Every one has made a hue and cry about this 10% service charge levied by the restaurants in UAE. Ministry says service charge is illegal and restaurants continue to justify the same. As quoted in the 7 days article “The committee, which is chaired by Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, the Minister of Economy, said that under Consumer Protection Law 26, issued in 2006, restaurants are not allowed to add any service charge to a bill.” If this rule is in the books past 3 years, was the Consumer Protection Committee sleeping or the restaurants were never awake?
I want my money back. A lot is being questioned and discussed about the charges in the local forums and newspapers, which causes further confusion. As per an article published in The National – most of the restaurants remain confused about this rule or rather are taken by surprise. Some of them justify the charge as a means to provide high service standards to their customers. The only question remains that do the restaurants continue to charge or not? As of today the restaurants maintain that if the Ministry insists then they would discontinue the service charge. I believe the statement made by Mr Al Mansouri has fallen on deaf ears – stop the service charge. Have you recently dined out at any restaurants in the past 2 days which levy a service charge?
It was almost a year ago when, Lehman Brothers, one of world’s most trustworthy investment bank collapsed. This led to global financial panic, crashing of stock markets, housing crises failure of major investment houses etc. The series of event took place last September spreading panic world wide among bankers and destabilizing the financial system. When the dust had settled most of the world markets were down and big power houses were competing for government fund support.
