A man was outraged when he discovered his friend was charged a cancellation fee at a New York restaurant even though he showed up for the reservation.
TikTok creator Sean Lans sparked a heated debate after his friend was charged the fee despite booking the time slot and sitting down at the table, but left before ordering.
“Last weekend I went out for dinner with a friend and it was one of those annoying restaurants where you have to insert your card to make a reservation,” Lans explains in a video posted on the video sharing platform.
“So my friend makes the reservation, enters her card information, and the restaurant had a 24-hour cancellation policy with a $25 fee,” he continued, adding that they didn’t think it would be a problem because they didn’t like were planning on canceling and they showed up on time for the reservation.
“In fact, we were ten minutes early,” he added indignantly.
Then they were sitting in the restaurant looking at the menu when Lans’ friend started feeling sick and immediately went to the bathroom and left him sitting alone.
“The waiter keeps coming over and I say, ‘Oh no, my friends in the bathroom, we’ll order when she comes back,’” he recalled.
Fifteen minutes later, however, it was clear that his friend would have to leave.
Sean Lans was furious when he discovered his friend had to pay a cancellation fee at a New York restaurant even though he showed up for the reservation
“She texts me from the bathroom and says, ‘I feel really dirty all of a sudden, I don’t know if I’m going to throw up if it comes out the other side when it becomes number one, number two, number three,” recalled he himself.
“She clearly didn’t want a full meal, so we thought, let’s just leave, that’s fine.”
After his friend returned from the bathroom, they explained the situation to the waiter and left the eatery.
The pair thought nothing of it, but when Lans’ friend checked She saw on her credit card statement a few days later that she had been charged a $25 cancellation fee.
“So she called the restaurant and said, ‘Why were we charged for this?’ “I showed up, I followed the policy and they said, oh no, it’s not just the cancellation policy, we have a minimum spend policy,” he said in the video.
Lans said the restaurant told them the cancellation policy was in effect because the establishment was counting on the reservations to generate revenue for the company.
“(And they told her) ‘but you didn’t,’” he recalled angrily.
Lans said he then went on to reread the policy, insisting it contained “nothing about minimum spending.”
“So I’m wondering if this has happened to anyone before because I understand the logic behind what they’re saying, but also the policy that they’re saying is different from the print policy so I don’t see how that’s enforceable,” he concluded the video .
Reactions to his post were mixed.
Some were outraged on behalf of the restaurant and others agreed with the restaurant’s policies.
‘They shouldn’t have done this out of courtesy. There were clearly extenuating circumstances here,” one user commented.
“Not buying anything is the same as not showing… that the restaurant has lost revenue,” one user commented.
‘Actually on the side of the restaurant. These places charge cancellation fees because they’re missing out on valuable business by holding the table just for you so you don’t have to spend any money,” someone else interjected.
‘It’s a cancellation if you haven’t ordered anything. You canceled, you just did it on the spot,” another commented.
According to Open table, Cancellation or no-show fees are important to protect the business.
They noted that as many as 28 percent of Americans say they have not shown up for a reservation in the past year.
This can have serious consequences for the restaurant, which will lose money through labor costs and food waste.