Restaurant cancellation policies are getting (more) ridiculous...

Scam said:
There’s a foodie guy I follow on Instagram that booked some trendy new restaurant for 4 people. They had a £30pp fee for no-shows. His friend couldn’t make it last minute so they turned up as a party of 3. Got the bill and the restaurant charged them the £30 for their friend not turning up. Nuts.
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Had this at the weekend, booked for 4 and only 3 made it and there was £20 added to the bill. Asked for the manager and he suggested it was the t&c's etc but after a bit of a chat he did acknowledge that in this circumstance they wouldnt have been able to "sell" the other seat and took it off the bill. Nearly sent a photo of the first bill to my mate so he could transfer us the money to buy a round in at the next bar :D
 
Scam said:
I've booked a dinner with a work colleague for this coming week, and dinner out with some friends on Saturday. One in the West End, one out east London. Both places demanded a credit card to book (which I hate, but I've gotten over now..) but to my disbelief both places charge £50 per person if you don't cancel 48hrs before. This is bonkers, right? :confused: Have we all lost the plot? I'm sure we'd spend probably a little more than £50/head, but surely it's a bit extreme for a restaurant to be charging the same as what they'd expect you to pay there for a meal, when they'd probably fill the table with walk-ins anyway :confused:

Is this just a London thing?
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Imagine you own a restaurant, and then you get never ending **** heads that book tables and don't turn up... Empty restaurant = no income... Don't blame them at all
 
Haze said:
Imagine you own a restaurant, and then you get never ending **** heads that book tables and don't turn up... Empty restaurant = no income... Don't blame them at all
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Well as @cheesefest says why not let people cancel for free - and charge those that just don’t turn up. This policy of having to cancel 48hrs in advance or you get charged is silly. A lot can happen in 48hrs, people can get sick, you might have to work late etc. Of you’re a group of 4 it’s even more likely that something could happen. That’s life.

If you just don’t turn up, fine get charged. But if you actually bother to cancel then it should be ok imo.

Heck if you cancel 2hrs before that’d help the restaurant massively with filling the table with walk-ins. They can plan other sittings etc.

And like I said, i don’t mind the idea of a charge to cover costs - but charging almost what a punter would have paid is excessive and off putting.
 
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Scam said:
Well as @cheesefest says why not let people cancel for free - and charge those that just don’t turn up. This policy of having to cancel 48hrs in advance or you get charged is silly. A lot can happen in 48hrs, people can get sick, you might have to work late etc. Of you’re a group of 4 it’s even more likely that something could happen. That’s life.

If you just don’t turn up, fine get charged. But if you actually bother to cancel then it should be ok imo.

Heck if you cancel 2hrs before that’d help the restaurant massively with filling the table with walk-ins. They can plan other sittings etc.

And like I said, i don’t mind the idea of a charge to cover costs - but charging almost what a punter would have paid is excessive and off putting.
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Yea the 48 hour thing is ridiculous.

To be honest I hear all this about the catering industry being on its knees etc, but a lot of restaurants in this country are quite frankly ****, and expensive for what it is, so if I'm honest, I won't care if they close down.
 
I disagree with it entirely and vote with my feet, unless it is a specific/exclusive/posh restaurant that I really want to go to that does it. There is a restaurant near me that is very expensive and quite remote (in between towns and would rarely have "walk ups") which doesn't have any such policy. They just take the hit basically if you don't turn up. But people do turn up, because it's hard to get booked up and it's very good. I see it as a cost of running a business and just another thing us Brits take bending over, where businesses again try to transfer costs over to the consumer.
 
I don't mind being charged upfront as I understand the amount of no-shows has gotten out of hand. I had to cancel a Hawksmoor within 24 hours of the booking and they were fine with it - just rang them and explained.
 
I have no issue with this.
As long as its clear at the start it's up to you to agree or not.

Obviously for this restaurant no shows are worse than putting some people off.

I personally wouldn't dream of booking under such circumstances. But I don't have an issue with it.
 
I can understand why this is done with many probably being nowhere close to being able to take a chance with people just dropping in on the off chance and is obviously not just limited to restaurants.

The biggest issue I have is with service charges tbh.
 
One of my mates sons is heavily into scalping, was doing PS5's etc in lockdown and its ballooned from there. Anyway, he recently told me his son is now involved in restaurant reservation scapling (this is now a thing) where very popular restaurant free reservations at prime times are being booked up in advanced and then sold at a later date for some nominal value like £10. Not saying this is entirely the reason, but I can see how restaurants essentially taking a deposit on the reservation kills this scalping behaviour off, the risk would be too high for the scalper.
 
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thebandit said:
One of my mates sons is heavily into scalping, was doing PS5's etc in lockdown and its ballooned from there. Anyway, he told me his son is now involved in restaurant reservation scapling (this is now a thing) where very popular restaurant free reservations are being booked up in advanced and then sold at a later date.
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I distain scalpers. No better than scum, really.
 
Don't have a problem with this. The charge should be reasonable though and reflect the food/drink cost savings the restaurant will make by you not turning up, as well as the possibility the seat might get filled anyway.

I have recently seen some resuarants charge a small fixed fee for any cancellation (i.e. cancelling even a week before), to discourage speculative bookings.

At the end of the day, there's thousands of restaurants to choose from so if you don't like a restaurants policy (which is usually pretty clear when you make the reservation), go somewhere else.
 
I wish them luck making this stick if you raised a section 75 against them, with no service provided and no signed contract.

48h is total nonsense, maybe if you cancelled within 2 hours of your booking, and a reduced rate up to 6 hours. Perhaps they should give you a guarantee of how long your food will be from the time you order it, and if it is late they give you a 5% discount for the full table per 5 minutes. I means fair is fair right, what if you are late for your next pre-booked event due to them being slow, and you lose a deposit?
 
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