People scanning QR code
Singaporean questions tipping culture after restaurant app pre-selects tip on S$111.51 bill
SINGAPORE: A Singaporean has turned to Reddit to complain about what she feels is an increasingly aggressive tipping culture in the city-state, something once far more commonly associated with the West.
Posting on the r/singapore subreddit on Monday (Aug 17), the local asked: “Is tipping culture getting a bit ridiculous? What is wrong with some restaurants these days?”
The woman said she had recently dined at a restaurant with another person and, when she asked for the bill, was rather rudely told to scan a QR code to make the payment.
Her total came to S$111.51, which already included a 10% service charge. Fair enough, she thought, but the payment screen apparently had another surprise waiting for her.
According to the woman, an additional tip had already been pre-selected when the QR payment screen opened.
Thankfully, she noticed it before paying.
“If I hadn’t checked properly, I would have ended up paying another tip on top of the 10% service charge. So I manually changed it to 0%.”
She manually changed the tip to 0%, thinking that was the end of it. Apparently not.
The next prompt asked whether she wanted to “Round up your bill.”
“My bill was S$111.51, and the payment screen asked if I wanted to add S$3.49 to make it S$115. I mean, that’s not really ‘rounding off’ in the way I understand it. That’s another 3 per cent, approximately, added to a bill that already has a 10% service charge.”
Of course, she acknowledged that nobody was forcing customers to press the button, and she had no issue with restaurants allowing diners to leave a tip if they genuinely wanted to.
But having several prompts appear one after another was, to her, starting to feel excessive.
“When you combine a service charge, a pre-selected tip that you have to manually remove, and then another prompt asking you to voluntarily add S$3.49, it starts to feel a bit much.”
“At some point, you’re not paying a restaurant bill. You’re playing, ‘how many times can we ask the customer for a little bit more money before they leave?’ Begging pro max.”
The woman added she experienced this in other restaurants as well.
“I’ve noticed similar payment prompts at a few other places recently. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I think if restaurants want to charge more, they should just charge a higher service charge upfront rather than sneakily adding charges at the time of making payment. What are your opinions on this?”
The post quickly gained attention on the forum, racking up more than 940 upvotes and 240 responses in less than a day.
Many commenters criticised the restaurant in the comments, with one saying,
“They should ban this pre-selected tips nonsense. As bad as those restaurants that have almost zero service and then add service charge. Menu prices should have GST included also.”
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Another wrote, “Round up your bill isn't even a tip. What kind of place is this?”
A third remarked, “Do not ever tip in SG. Don’t start that toxic culture.”
A fourth added, “Tipping is something that should stay in the US. Shouldn't come here and shouldn't force it on us. We don't have a tipping culture, never had one. That said, the US F&B bosses should pay their employees better so tips don't need to be necessary.”
In other news, a woman has shared how her boyfriend of two years allegedly ended their relationship because he was embarrassed that she attended a private university while he studied at one of Singapore’s Big 3 universities.
Posting on the r/asksg forum, she said the truth only came out after she repeatedly asked him to be honest about why he wanted to break up.