Fight Thieving Restaurant Servers With Checksum Tips
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: business, credit, law
There’s a fascinating yet frightening discussion over at the FatWallet Finance Forums about restaurant servers stealing their way to higher tips on credit card receipts. Servers upset by low tips that they probably deserved have been known to edit the tip line of credit card receipts to bump up their tip. For example:
See how easily a measly tip is changed to a generous one by a disgruntled server or bartender?
The easiest way to combat this illegal and downright nasty behavior is to reconcile your receipts against your credit card statements each and every month. You’ll spot restaurant wrongdoing and be able to phone it in to your credit card issuer faster than you can say “there’s a fly in my soup.”
But for the trillions of people who don’t want to go through the trouble of reconciling their receipts each month, there’s an easier way to stop tip alterations just by glancing over your credit card statement each month. It involves using checksums to add a layer of security to your tip amount. The term “checksum” normally refers to a technique used by computer systems to ensure file integrity. Here, we’ll be using checksums to ensure human integrity.
There are many checksum systems you can use when tipping, but here’s a great example that’s easy to learn and can be performed without the aid of a calculator unless you suck at math really badly.
Step 1: Look over your receipt
You’ll get ripped off far more often for food and drink overcharges than you will by spiteful servers. Check each billed item and compare it to the menu price.
Step 2: Calculate the appropriate tip
Tip as you normally do without worrying about checksums for now. For our example, let’s say you had the following bill but service was slow, so you’d like to tip about 10%.
Step 3: Apply a checksum
That $4.71 is just begging to have ten dollars added to it, and $51.87 becomes $61.87 so easily. Foil these alteration efforts with this simple checksum method.
Adjust the amount of the tip so that the numbers in the final total to the left of the decimal point add up to the right-most digit. In this case, the total has a “51″ to the left of the decimal point (A). 5 + 1 = 6, so the final digit should be six. Adjust the total to $51.86 or $51.96 (B) by adding nine or subtracting one from the tip (C).
Step 4: Check your credit card statements each month
While the receipt will help you ensure no fraud was enacted upon your dining bill, you only need the statement to verify the checksum. For this example, simply locate the dining transaction, add the numbers to the left of the decimal point, and confirm that they add up to the right-most digit. If they don’t, you’ve been scammed.
This technique is not foolproof. If the scammy server had added nine dollars to the total—making it $60.86—the checksum calculation would still come back okay. But because it’s harder to turn a “51″ into a “60″ than a “61,” it’s unlikely your server will do this unless they’re wise to this particular checksum technique.
Step 5: Deal with the theft
If you hit a checksum that fails, dig out your copy of the receipt to confirm it doesn’t match the total on your statement. Next, do three things:
- Call your credit card issuer. It should be fairly simple to get a credit for the difference between your actual bill and what you were forced to pay due to this fraud.
- Call the police. You were the victim of a crime, so you should report it, even if it’s just a few dollars. If the stealing server has multiple victims who report his or her behavior, the police will likely take action against the server and/or the restaurant. Hopefully a few thieving restaurant workers behind bars will set enough of an example to discourage similar actions in others.
- Call the restaurant (optional). At this point, you’ve likely got your money back and given all the information you can to law enforcement. You can try calling the restaurant to report the theft, but it might not do much. In the best case, the manager will recognize the server’s name on your receipt and confirm he or she has been suspected of wrongdoing. Maybe you’ll even get a free meal out of it for your trouble. Worst case, the restaurant does nothing.
The original poster in the FatWallet Finance Forum topic may be onto something when he or she says that this is probably one of the most widespread types of theft that goes unpunished. Now you have the tools to fight it. The next time you’re at a restaurant, eat, drink, be merry, and do a little extra math come tip time to help combat this rapidly growing problem.
UPDATE: Jeff B. put together a nifty Windows Mobile app for tip checksum calculations that’ll help make it easier to compute the proper tip given your level of service and checksumming method. Thanks Jeff!
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63 Responses »
1.
rstlne
October 12th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Or… use cash. That way, you pay exactly what you pay at the time of the transaction and there’s no need to check receipts later.
2.
Nick
October 12th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
rstlne, blasphemy!
