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What is "tip jacking," and should I be concerned about it? —Peter L., St. Louis
“Tip jacking” occurs when a restaurant server "jacks up" the tip on a guest check. Doing so is easy: A common tactic is to add a “1” to a single-digit tip, for instance, or change a "3" to an "8" and adjust the total. Or if the guest check is paid with plastic and the tip is left in cash, a tip can be placed on the blank line and the total adjusted. Since most customers never reconcile tip amounts on their charge statements, tip jacking is risky for the server but usually goes unnoticed by the customer.
Tip jacking appears in the news from time to time (as it did last week), partly because it’s demonstrable. When this occurs, it’s rarely caught on the front end—managers and bookkeepers typically do not take the time to play small-time detective. It’s often customers who figure out they've been duped, as happened last month in a St. Louis eatery when a customer noticed that the tip amount added to the original bill was close to double the cost of his meal, which was incorrect, as he had tipped in cash. The restaurant was made aware of the problem and reimbursed the patron. Was it an honest mistake? It's hard to say.
In another recent local instance, a diner (who has made a habit of rounding up the tip up so that the total equals an even dollar amount), noticed that the total on the credit card statement had been increased a few dollars (to a non-even dollar amount, signifying a change in tip), reported the error to restaurant management, and the difference was refunded.
Is tip jacking a common problem? The short answer is “probably not,” but since there are no studies and no reporting mechanisms, no one really knows for sure. Some diners tip in cash for this reason, striking a bold line where an unscrupulous tip might get entered.
Since most dining patrons choose to tip "on the card," restaurant receipts should be to one's credit card statements or, at the very least, the totals spot-checked from time to time. Customers who don't save their receipts can always take a photo of the guest check for reconciliation purposes.
A practice that seems to be more common is “double-tipping,” in which the host of a large party leaves a second tip on top of an automatic gratuity that was already assessed.
Another frequent (and similarly unstudied) occurrence is “check padding,” when additional items get mysteriously added onto a guest’s check. Again, it’s the larger parties that seem to be most victimized, as it’s easier to slip in an extra entrée or bottle of wine onto the check of a 10-top than a smaller party. Plus, a 10-top’s bill is rarely scrutinized and is often split five ways, so no one’s ever the wiser.
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