American Express Membership Rewards - Question (Pertaining to Restaurants)

What would you do if your waiter/waitress added a tip onto your receipt after you left, even though you left a cash tip? Not that I'll really miss the money, but still... it isn't right, is it?

That's a simple answer, you just dispute the tip amount with AMEX, like you would with any charge that you didn't authorize.

If I was a waiter, I would want you as a customer because I would make my tip a couple of hundred bucks and you wouldn't dispute it.. haha..:D

Well, obviously... I just wanted to hear it from someone else so I wouldn't feel stingy. ;)

When you present a card at a restaurant the establishment requests authorization for an amount larger than the total bill, making provision for a potential gratuity. Subsequently they should report the actual transaction amount. If you are looking at your account online a day or two after the meal you may see the higher authorized amount or even two charges, but this should be resolved after another few days.

Even if the higher amount stays on your bill it may be a processing error by the restaurant management rather than something done by the waiter. I would dispute the amount, but I wouldn't accuse anyone of fraud unless you see a charge form where someone else wrote in a tip.

It happened to me, at a very nice steak house. the tip ended up being about 75%. clearly an error. All it took was 1 phone call to AMEX and maybe 10 min of my time.

Something similar happened to me 2 months ago. I added a tip to a pizza delivery and it showed $2 higher online. Not sure if it was simply a mistake or the driver thought I wouldn't notice. I contested it online and a $2 credit showed up within a day or two. I never had to speak to anyone.

I would also report it to the Police..thats is stealing.@:-)

It seems some waitstaff (at less-exclusive places) will skim blatantly off your reciepts. I round final amounts upwards to the next dollar, so say if the bill is 21.20, I'll usually leave $25.00 . I've had well more than one occasion where they'll either make the trailing "0"s into "9"s or "8"s. I don't make a noise about it (that's usually in one-off places I don't visit very often anyway), but it's still disappointing. I guess I should start doing the math, but then what's the point of rounding up? (No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.)

I did have one waitress turn a $157.XX bill that I'd tipped to $200 extend a loop onto the first zero and submitted a charge for $260- and since it wasn't an AMEX, I had to fight thru hell to get that charge fixed. I'd actually decided to get an AmEx for the first time 'cause of that, 'cause I'd heard that they really fight for the consumer over stuff like that.

I would dispute with the cc company & have it removed.