As long as I have my (wife’s) mtvU Reward card and its 5% back at restaurants, it’s credit only for me, even if it means having to do some math to protect myself from server fraud.
3.
Kimberly
October 12th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I’ve always worried about this and thought I was just being paranoid… I never actually knew it was a real problem… The only difference I’ve ever had is when the server took less then I actually wrote down which I thought was weird. I would like to think I tip pretty good so this wouldn’t happen but I do check my receipts religiously just in case… I’ll be sure and keep this technique in mind.
4.
Patrick
October 13th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Great post, but I agree with rstlne. I almost always tip in cash, and leave a $0.00 tip on my card. Yeah, I understand I could gain a minimal amount of cash back over the course of the year, but it doesn’t bother me. My wife and I rarely go out to eat anyway, so for us it wouldn’t be much of a difference. And I’m sure the wait-staff appreciates cash more.
5.
Baz L
October 13th, 2007 at 11:55 am
That’s funny, but so true. I once had such bad service at a restaurant, so I entered $0.00 tip. That magically turned into a $6.00 tip.
I promptly called the company and complained. It was eventually reversed.
6.
Eric
October 14th, 2007 at 10:19 am
That’s such an easy thing to do, and it’s a fantastic idea! This happened to me and a few friends at a restaurant we frequent. Really ticks me off when someone pulls crap like adding another dollar to the tip. I love that this is a cool, geeky way to check for that kind of scam.
7.
freefrombroke
October 15th, 2007 at 9:33 am
I had a restaurant add $10 to a bill I paid a cash tip for (I crossed out the tip section too). I was lucky to notice the wrong amount on my CC bill and was able to dispute the amount and get the money back. I never even thought to go to the police though. That’s an interesting angle. I’ll keep that in mind should that ever happen to me again. Thanks!
8.
chica with issues
October 16th, 2007 at 8:55 am
I’ve had a server add on $10 once before when I was traveling. The most insulting thing was that I tipped well!
9.
mapgirl
October 18th, 2007 at 8:51 am
This has never ever happened to me. I usually check my statement right away with Quicken. I also try to leave tips in cash and then draw a line through the tip space or put a big loopy zero with a slash through it.
Where are people dining that this is happening? That’s what I want to know.
10.
plow
October 18th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
One could write the tip out and not use numerals. i.e. “three” versus “$3.00″ It’d be a lot harder to turn “three” into “eight” than it is to turn “3.00″ to “8.00″
Not nearly as cool as the checksum method though..
11.
denis bider
October 21st, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Duh. Cash. Always.
12.
pjm
October 21st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I’ve also heard of a no-arithmetic method: adjust the tip to make the total a palindrome. Very easy to spot and check in the credit card bill without mental addition, and the checksum is “obvious” enough to a half-awake server that they’re less likely to try fiddling the bill.
13.
Nick
October 21st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
pjm, palindromes are another good checksum, but it still requires just as much math to adjust the tip to yield a palindrome, and it’s easier for a server to catch on to your checksumming method and find a way to counter it—like finding another, more expensive palindrome.
14.
Peter
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:19 am
Or, perhaps consider that if the service was a little slow, the server was probably busy and was doing their best, or having a bad day. Digging a little deeper and always tipping at *least* 15% unless the service is drop-dead horrible is your best way to combat cranky wait staff in a fraudulent mood.
15.
Jemaleddin
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 am
You should really check out Ian Hickson’s blog entry about trying to use tips on his credit card as a way of keeping track of restaurant reviews:
http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1190803943&count=1
Short synopsis: it doesn’t work, for some unknowable reason.
16.
Matt Ellsworth
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:23 pm
nice idea - thanks!
17.
Unseen
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
You know, all of you should work as servers and you will learn that 99.9% of servers do not do this to people they honestly gave bad service to. But more often than not restaurant guests are just being cheap or simply do not know HOW to tip, that is when this will happen. I was a server for a few years and up until recently when I got a nice office 9-5er. But what you all don’t realize is that there are ways around even this. It involves the server “borrowing” a mangers swipe card to remove a “mistake” they put on the bill….no managers ever do it themselves, they would give us their card to remove the item ourselves…..and now I get a better tip anyway….Or I use the coupons you guests bring in, that I didn’t turn in at the end of the day…..so no matter what you lose, I win
18.
