If you want to be treated like an ignorant tourist and ripped off then I thoroughly recommend Royal China.

We dined there a couple of weeks ago and had a great meal with excellent service. All was good.

We returned this evening and had another enjoyable meal and thought that Royal China's reputation as a good local Chinese restaurant was confirmed. Then the bill came.

I handed over my credit card and the waitress printed out a receipt that I had to sign. The ‘tip’ line was left blank. I told the waitress that the ‘recommended’ service charge had already been added to the bill. I asked why she had asked us to sign a separate bill with a blank space for the ‘tip’. She flustered and said that an additional confirmation was required by the bank. Yeah, right! I told her that we had dined here two weeks ago and the waitress had not required us to sign a separate bill for a bank confirmation. Like almost every other restaurant in London, all I had to do was enter my PIN. I could even see that the wireless credit card terminal had an ‘Enter PIN’ message on the screen. Presumably the scam was to ask the customer to add a ‘second’ tip on the paper receipt at which point the waitress would cancel the original transaction and re-enter the higher amount (the original bill with the second ‘tip’ added).

Anyone who has lived in London for a while knows that this practice was all but outlawed about five years ago. The main newspapers, most notably the Independent, mounted a campaign to eradicate the intentional double-charging of ‘tips’.

I asked to speak to manager. He came to the table and also repeated the line that the bank required an additional confirmation. When pressed harder, he told me that a ‘service charge’ was different to a ‘tip’ and that he wanted to give his customers the opportunity of adding a ‘tip’ if they liked the meal. I'll leave you to be the judge as to whether this is credible. If you think that a service charge is different to a tip then by all means dine hear… More