Hand grab surcharge from cooler : really ?!

Seems like they made it pretty clear that they don't want your business.

I'm wondering, is there some outside chance that there's some law that requires such nonsense? Not too sure of NY laws.

 

Seems high, but a reasonable margin/markup if it is at a bar. I mean, if you drank it there was it still only $14 or was there a higher price on the menu? I see it for $10 in all the big box discount liquor stores around Chicago, so paying $20 total in a bar seems a bit steep, but not totally out of order - depends on if they gave you the retail price then charged you the bar markup.

Either way, seems easier to simply charge you a menu price, as it does come across as pretty douchy to charge $6 to hand you a beer.

 

Were you in a store or a bar? If you grabbed a beer out of a cooler at a bar, you deserved a bigger penalty than you got. Don't be a dick in bars. Bartenders are responsible for your behavior, they can get fined if you do something dumb after they've served you. What if the bartender hadn't seen you grab the bottle, and you had opened it and drank it? One of the bartenders jobs is to determine if you are too drunk to be served anymore. Reaching into a cooler would be a good sign that you shouldn't be served anymore.

 

If you had seen it before leaving you could have added your own charge of 5.98 for picking up the bill.

 

Did you read the post? he said he got charged for the bartender to grab it for him

 

@beertunes I might have mis-read, but I understood it as a service charge for buying a beer to go in a bar.

OP is this what happened? You basically got a beer to take home but were in a bar?

 

I think you may have misinterpreted the OP. Most likely the bar was selling the gent a bottle at retail price, then charging a "corking" fee for lack of better terms. This is common practice in bars/restaurants where you can buy beer/wine at retail price to take home.

 

Just to clarify on behalf of the OP, the JW Lee was a "traveler" beer, which I take to mean a "to go" beer.

Typically to go beers--even ones bought in a bar--are *cheaper* than beers bought to consume on premises. Charging a $5 mark-up on a to go beer not only seems asinine, but it strikes me as the opposite of what is typically done in these situations, largely because a to go beer doesn't carry the same costs as an on-premises beer: bartender/staff worrying about your inebriation and/or serving you, dirtying glassware, taking up a space in the bar, etc.

That would be the last time I went to that bar. I wouldn't even bother asking them about it, because that practice strikes me as bush-league.

 

That's pretty steep for a "corkage" fee, which is essentially all that is, and pagriley is right. What they should do is make it so that the menu price includes the "corkage" fee and then they just give you a discount when you get the bottle to go. Way simpler and yes, far less douchey. And also, what if you drink multiple bottled beers while at the bar? Is there a $6 fee for every single bottle opened? If so, that's outrageous.

 

You hit the nail right on the head. So @TurkeyFeathers would you please clarify if you drank the bottle there, or took it to go? If you got charged for a to-go bottle, that's even more outrageous than the size of the actual fee. My hangup is I've never heard of this "traveler" term.

 

In all seriousness I'd be pretty pissed about something like that, just charge me $20 up front so I don't think I'm getting a nice deal just to get slapped with an almost 30% surcharge.

 

This is an uncorking fee plain and simple. Many bottle shops and fridge door bars do this.

 

Not sure I would even expect a discount at a bar for a traveler - I mean, if I want the beer to go then I would expect to be charged the bar price as it is on the menu (after all they have bothered to stock a specialty beer and could just sell it to the next guy at menu price). I just don't get why they bothered to charge 1 price, then add an extra charge. Only thing I can think of is that they want to discourage traveler purchases, but if the menu price was $14, I would definitely be back to that bar! That is a $10 beer in a retail store in Chicago

 

One of our places here gives a discount for bottles to go (Cap Ale) but upcharge? Sounds like a union thing to me. Since the bartender wasn't' given the opportunity to perform labour, ie., draw from a tap, you had to pay him anyway. Either way, WOW, that's craptacular.

 

I admittedly don't go out to bars that often, but is this really common? I could eat a $2 fee maybe if I bought a nice bottle of something, but I would really much rather just get charged up front or at the very least told about it first, which it sounds like OP wasn't.

 

A: If I hadn't read the post, I wouldn't have responded. Thanks for trying though.

B: I did misread the post. This is the part that threw me off: "I got charged for bartender to remove the traveler beer". I took that to mean that when the bartender saw that the beer had "traveled" from the cooler, without him doing it, that he added a dickhead surcharge.

C: Apologies to OP. Carry on.

 

If the charge is not on the menu I would never go back to the place. Let them know why and give them a chance to make it right. If it was a credit card purchase I would consider going through the credit card company. You may not win as you probably signed the receipt, but you never know. In the least the bar will have to answer to them and realize customers feel they are getting ripped off.

 

I haven't seen an uncorking fee anywhere that wasn't a BYOB place. Interesting that this would be the case here, why not just build that into the price of the beer?