Marc B
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Well, I’m an 8-4 office worker, with a 5-11 server job at night. And believe it or not, there are people out there who really enjoy their server job (gets them away from the office setting) & are honest, both to thier customers and their employer. Maybe I live a sheltered life! The checksum methos is cool, and I will try to apply it when I go out myself! Though the extra cocktails i may have might alter my math abilities.
19.
moondog
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:48 pm
i worked as a pizza delivery guy for quite some time, and this type of thing happened often. i always reminded people to fill in the total on their cards if they “forgot” to tip. 9 times out of 10 they would fill in a tip, but the one time they don’t i make them fill it out anyway because this type of thing is so easy to get away with. especially if they use *my* pen to sign the receipt.
but i will say as well, that 9 times out of 10 that extra tip is an honest mistake made when entering tips into the credit card machine at the end of the night. when you have 20+ credit receipts to enter before you can go home and you lose track of which one you’re on, it doesn’t take much to accidentally change the total. yes, you’re pissed off that the receipt came back higher than you expected it to, but i doubt that it’s always a server deliberately trying to rip you off.
20.
Jen S.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I always tip in cash, even when paying by credit card. I write “on table” on the tip line instead of writing zeroes.
21.
Schizohedron
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I prefer to leave cash tips. However . . .
Will the charge slip still be valid if one were to write out the tip, e.g.,:
Three Dollars and 50/XX
the way one does on a check? You are still going to write in a numerical total, so the part the CC company cares about is the same.
22.
vh
October 24th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Although it’s true that most servers are hardworking & honest, in my experience now & again one isn’t quite so honest. I’ve found tips altered, and I always tip 20% because my math is so poor the only way I can figure out a tip is to take 10% of the bill and double it. Obviously, the checksum method leaves something to be desired for a person who is that math-challenged.
If I leave cash for the tip, I write on the receipt “Tip left in cash.” When I add the tip to the credit card payment, I write down the amount of the tip on the receipt. Then I keep EVERY receipt and enter it in Quicken. When the bill gets here, I check off each charge on the statement against Quicken. It’s pretty easy to spot any discrepancies. A complaint to the credit card company brings a correction.
A far more reliable way to avoid getting ripped off at restaurants is simply to eat out less. Learn to cook. Once you have a feel for what a glass of pop, tea, wine, or beer actually costs and how much work goes in to making a nice meal, you have a better idea of whether the amount the restauranteur charges for menu items is fair.
23.
jerry
October 24th, 2007 at 9:08 am
I pay for my meal with my rewards card, but on the tip line write ‘CASH’ and leave a cash tip.
24.
guinness416
October 24th, 2007 at 10:01 am
We use Jerry’s method when we can. How often does this actually happen? Himself and I eat out a lot, for work and for pleasure, and have bartended on and off since we were teenagers, and I’ve NEVER heard of this happening to anyone …
25.
Joel
October 24th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
guiness416, you’ve never heard of this happening? You lead a sheltered life. I hardly ever eat out but I’ve seen a group of six of us get a bill that somehow had seven entrees on it. We asked the server about it and he quickly said “Whoops, my bad” and removed the extra. He didn’t even bother to go over the bill with us before saying that. He already knew.
How many discrepancies would I find if I actually kept my restaurant receipts and compared them to my credit card bill? Again, I don’t eat out much and have never bothered to do this, but the fact that everyone else in this forum has horror stories to tell suggests that I would find a few. You are the statistical outlier here.
26.
dr.xnlb
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:25 pm
10%? You deserved to be ripped off. Start tipping 20% on average, and watch this plague of petty crime on your bills go away.
27.
Springs1
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:29 am
dr.xnlb
“10%? You deserved to be ripped off. Start tipping 20% on average, and watch this plague of petty crime on your bills go away.”
