GREENSBORO, NC -- 2 Wants to Know is all about protecting your money - and your right to know what you're being charged - and why. Well take a look at a sign posted at a local restaurant on the hostess stand. Management is telling you the restaurant will automatically had 15 percent gratuity to your check after 10 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Well one of your neighbor's missed this sign and contacted Call for Action. He wanted to know, "Is this legal?"
It turns out there's a lot of misinformation out there.
The local man who contacted Call for Action thought President Obama had signed a law that restaurants aren't allowed to add auto gratuity unless the patrons were told before they sat. Nope.
In reality - the law does cover tipping, but it deals with servers being taxed on the gratuity they get. So there was confusion.
And to make things more confusing - on line we found this statement, "Auto gratuity is legal as long as a notification that a gratuity is added appears on a customer's check." That's not true either.
Both the state and national restaurant association tell us there's no law that requires a restaurant to tell you about the tip charge. So it doesn't have to be on the menu .... or even on a sign.
It's your responsibility to check your bill - and you should. Who knows - they could have accidentally charged you for something you didn't order.
Restaurant owners we talked to do say it's just good practice to let folks know about the charge. But they really do it to protect their servers. Servers only make $2.13 an hour to bring you your food.
If you do think there's something fishy about the bill, you can contact the Attorney General's office.
