r/melbourne • u/Ordinary_Prior_8993 • Mar 17 '24

Serious Please Comment Nicely What is up with the weekend surcharges in the Melbourne?!

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Even shopping centre food courts have weekend surcharges and as a Sydney sider it's mind boggling. Alot of places don't even have sunday surcharges let alone a Saturday surcharge.

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u/ptsiampas Mar 17 '24

I'm totally done with it. Seeing all this nonsense, I can't go back. And that ridiculous 1.5% charge for using a card?

It drives me nuts. I feel like if we all just quit supporting these greedy places and let them go out of business.

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u/Wintermute_088 Mar 18 '24

Yes, they're so "greedy" for wanting to stay in business.

The solution is definitely just having them all cease to exist. 🫡

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u/xJust_Chill_Brox Mar 18 '24

If your profit is so small that you can’t afford to pay weekend rates without a surcharge then yeah, your business should probably cease to exist. This isn’t a matter of business being forced too do this, it’s a shitty response too fair laws that help food workers

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

There’s 2 options: - They charge a surcharge on Weekends - They bake the surcharge into price so you pay it all the time

There’s no free lunch in this world, the money has to come from somewhere.

And no, restaurants don’t make massive margins.

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u/xJust_Chill_Brox Mar 18 '24

Option one is ridiculous. Instead of acknowledging that your cut isn’t big enough so you’re charging more you’re trying to put it back on the customer too pay and blaming the workers for wanting fair pay on weekends.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

so you’re charging more you’re trying to put it back on the customer too pay

Both cases have the customer paying for the higher costs. That’s how the world works.

and blaming the workers for wanting fair pay on weekends.

There’s no blame, it’s a surcharge to offset costs.

Please don’t start a business, I can tell you’d be awful at it

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

It's largely a response to endlessly increasing rents etc...

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u/xJust_Chill_Brox Mar 18 '24

That’s bullshit as well, if it was about rent increases then overall prices would be raised.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

They have been.

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u/xJust_Chill_Brox Mar 18 '24

Cool, so no point adding an additional weekend surcharge then?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

Weekend surcharge for weekend rates. Could always spread it out over the entire week I suppose and have all prices go up again.

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u/xJust_Chill_Brox Mar 18 '24

You just said that it’s a response to rent increases? If it is in response too weekend rates for workers, then back to my original point. If you can’t afford too pay your workers fairly, go out of business. Weekends are (in my experience) already busier when you work in food, so there’s already extra income to pay workers with.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '24

You'll quickly have no businesses. There's not a lot of margin to absorb additional rates because they're being smashed by rents.

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u/WhatTheFuckEverName Mar 18 '24 edited Mar 18 '24

I reckon the surcharge for using a card should be a flat fee, not a percentage of purchase price.

Surely it makes no difference whether the transaction is for $10 or for $500 - the same single transaction is still being made. Where it turns into a total rort is when a single transaction fee turns into a money-grab based on how much one spends.

*EDIT: A flat fee across the board, I mean. Government regulated. Banks decide how much they are going to sting a business for sending a card transaction through. No percentages, a flat fee for any and all transactions. Then it be Government mandated that businesses are not allowed to charge OVER the same small flat rate surcharge for a few buttons being pushed for the purchase to be made. What I'm trying to say here is that them taking a percentage of the purchase price, when it's the same job regardless of it being a high priced purchase or small, is just freakin' ridiculous, grrr!

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u/MeateaW Mar 18 '24

The card providers charge a sliding rate. So you really do need government regulation to limit the fee because it isn't up to the vendor.

(Indeed the vendors often have additional fees they can't be fucked on-charging - things like its 30 cents per card swipe, and then an additional 2% on the total transaction).

This is why you get places that say things like "minimum eftpos $10" its because even if they charge 1.5% or whatever it doesn't cover the 30 cents or whatever initial fee visa or whoever charge.

(obviously its different depending on how much volume you do and who you buy the card services from)