I TOTALLY DISAGREE since he said his service was slow. His service could be slow because of a non-attentive server or a server that takes 10 minutes to get a refill, which that IS in their control to get a refill of coke. Waiting 5-10 minutes for the check and another 5 minutes to get it rung up, is in the server’s control as well. I tip 25% for great service, but if the service sucks, I give what is DESERVED! If the server deserves only 10% for doing a lousy job, THAT is what they deserve. The customer DOESN’T deserve theft to happen to them unless they tip 10% to just be cheap with being that nothing went wrong with the service. That’s when I’d say they got a taste of their own medicine, but if they received bad service, a bad tip IS JUSTIFIED and DESERVED!
28.
Jeff B.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Although I can’t claim that I’ve ever had a tip changed (I’ve never paid that much attention) I did find the algorithm(s) intriguing enough to create my first Windows Mobile app for my PDA. If anyone is interested, you can check out the details here:
http://devmatter.blogspot.com/2007/11/safetytip-my-first-mobile-app.html
29.
Anon
November 15th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
30.
Brad
November 15th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
You could go even further to fight some waiter or waitress doing the checksum or random chance. Perhaps have the first digit of the cents of the total be the final digit when you multiply the digits of the dollar. In the above example, give a tip of $4.50 for a total of $51.66. 5×1=6. If the waiter adds $9 instead of 10, the final “6″ would match, but 6×0!=6, thwarting another theft. Variations on this theme guarantee no one will figure your system out.
However, after a few beers at dinner, I’m going to continue to tip based on boob size of the waitress.
31.
TomHung
November 15th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I suggest that if you pay cash for the tip you put a “ZERO” in the tip spot instead of “$0.00″.
I would be tough to change the ZERO into any amount.
Looks like i’m going to start carrying cash more often.
G
32.
foop
November 15th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Or move to the UK. With the advent of “Chip and PIN” cards, the waiter (sorry, server) will bring a small wireless card reader to your table. You get to enter the value of the tip and your PIN from your seat.
Of course it’s not guaranteed to be 100% safe, but I haven’t heard any reports of fraud. Now, the same system in petrol (sorry, gas) stations is a different matter - there were reports a year ago of the card terminals being hacked to intercept card details and PINs.
33.
Sam
November 15th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
How about writing in a null symbol (Ø) for the tip?
34.
fourstar
November 16th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Isn’t this all a bit cheap? I do live in the UK where tips are slightly less of the make-up of a server’s income (due to higher minimum wage, etc) but a bump up of $5 is not really going to break the bank, is it? Lighten up a little.
I do agree that it’s wrong - theft, even - but for goodness’ sake!
35.
Harvey
November 16th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Instead of assuming your waiter is a criminal, perhaps perform step 3 first: call the restaurant. I had a really busy bartender once over charge me by $300 because she accidentally held down the 3 button to long: $30 -> $330. I called the restaurant, they went through their receipts and refunded my money with an apology.
Morals:
1. Everyone is not out to get you.
2. Be nice to your less-than-minimum-wage waiter.
36.
Rodney
November 16th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Why not just keep your copy of the receipt, and if it doesn’t match the bill, call the restaurant? This seems needlessly complicated, especially if you use Quicken.
37.
Nick W
November 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
What’s the big deal? Who needs a checksum procedure?
After you write the tip in, you put a squiggly line to the left of it that touches the dollar number:
25.00
~~~5.00
———-
30.00
Or if you are leaving the tip on the table. you put a squiggly line over the tip line:
25.00
~~~~
——-
25.00
This will make it obvious if anyone has tried to add a number to yours. Just like when you write a check; you don’t leave any blank space to the left of the dollar figure.
Make your 3s with a flat top. Make your 9s and 6s with straight up and down lines. Make your 5 with a square top, not like an S.
Nobody will fuck with your tip. They’ll fuck with someone else’s that’s easier.
This is not rocket science.
38.
khatty86
November 17th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Simple - leave an appropriate tip!!! 20 % - and if you decide to camp out at the table ad take up the time the server could have been makeing money you should tip for that to!
39.
Matt
November 19th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I managed a restaurant for three years, and the more pressing problem is servers trying to defraud the restaurant out of money. At least where I worked, every receipt was subject to audit, and if a server were caught inflating a tip, they would have been subject to disciplinary action, as well as open to criminal prosecution. As a matter of fact, we fired a food runner during a shift when we learned from a previous employer that he had been charged with credit card fraud.
