Bad Service? You Don't Have To Pay The Service Charge At Restaurants Anymore!

PM Narendra Modi recently announced that service charge on the food that you eat at restaurants will be optional! So now you can choose to pay for it depending on how your dining experience and the services levied by the restaurant were. 

The centre pointed out a few days back that the customers dissatisfied with their service could choose not to pay the service charge levied by a hotel or restaurant however the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has cited a case in the court against this decision! The Government has said that the reason behind this action was that various customers had complained that they were being forced to pay service charge amounting to somewhere between 5%-20% whether they liked the services or not.

But we definitely feel this decision has its pros and cons and here they are:

The Cons

To be very honest, service providers at restaurants, i.e. waiters in particular put in a lot of effort when it comes to doing their job correctly, thus they deserve the tips that they were getting from the Service Charge. By making it optional, most people will simply skip it hence taking away the extra money that used to come into the pockets of the waiters. 

The Pros

There are always certain cafes you come across that have sloppy service, now here the customer gets a choice to pay for the services or forego it! And so you wouldn’t be obligated to pay the service charge here even after disliking the service provided by the restaurant. Via this act, it may come into the light of the restaurateur, striving to make things better. 

Personally we feel that instead of removing the service charge which used to go into the hands of the waiters at restaurants, remove the service tax which goes into the hands of the government.  

Let’s see how things pan out... what do you make of it?!

Sourced Via Times Of India