Tipping at Cheesecake Factory
I went to the Cheesecake factory restaurant down on 71st with a group of friends and the bill came out to be $10.95 for my portion of order. I paid $20.00 in cash and received $4.00 back in change. I should have received $9.05 back. I wanted to tip $4.00, but if I did, it would leave me with nothing.I thought, "Oh. Maybe my bill was mixed with another person." So I asked my friends if perhaps their bill was accidentally switched. I looked around and everyone's faces were in shock. No one received their exact change return. We were all overcharged. I had one friend who was overcharged $10.00 for a $8.99 meal! What a joke! We ask the waiter and he said that everyone got charged for gratitude fee. Gratitude fee?! The bill never had gratitude fee, nor have I ever been charged gratitude fee for eating out with my friends before! They can't arbitrarily charge hidden fees and if there were gratitude fees, it needs to be stated somewhere on the bill. Gratitude fee is based off of a percentage of the bill, not some ridiculously high random number! We thought about letting this go, but most of us were worried that this might happen again if we returned. Something had to be done. We demanded for a billing correction or we'll file for complaint. Eventually, we all got our exact change back about 30 minutes of back-and-forth complaint. As a group, we decided that no one should tipped them for their inappropriate actions. It's a shame, because they could have gotten well over $40.00 in tips as we were all very generous tippers.IBF!