Out of curiosity, how does that work? When making a reservation do you have to provide your credit card? I highly doubt that given that it's Germany :) Seriously though, how do they make people pay?
Exactly that: “Please provide your card to complete the booking”. I was so pissed about it I signed up for Revolut (for their single-use cards). Funnily enough, restaurants that force you to do this are neither the best nor especially highly rated.
In my experience, restaurants taking deposits will actually charge the deposit to the card at the time you are making the reservation and credit it towards the final check amount if you do show up.
I’ve seen it both ways. For larger parties most places near me charge upfront. For couples or parties up to 4 the charge hits 48 hours before your reservation or whatever the cutoff happens to be. In one case, I did have to get the bill adjusted because the restaurant forgot the credit our deposit. I think it was an honest mistake since we’ve never had a problem there in half a dozen other visits and it’s only for parties over 8 that they charge the deposit. Seeing as the whole place only seats about 40, they don’t get many large parties.
San in berlin does this. Im surprised at how many users on hn have never experienced or even heard of the practice considering the average income of the group.
“Why would I leave my house to pay someone else to shake up my bottle of Soylent? I can just buy it premixed.”
“My work has an excellent and free cafeteria. I just eat there and stuff my pockets with things for the company bus ride to my apartment in the hive my company developed.”
“I’m kind of creeped out by restaurants because of the whole power dynamics of someone there to ‘serve’ me. And on top of that they want to know all kinds of stuff about what I want to eat. I think they are collecting all that information and then targeting me with advertising.”
Out of curiosity, how does that work? When making a reservation do you have to provide your credit card? I highly doubt that given that it's Germany :) Seriously though, how do they make people pay?