Woman looks at her Capital One statement. Then she notices someone added a 266% tip to her restaurant check

A woman received an interesting email from Capital One, which let her know that she apparently gave a server a “266% tip” on a bill. The only problem? She had opted out of the tip line.

Adrienne (@yoadriennesellshomes), a Georgia realtor, posted a video that received more than 1.1 million views.

In it, she described an altercation she had with a manager at a local restaurant, where she ordered takeout. The content creator said she called the business after seeing a “$40” tip added to a to-go order she placed.

She added that despite letting the restaurant know it was “not an accident,” they responded that it was.

How did the tip get added?

Adrienne got a soup order to go from a West Atlanta restaurant she called “Nuevo Laredo Cantina,” at 1495 Chattahoochee Ave. NW in Atlanta.

Not long after, she received a strange message from Capital One. According to her bank statement, someone added a 266% tip to her bill. Adrienne explicitly clarified that she did not add the tip; she had X'ed out the space to leave one.

The realtor drove to the restaurant to discuss the charge. There, she said, an employee looked through various receipts and transaction histories to find Adrienne's.

Then she said something that told Adrienne who may have added the charge.

“Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay,” presumably referring to who handled the transaction. That's when the employee told Adrienne she'd need to call the owner to discuss the matter further.

A conversation with the owner

The employee managed to get the owner on the phone, so Adrienne was able to discuss the charge with him. The content creator said the owner was immediately apologetic. He told Adrienne that he hoped the experience wouldn't make her think of the restaurant differently. Then, while clarifying some additional details, he said something that struck a nerve with her.

“ Where he lost me was that he said, ‘This was just an accident,'” she said. “I said, ‘No problem, but… And I appreciate your, um, willingness to help me, and that you wanna take accountability for it, but I just wanna be clear, this, this wasn't an accident.'”

Adrienne said the owner reiterated the point. He then described a situation he had gone through where a restaurant accidentally added a $99 tip to a meal on accident, as a way of saying the situation just happens sometimes.

In response, Adrienne asked the employee, who was still standing and waiting for the phone, whether the tip space on her receipt was X'ed out. According to her, the employee “didn't want to say yes, but she didn't say no.”

By contrast, the owner said he was going to “stand by [his] staff.”

Did they make it right?

Adrienne said she wasn't going to make a video about the encounter at first, as the restaurant did refund her. But the situation made her realize she needed to check the charges on her card more carefully.

As a message to the restaurant, she said: “Before you make statements like that, you might wanna check and actually verify what it is that you claim you stand by …  I put an X on the receipt so there's no way that you could accidentally rerun my card for an additional $40 by accident.”

Adrienne took one lesson from the experience. “ I should … [check] into things like that,” she said. “I just wanted to share that story so that other people can be … mindful of checking their receipts to ensure that their tips are not changed as well.”

Do servers really add tips to bills?

In the comments section, multiple viewers said they were surprised that the owner stood the server. Adding a tip that a customer didn't intend to leave to a bill is fraudulent, although it usually results in chargebacks, not arrests.

Unfortunately, though, adding a tip to an empty tip line happens. BroBible has reported on multiple instances where servers have added tips for themselves—without the customer knowing. In one situation, a customer said that a Texas Roadhouse server added a tip for themselves without their consent. In another, BroBible covered a server who discussed her co-workers inflating their own tips on a routine basis.

And while a majority of servers don't inflate tips, it's a common enough practice for discussion threads and blogs to recommend fully X'ing out the tip line when a tip isn't given. Still, as Adrienne's experience proves, that may not always be enough.

@yoadriennesellshomes

Subplot News reached out to Adrienne via TikTok comment and to Nuevo Laredo Cantina via email.

The post Woman looks at her Capital One statement. Then she notices someone added a 266% tip to her restaurant check appeared first on Subplot News.