The diabolical rise of ‘dine and dash’: ‘It feels like a betrayal’ | Restaurants

23 comments

1. In before the inevitable “succulent Chinese meal!” comments…

   But the fact is that the police don’t care about crime, so more people are going to try it.

2. Surprised those 2 in the article were capable of the dashing away part.

3. Remember, it’s just poor people desperate to feed a starving family, and if you saw it you didn’t see it, and it’s all the Tories’ fault and Brexit’s probably involved somewhere.

   Or something.

4. The only dash I’ve done is when we had a pub lunch, they were closing the service for cleaning before evening meals as we left, when we got back to where we were staying asked the wife how much it came to as I left early to take a kid to the loo, she thought I had paid on my way to the loos, I hopped in the car straight back and settled the bill. We were both embarrassed but still returned the following day for lunch, waiter clocked us and joked about paying this time.

5. Maybe restaurants should start taking card details at the point of booking, so they can charge if they do this

   There are a restaurants near me that take card bookings incase of no show, and charge your card in the event of a no show

6. Demand customers pay a massive deposit when they order the meal. When it’s time to pay the bill, refund the difference.

7. Restaurants will have to start taking pre authorised payments like some hotels do.

8. A family that was shamed in the local papers for doing it sent their children to our nursery, where they also were frequently late with paying invoices or paying them short.

   They weren’t poor or struggling it was more a what you gonna do? Not enough to get a debt recovery service to get involved and not enough for the police to really care.

9. This was probably 10 years ago now, probably long. Can’t remember the panel show, I think it was a panel show. One of the guests wasn’t British and was asked what makes Britain different to other countries.

   “A sense of fairness”. They went to explain more fully but it was that there is inbuilt sense of fairness in British people and they will react if you take the piss. The phrase itself effectively comes from that sense of fairness

   Sadly I feel that it really has completely disappeared.

   It’s easy to blame it on the Tories but it’s across society.

10. This is only going to make things worse for regular customers who pay their bills. Prices will go up to accommodate losses from dining and dashing, and there will be added measures introduced to keep a better track of customers, including taking customer details prior to anything being brought out. It is like how many supermarkets require you to scan your receipt to leave these days. A small handful of cunts are ruining it for the rest of us.

11. It doesn’t help that the prices of everything have risen while service and quality have gone down. It is only in the last three years that I have been increasingly tempted to leave a restaurant without paying (never have). More often than not I get annoyed at the slow and inattentive service.

    In a way this is symptom of a bigger issue where people have given up caring about anyone or anything. Low wages, high cost of living, lack of community, and poor service eventually leads to indifference.

12. It is shocking.

    There’s a lot of people who genuine people that accidentally forget to pay, or don’t realise the card is being checked for a PIN number.

    Dine and dash is just stealing. People used to do it to taxi drivers as well years ago. I also think it’s stealing when you realise the bill is wrong and don’t say anything.

13. I blame the succulent Chinese meal guy

    He started a revolution

14. Scrubs will be scrubs unfortunately! But they need to face the consequences 💯

15. Just take payment when you order. My favourite thing to come from Covid was this. Order food and drinks then pay. Order another drink? Pay when bring it.
    When we are done we just go. No faffing trying to get a ticket. Love places that stuck with this.
    No dine and dash possible

16. I think we’ll have to move to the US tab system, which tbh I quite liked when I lived there. You go in, they take your card and keep it behind the bar, and then charge it at the end of the night. To make sure it’s a valid card they usually make an initial charge when you put it behind the bar like $20 or something, and then refund/recharge if you spend more or less than it.

    I recall the one time I did leave a bar without paying (drink…) the next day I was horrified and embarrassed, but anyhow rang the bar, they told me they’d closed out my bill end of the night added a 20% tip and I could come get it whenever.

    I hate dine and dash people, they are the worst of the worst. I don’t like theft in general but I can forgive someone who steals necessities from a big supermarket who genuinely can’t afford it (I’m not talking the trash who help themselves to booze or whatver), but restaurants are meant to be a bit of a treat for whoever goes there and have thin margins, so there’s absolutely no justification or ‘understanding’ for it.

17. It honestly tempts me at places that add the automatic tip, horrendous how that is legal, let’s not bring the bad parts of America over here…

18. Maybe they should be more selective of their clientele and just politely refuse service for…the kind of people likely to dine and dash.

19. My old line manager did this, last I know of several years ago. She was in early 40s and heavily overweight. What hurt was the realisation she only does it at ethnic places and my dad works in those kind of places

20. Wonder if the poor being royally fucked up the arse for over a decade has anything to do with being on the rise

21. All that’s going to happen is that payment details will start being taken up front by restaurants. Any business will take steps to prevent money being lost.

22. In California, restaurants are adding a lot of surcharges (in some cases 20% of the bill) on top of tax/tip, etc. This is because they don’t want to increase the menu prices. Anyway, I will have zero sympathy for those establishments

23. Can’t beat paying for food before you get it. Just being able to stand up and leave straight away without all the messing around makes me happy.