Restaurant agrees to drop customer's service charge

Days after the Department of Consumer Affairs recently clarified that it is totally up to the consumers to pay 10 per cent service charge,? a customer managed to get the restaurant to reverse the service charge.

The incident took place on January 2, when Kunal Shah and his family visited Kailash Parbat restaurant's Borivli outlet? for dinner. Kunal who is a builder has always been against paying service charge as he believes it is not mandatory for one to pay the charge when the cost of food is anyway high. He said, "If I eat pani puri at a roadside stall it would cost me maximum rupees 50 while at Kailash Parbat I would be charged more than the double. On that day too, my bill was over one thousand rupees but I was charged Rs 56 as service charge."

"I was irked by the fact that I was asked to pay more hence, I requested the manager to deduct the amount. I had read about service charge being discretionary. Without much ado, the manager remitted the bill with a discount of 5 per cent against the service charge, printed a new bill and gave it to us." "We do not know if this money which is charged in the name of service charge actually reaches to those in the service staff. It is better we tip the staff members ourselves, and we did that. For the amount that was given to us as discount, we gave it to the waiter. At least we know that way it is going to those who deserve it."

Moses Angelo, manager of the outlet said, "As soon as the customer requested us to deduct the service charge, we did so. It will take sometime for restaurants to make a decision but at the moment, we have been given guidelines from our bosses to deduct service charge if the customer requests for it." "The government needs to make it clear to the restaurateurs and keep a check on them too. Otherwise, they would keep charging us anywhere between 5-20 per cent of service charge and the money will not reach those who actually deserve it," Angelo added.