Ph-D Adds 20% Tip to Your Bill For Your Convenience

It looks like you can add the Dream Downtown hotel's rooftop nightclub Ph-D to the ever-growing list of New York bars and clubs that tack on automatic gratuity to your bill. A tipster sent us their receipt from a recent visit, saying that the receipt notes "20% gratuity added to your bar bill for your convenience. Thanks. But that would not be my convenience, it's yours." Spot on! To be clear, lots of other places automatically add a tip to your drink bill, especially the high-volume nightclubs, and they are allowed to do it as long as the policy is clearly stated on the menu and 100% of the money collected from the additional 20% goes to the servers. With that being said, the tactic may not be illegal, but it is pretty crappy.

It's one thing if you want to charge an automatic tip for bottle service to protect the staff from customers who spend $5000 on booze and then try to skip out on the tip. But automatically tacking on 20% for drinks, especially in a dark and loud club where customers aren't really expecting it and are more likely to add another tip in the space provided is just wrong. You, the paying customer, deserve better.
· Ph-D Coverage [~ENY~]
· Tipped Off [~ENY~]
· Dream Downtown Coverage {~ENY~]
· Nightlife Coverage [~ENY~]