Hacker News Reader

Comment by mannanj | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it kind of like mandatory tip? If you haven't given it voluntarily, i.e .its automatically opted-in and you maybe can't even not give it. its the same.

View on HN

Opt-in by default means it is either mandatory (if you can‘t disable it) or it‘s opt-out (if you can) Opt-In by default is BS to make it sound less invasive

Imagine if they said paying taxes were opt-in by default. No, it's mandatory! Sure you can technically not pay taxes but you won't have a good time.

That is slightly different though. The government says you must pay taxes, mandatory as you said.

PostHog here is saying they will train on your data but opting out is allowed. For the taxes analogy to work, PostHoh would not offer the opt-out option at all and you'd be doing something like hacking their system to filter your data out on their end.

Many restaurants have the audacity to add a 20% (or whatever percentage) "service fee" that isn't considered tip. It even says something like "we use this to pay our staff competitive wages and health insurance." You can't opt out. It's just part of the bill. Then they have the gall to ask for a tip on top of that.

I've taken to a) leaving a negative Google or yelp review for such establishments and b) never coming back. This is a practice that needs to die.

Do you leave a negative review if they add the service charge but don't ask for a tip?

I've never had the pleasure of encountering that situation.

But at what point do we call a spade a spade and say it's just them secretly inflating their prices? "everything is a penny but we charge a 1000000% service charge"

I used to wait tables once upon a time and it was standard practice to add a fixed service charge for any large party in lieu of a tip. Have you really never encountered that?

I've encountered large party service charges and that makes sense because it usually requires staff to do stuff they wouldn't normally do for smaller parties.

I'm talking about restaurants that just add service charge to everyone.

I think the lesson from the airline industry is that while consumers will get angry about surcharges, pricing transparency is what really gets punished in the marketplace. There are enough consumers who will always buy the deceptively priced item that it's suicidal to tell the truth (absent government regulation forcing the issue for all purveyors).

There are a fair number of well-meaning restaurateurs who have tried no-tip policies for ethical reasons. But the mass marketplace has not changed.

Kinda reminds me of when Burger King had a 1/3 lb burger and a 1/4 lb burger and more people bought the 1/4 lb because they thought it was more burger than the (rightfully) more expensive 1/3 lb burger.

The average consumer can't do math.

I would. If it's mandatory just include it in the advertised food prices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com