on the fly sometimes, but it might just be worth it, and its a cute trick.