Some New York restaurants are being honest about their dishonesty, admitting that they've been rounding bills up to the next dollar. Apparently, counting change slows everything down, so they round up if it involves over 50 cents. This was the logic used by a waitress at Dutch Boy Burger in Crown Heights, and a very pissed off customer got very pissed off about when they noticed an additional 47-cent charge on their bill.
She was at Franklin Park, a bar connected to the burger joint, and ordered $6 fries. Her tab showed an additional 53 cents for tax, plus a 47-cent "rounding fee." Matt Roff, who owns Dutch Boy Burger, called the rounding fee a computer error. "We figured a loss for us or the customer of one to four pennies was understandable, but we were then made aware that the system had been rounding to the dollar." He added that Dutch Boy had stopped that process "a long time ago."
Back in August, Chipotle got busted increasing totals at locations that received a lot of business. Reps explained that rounding helped to deal with long lines, but they also ended the process after receiving bad press.
[via NY Post]
