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You probably lived it a thousand times. You stay with your friends for dinner in a restaurant and after the first, the second, the dessert, coffees and chupitos arrives the test of fire: the great Huge dilemma of how Devils foot the bill. Together or separate? Does each one pay your own or the bill is fractionated in equal parts? Card, metallic or a mixture of both? And in case someone forward money, especially if the minute is high, who does it and how the rest of the guests are organized to pay you?
In Spain increasingly Bars save those headaches to their customers by applying a very simple standard: no divided payments. A table, an account.
If you go together, you pay together. There are no official figures and from Facu increasingly Bars and restaurants in Spain embrace a rule when they have to charge guest groups: nothing to divide accounts between different customers sitting at the same table. At least if they intend to pay by card. A group, a payment. So simple.
Lasxta revealed recently that the custom is spreading through the Malaga hospitality, but similar news (and more or less recent) about restaurants from Aragon either Catalonia. There is also a good handful of references in Xeither Tiktok or even Reddit threads in which the pros and cons are discussed and whether it is legal or that a restaurant refuses to fraction an account.
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The big question: why? Like more or less, the undeniable thing is that the norm generates debate and Not everyone He feels comfortable with her. So … why are the hoteliers apply, even at the risk of angry at their clientele? The reason is simple: efficiency. A waiter is more comfortable and quick to manage a single charge to repeat that operation five, seven, ten or more times, depending on how many diners they have sat at the table.
“It is super complicated to charge separately and more when they are large groups,” Recognize A waiter from Malaga to Lasexta. “Sometimes groups of fifteen or twenty people are made and each one wants to pay their convenience,” confesses Another hotelier from Barcelona. When that happens, work is slowed down in the room and the business risks that the box ends up disabled.
There are times when the situation is further complicated and customers no longer ask for the payment, but each one is charged. It may seem a minor issue if the account is from a table with few customers, but the thing is complicated when we talk about broad groups and minutes of several hundred euros, as reported Two years ago In Tiktok a waiter.
But … Is it legal? The million dollar question. “There is really nothing regulated. The solution is to say no, that each diner will pay their part. The establishment has two options: accept or not collect,” he says Rubén Sánchezof Facua. “If at the door he indicates that he accepts card payments cannot reject that means of payment in half.
“There is no law that determines that customers have the right to fraction the account to pay it at once. It is an aspect in which the law does not deepen so much. You have to apply common sense,” agrees Enrique García, spokesman for the OCU. “The logical thing is to inform the company that provides the service and customers to attend these circumstances.”
@xavi_abat Have you found in this situation? #Elabogadodetiktok
A supplement to fraction? At the end of 2024 Xavi Abat, “Tiktok’s lawyer”, He warned of another practice to which more and more bars and restaurants are being accepted: the collection of “separate accounts supplements” to those customers who ask for the payment of payment. In Your video Abat in fact showed the poster of a bar that applies different “management” positions depending on the size of the table and how many payments should process: one to eight diners, one euro; from eight to 12, two euros; And in the case of tables of more than 12 clients, three euros. Those sums, says the place, cover “the resources” invested and the use of TPV.
The key: Information and visibility. The question is the same … are that kind of supplements legal? The key, ABAT revealsis in the information available to the client when he sits at the table. “There is no law, nothing is said in the Civil Code. The contractual relations between the parties are free. Each establishment can establish what they want,” reason The expert. “Therefore, if the restaurant warns of this charge, there is a contractual offer and you and you accept, you have to eat it.”
“Contrary, if you go to a restaurant, you are seven or eight and at the end of the food they do not let you pay separately, as you have not been warned, as you have not had the option to negotiate it, you can oppose and demand that you want to pay separately. You could file a complaint or plant yourself there until they let you charge separately,” adds ABAT.
Argument shock. The reality is that both parties, hoteliers and customers, have arguments to be in favor or against collection subdivisions. Business They allege What dividing the accounts demands more time, slows down their work, you can unravel the box and carry an expenditure of time and extra resources. After all, there are payment systems that generate extra commissions when several operations are carried out. The truth is that the unique payment in groups is a common practice in other countries in Europe.
As for customers, the main complaint is the discomfort and headaches that can lead not to divide the accounts. Without counting that someone must pay the full amount of the invoice. “Why do I have to fight with the people of a group to make me the bizum of what they have consumed?” Question A user in X: “It is a pain. Especially when your friend is the birthday, your friends you don’t know and you are twenty.”
Image | VITALY GARIEV (UNSPLASH)
In Xataka | More and more Spanish bars refuse to pay at the table. Its objective is very simple: greater rotation
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