Chase took his wife to a restaurant for her birthday while vacationing in Maine. He brought a birthday cake and had the waitress bring it out for her. But when the bill came there was a $25 cake cutting fee. Chase is angry that he had to pay to eat his own cake, but is the restaurant justified in charging to cut and serve the cake? Would you pay a $25 cake cutting fee for a cake that you supplied yourself?
Ayla Brown: And good morning, Chase. Thank you for calling in, because I hear that something happened at a restaurant, and you just needed to call me. So what went down?
Chase: Okay, I am just very confused. My family summers up on vacation in Maine. We go to Maine every summer. It’s my wife’s birthday. Okay, So I go out. We’ve been there before. I get this great cake, It’s amazing. I get this perfect birthday cake, and then I want to surprise her. So then we go to the restaurant. I want to do a secret thing. And I said to the waitress, Hey, can you do me a favor? I got this special cake. And if they did a whole thing with it, can you guys just bring it out at the end? She said, No problem. I tell you what, we’ll even cut it up and we’ll come out with the whole thing and it’s great. I think that’s so kind of you. That’s awesome. That’s why I love Maine.
Ayla Brown: Yeah, the people are so nice.
Chase: Yeah, they are. So they come out, they do everything they said. It was all cut up into little pieces. They’re handing out of the whole thing, and it was true, it was just really nice.
Ayla Brown: Okay.
Chase: And then at the end of the meal, I get the bill and there’s a $25 service fee. I get charged for the cake.
Ayla Brown: Were you charged for the cake or because you brought the cake?
Chase: I have zero idea. But the point is this. I bought the cake. I brought the cake. I didn’t even need them to do anything. I just wanted them to bring it out as a surprise. And now suddenly I have to pay them almost a quarter of $100. Just for that.
Ayla Brown: Yeah, for cutting a cake for you and delivery. It’s a service fee. I mean, it probably said service fee on the bill.
Chase: Yeah, it did. It said service fee. But the thing is what service? Walk ten feet? That’s not worth $25 and it’s just rude. And I think this is what’s happening. I don’t think we should be paying all this. I think there’s way too much. When you’re going to take out. You have to tip the guy ten bucks. You bring a cake in that I paid almost 300 bucks.
Ayla Brown: 300 bucks, as you said. Yeah. When you think about it. Like that quarter of 100 is a lot of money. And is it just outside? Dang. Chase You seem very mad about it. As a cheap, sorry, I’m not cheap. I’m frugal. As a frugal person myself. Okay. Jim says I’m cheap, but I think I’m frugal. And if I had seen a service fee of $25 for cake cutting, I would have personally thought to myself, Dang, had I known that I want to cut it myself, You know what I mean? But does anyone else feel like we do? Chase That is the question
Chase: Thank you.
