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TOURISM

Tourists left reeling after tipping scam

Two Danish tourists were left out of pocket after they were fooled into leaving a 20 percent tip at a Stockholm restaurant recently, despite the fact that tipping in Sweden is optional.

Published: 23 September 2011 15:53 CEST

”This sounds like an attempt to trick uninformed tourists into paying more,” Clemens Wantschura of the Swedish Hotels and Restaurant Association (Sveriges hotell- och restaurangföretagare -SHR) told The Local.

In June, Danish couple Paul Eller and his wife Else-Marie visited Stockholm over a long weekend. While here, they decided to take the opportunity to dine out in the restaurant Stortorgskällaren in the picturesque Gamla Stan (Old Town) district.

The visit was a success until they were presented with a bill on which a red stamp at the bottom stated that a service charge of 20 percent wasn’t included. The couple decided to ask the waiter what this meant.

”The waiter said that restaurants in Sweden can choose whether or not they want to include a tip in the price,” Eller told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily.

But according to the Swedish Hotels and Restaurant Association this is not the case.

”A tip should never be anything more than a reward for good service to the serving staff – it has nothing to do with the restaurant,” said Wantschura.

Wantschura added that there is always an ongoing discussion as to how much one should leave as a tip, but he maintained that there are no stipulated rules to how much you should leave, or whether you should pay the waiting staff anything at all.

“You should keep in mind, as well, that all serving staff in Sweden are salaried, they don’t have to survive on tips as the case may be in other countries,” said Wantschura.

“I tell people they must decide themselves if they want to pay anything, and in that case how much, depending on how much they thought the service was worth.”

The chairman of the management board responsible for running the restaurant in question, Conny Lantz, told DN that there hasn’t been any instructions from the board to encourage guests to pay any extras. He said he doesn’t know how the red stamp came to be on the receipt.

“We are taking this very seriously and will conduct a full investigation,” Lantz assured DN.

According to the paper, this particular method is not a scam that police in Sweden are familiar with. Neither has Clemens Wantschura heard of anything similar.

“No, this is news to me, but I am glad it has been brought up in the national media as it will be picked up on by more people that way,” he said.

In the end, Paul Eller and his wife added an extra 240 kronor ($35) on their bill after the meal in Stockholm’s Gamla Stan.

“To see a restaurant tricking its customers this way feels sad. I feel diddled and disappointed,” he said to DN.

Wantschura advised customers faced with a demand similar to the one the Ellers received to simply refuse to pay the extra charge.

“They should say that they are only prepared to pay for what they have ordered – the items listed on the bill. And they should stand their ground,” Wantschura told The Local.

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FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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