Last night I ate at Montien, a Thai restaurant in Boston. The food was good, as usual. When we got the check, I noticed one entrée was $2 more than the menu list price (about 10%). I didn’t think much of it. It seemed pretty normal that a printed menu might have fallen out of date.
The waitress came by to get my credit card.
She said, “Oh, would you like to pay cash to save 10%?”
I said, “What?”
She said, “See, you can pay cash and save 10%.”
She pointed to a line on the check that said something like, “Sign here to agree to pay cash and save 10%.”
I signed. She handed the credit card back, took the check, and said she’d be right back. She came back with a new check with a 10% lower total cost.
I looked at one appetizer and saw that it had also been billed at a price higher than the menu. About 10% higher. As a matter of interest, so had everything else. I was now paying what I had expected to pay, based on the menu list prices.
I put three twenties into the check fold. The waitress picked it up and came back with change. We didn’t have any singles, which would have been necessary to leave a normal amount of tip, so I flagged her down again. She broke my five into ones. We left the tip and left the restaurant.
A Questionable Pricing Practice
Shouldn’t the menu have had an asterisk somewhere saying, “List prices are for cash”? Maybe it did.
Either way, you can’t list the price of a Chili-Chili Duck as $20.95, then charge me for $22.95, and tell me I’m getting a discount by paying cash. I’m really being charged more for using a credit card.
Does a 10% surcharge make sense? Here are the costs for a $50 dinner for two:
| Customer Pays with Credit Card | Customer Pays with Cash | |
|---|---|---|
| Credit card processing fee | $1.50 to $2.50 | n/a |
| Waitstaff time (1 min ea. visit to table; $10/hr wage) | $0.33 | $0.66 |
| Processing cost | $1.83 to $2.83 | $0.66 |
| Customer Surcharge | ($5) | ($0) |
| Loss (Gain) from Processing | ($3.17 to $2.18) | $0.66 |
Under the surcharge scheme, the restaurant makes additional money every time someone pays with credit card. But they have their waitstaff making as many as two extra trips to the table, plus they have back room expenses associated with counting, safeguarding, and depositing all that cash.
Nevermind all that, I felt deceived. As I said above, it was presented to me as a discount, but I was observant enough to see that it wasn’t. I probably won’t go back. The extra $2 to $3 they got from me may be the last of it.
It’ll depend on how much I want that Chili-Chili Duck.
