After watching Beowulf and standing around for awhile deciding where to go to eat, we eventually decided on East!. East! was sprung from the owners of Spring Rolls and basically shares the same menu as them. However, they have a prime location being directly across from the City TV CTV building.

I know some people have an intense hatred for Spring Rolls, but I’m not sure what the issue is. It’s reasonably priced Asian food in decent decor. Basically you’re paying a few bucks more so you don’t have to eat off cheap Chinatown tables and plastic covers. East! was no different. The reason for this blog however, was to rely our experiences with the bill. We had a group of 8, so that means a mandatory gratuity; however in our separate checks, the accounting was bit like Enron. It looked a bit like the receipt on the right.

If you weren’t paying attention, you would see the $18, pay with credit card and then add the tip on — meaning a double tip and extra profit. Usually restaurants aren’t as shady and actually put how much they want for their tip; but in East!’s case, they changed the alignment of the cost, and removed the details, which makes the true nature of the bill easy to miss.

In fact, I would expect that most sketchy bill business would be in charging a slightly higher number than what you wrote down on the credit card receipt. Coincidentilly, I came across a neat, geeky way to protect against the restaurant changing the credit card value, although I doubt that I would actually call up the credit card company if I discovered a change. And it wouldn’t have helped in this circumstance.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: restaurants, scam