Diners find hidden restaurant charges hard to swallow
Restaurants urged to be more transparent on pricing as Consumer Council reports 13pc increase in complaints by dissatisfied diners
Diners are finding unreasonable hidden charges in their restaurant bills increasingly hard to swallow, the consumer watchdog has found.
The Consumer Council recorded 423 complaints about restaurants in the first half of the year alone, a 13 per cent increase from the same period a year ago.
Practices complained about included prices being rounded up to whole numbers and charity donations being added without consent. Most involved negligible amounts of money, reflecting "strong consumer dissatisfaction over unfair trade practices rather than personal loss", the watchdog said.
One case highlighted in the watchdog's Choice magazine this month involved a diner who found his dim sum bill of HK$55.44, which included a 10 per cent service charge, to have been rounded up to HK$56.
He was told the company's computer system rounded all decimals to the nearest whole number. It was noted in small print at the entrance and on the dim sum price lists.
In another case, a complainant was charged an extra dollar on her bill for a charity donation she was not aware of or told about.
Professor Michael Hui King-man, chairman of the council's publicity and community relations committee, said the absence of specific legislation regulating the charging and billing practices in the trade allowed restaurants to set their own price and charging strategies.