If you’ve ever dined out, you know the drill. After your delicious drink or meal, you will likely get two receipts for your bill from your waiter: a merchant and a customer.
Sometimes a merchant copy will be the only receipt with a line for a signature, but often there is no distinct difference in the agreements between the two versions.
What happens if you accidentally sign the customer’s copy instead of the restaurant’s copy? Restaurant workers and fraud experts weighed in.
The signature of the customer’s copy on the merchant’s copy probably won’t matter.
San Diego-based beverage manager Alicia Perry said it may depend on the exact policies of the restaurant or establishment, based on her experience in the industry.
“It’s not something we traditionally worry about or worry about, as long as there’s a signed copy,” she said. “That way we can make sure whoever chooses or hopes to challenge it, that they’ve basically signed whatever they’ve marked on that side of the receipt.”
Gabriella Zottola, a restaurant manager based in Waltham, Mass., agreed and said leaving a signed copy of the customer wasn’t a big deal. “As long as the tip is clearly written on it, it’s fine!” she says. Zottola noted that if client copy is left behind, his practice is to “throw them away.”
Perry echoed that sentiment, saying, “If the guest isn’t there, then we just throw away [the customer copy] away to make sure it is not tampered with.
As technology makes paper receipts increasingly obsolete, consider that less of an issue these days.
Perry said whether or not to sign the merchant copy is “largely a moot point because of digital payments like Toast; however, it is perfectly acceptable to sign the customer’s copy. Nothing will happen.”
The one thing you should check? That you accidentally bring home the only signed receipt.
Bill Whitlow, a Covington, Kentucky-based restaurateur, said a bigger problem is when a customer signs the merchant’s copy and then accidentally takes it home, so all that’s left is a blank customer copy. Restaurants must then determine what the tip was supposed to be.
In these scenarios, what happens next depends on the restaurant’s policy. Whitlow said that at the restaurants he grew up in, staff members would work from the indentation of the tip left behind if it was clearly visible.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, the copies are superimposed. So you could clearly see the intent of what they were writing on the other pile. And you would go with that,” he said.
But in some cases, restaurant employees can end up without a tip if it’s not written on a receipt. Whitlow recalled that when he worked at a restaurant in Miami’s South Beach, if the customer “took the wrong copy, I wasn’t going to get a tip. [a] $200 to $300 check from South Beach… I sure knocked a few people down.
For Perry, signing is key. She said if a customer fills out a tip for a copy of the guest receipt, but doesn’t sign it, it can leave some restaurant staff without a tip.
In some places she worked, “I wouldn’t be able to capture that information,” she said. “I can’t really process a tip. Sure, I can process the payment.
If you want to be a savvy consumer, keep your customer copy.
Even if it doesn’t matter for invoicing, you should always take copies of customer receipts home with you.
Amy Nofziger, director of victim support at AARP Fraud Watch Network, said that in general, for any clothing, grocery or restaurant purchases, it’s a good idea to keep your receipts until the charge is processed on your credit card. That way, you can validate “that what you think you were charged is what was actually charged to your credit card. And then once you see it matches, you can get rid of that receipt,” she said.
Nofziger recalled how having a copy of a customer bill helped her dispute an incorrect tip amount. Without the customer’s copy, you can dispute the incorrect charge, “but again, having that copy, I think, is just more proof,” she said.
Nofziger also recommends knowing your last credit card numbers, so you can quickly notice if the information doesn’t line up.
“We need to make a habit of looking at where our personal information is,” she said. “If you’re looking at a receipt, it will usually have the last four digits of your credit card number, and then everything else will be engraved.”
Whitlow said if you find a discrepancy, you should first try calling the restaurant to get it fixed, as it can be costly for restaurants.
“If you see something wrong on your credit card statement…it’s probably just a legitimate mistake,” he advised. “We had an issue where someone would say they had a check for $100, and they put a $25 tip, and someone accidentally put that as a $35 tip.”
“And instead of calling the restaurant to get it fixed…they’re challenging it,” he continued.
Whitlow said this may result in the bank reimbursing the full amount, plus a fee, instead of just the tip amount. “The restaurant forfeits the tip they already gave the server, the entire check, and also has to pay us a $35 chargeback fee,” he said.
And if you want to be a good customer, check your calculations, restaurant owners advise.
Whitlow said it’s a common mistake that the tip amount doesn’t match the total amount. In these cases, he was taught to follow what is on the whistleblower line, because “people will write whatever they want, you can’t always expect them to do the math right.”
Zottola agreed and said in these scenarios, “We end up doing the math for them and we always put the correct total from the tip they write.”
But Perry said it can sometimes be a “null and void situation” when the tip amount doesn’t match the final amount, “because we can’t assume the individual wants to pay one or the other, especially if they don’t add up.”
In other words, what you do and what you don’t write and sign at the bottom of receipts really matters. This extra diligence of writing legibly and double-checking your calculations might take you a few extra minutes, but it can save you and the restaurant employees a lot of peace of mind.