It was my experience that the sort of customers who worried about overcharges on their bills either didn’t properly understand how to read a bill, or were the type of parsimonious jerks that run the risk of bad things happening to them because they’re rude and obnoxious, not because their servers are trying to scam them out of an extra $5 or $10. My advice would be to either come to grips with the fact that tipping is just as much a part of service etiquette as getting your drink refilled on time, and that you should take care of your server the way you’d like to be taken care of if you were in the position of dealing with someone like you for two hours.
You should also bear in mind that you have a stove at home and most likely a grocery store nearby if you’re unhappy about the arrangement.
40.
Pete Camper
November 19th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Want 20%? Earn it.
15% is the default for adequate service. Service with a snarl gets you even less. Try to rip someone off because that’s easier than doing your job? Have a nice time in jail.
41.
Paul
November 20th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Palindromes are much quicker to look for in a credit card statement. That Windows Mobile solution is a great app that lets users quickly calculate this. If you’re an iPhone user & want this capability you can use tipTapp at http://www.sixteenseven.com/tiptapp
42.
rocketc
January 4th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Huh. very interesting and complicated. and i am really late to this party. nice post
43.
Damien
January 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I eat out at restaurants almost every night (literally) and I almost always put it on my card. But I also use Quicken to an extremely anal degree and every night I input all the days expenses into it (after any purchase throughout the day I type it into my PDA). So I would always know if my card was charged more because it wouldn’t match when I download my transactions. I’ve been doing this for years and NOT ONCE have I been overcharged by a restaurant. And I am not exaggerating when I say I eat out at restaurants almost every single night and put the bill on my card.
I also think calling the cops about this is crazy. I don’t know where you live, I live in a major metro area and if I called the cops because I was overcharged a few bucks from a restaurant I’m sure they would literally laugh in my face. At minimum all you’re doing is wasting your own time. The best thing to do is just call the restaurant and tell the manager. I’m sure they can look up who the server was and if they’ve gotten a few complaints they would probably fire the guy/girl which is punishment enough.
44.
Credit Safe
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Never thought of a checksum for the real world! Great tip, though I always compare my bill with my statement. Caught more than one um … “error” … this way.
45.
Tim
February 4th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I liked this idea a lot. I came up with an iPhone web app to help out with this calculation, because I wanted to start using it but found the math to be a little too difficult on a full tummy. Check it out on your iPhone at http://tippytops.net/iphone/tip/
46.
PDA lover
February 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Well…the methods used by these cheating servers is quite smart.
I think one of the good methods to prevent cheating servers is by becoming a good boss.
When your employee have respect and you or even admire you, you can guarantee that you’ll have very few cheaters in your business establishment.
Bad boss will surely get a lot of cheater employees .
47.
M.V.P.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Great idea, thieves suck. There are two reasons servers steal from their guests; 1. Greed 2. Ire from a guests bad tip. Greed you can’t control, we all know that. In the situation when you feel you have to leave a bad tip, let the server AND the manager know why the service was bad (no drink refills, attitude, long wait for food, etc…). 9 out of 10 times the server will understand and apologize sincerely and the meal will be comped. Just remember, the server doesn’t cook the food, so if you don’t like what you ordered, it’s not their fault. Just be fair, servers generally make between $2-3/Hr before tips. Not all servers are thieves, just honest people trying to make a living like everyone else.
48.
Amber
April 26th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Okay so I’m a server and I came on this website to find out some answers about the whole credit card thing….. my deal is some guy tip’d me and another server double because he said we were fantastic…. and he already informed me that he knew that there was a gratuity. So here’s my question….LEGALLY…can his wife call in the next day and ask for that tip to be put back on the credit card even though it’s not her credit card…and she could be anybody….and she didn’t come in with an picture id with a matching credit card or nothing…she lied and said it was hers..but it was in his name!? i just think it’s retarded……… thats between them…I think…. I already payed bills with that money and everything and now i’m out of pocket! and i had to stay late as hell that night so i was happy that he compensated us for our time ya know???? Is that legal…what that women did?
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