Petition · past parliament · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Make it illegal for restaurants to automatically add gratuity to the bill
Closed
5,202 signatures
What the petition asks
Many restaurants now value their own service by automatically adding a service charge onto the bill. We believe this is essentially a hidden charge that relies on socially anxious people wanting to avoid confrontation in order to make customers pay more.
We believe automatically adding a service charge to the bill is an unfair extra charge on the customers. The value of service should be at the discretion of the customer, not the staff. This extra charge is being paid by unwilling customers because they don't want to ask staff to have the fee removed. We think too many companies are being unduly greedy and taking advantage of their customers.
Timeline
| 21 Feb 2023 | Petition opened for signatures |
| 21 Aug 2023 | Closed to new signatures |
Key facts
Signatures
5,202
Status
Closed
Department
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Opened
21 Feb 2023
Closed
21 Aug 2023
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Source: the official petition page. Last checked 15 Jul 2026.