3 of my friends and I all have our birthdays in the beginning of December so we all decided to celebrate together. We decided on National because of the location. We really should have gone to Craft, but nothing can be done about that now. We were a small group, probably about 12 - 14 people came and went throughout the night. All of them paying their tabs and tipping before leaving. Little did we know that our server was allowing them all to pay, but not removing their drinks or food items from the bill. So when the bill comes at the end of the night and everyone has put in the money for what they have had and tipping on their part of the bill we are still short. We tell our waitress that there is something wrong but she claims the bill is correct and walks away. Feeling guilty that someone may have left without paying their bill we all pitch in extra to cover the rest and a tip for the waitress. Everyone celebrating their birthday that night ended up paying double or more. I paid $300 for a burger, a poutine and a few beer.
After talking to our friends over the next few days we found out that they had all paid. They told us when they were paying their tabs before leaving the waitress told them that she was not supposed to split items off the bill and not to tell anyone that she was doing it. I found this really suspicious as every restaurant I have ever been to can easily split a bill so each person can pay their own portion, but maybe this establishment has some strange rule against it. After going over the bill with every one of our friends that attended, we made a list of the items that had been paid for and that the waitress had been tipped for twice. We called to speak to a manager and inform them of what had happened, they said they would speak to the waitress to see if she remembered anything about it. After about 4 days we finally heard back from the manager that they would reimburse us for the items that we had paid for twice but nothing more. They didn't do anything about the fact that we had tipped twice on every item in addition to the mandatory 20% Gratuity that was automatically added to our bill. Nothing. They did the bare minimum. All they did was give back some of the money they had wrongly taken from us.
After driving for an hour to go pick up the money they were going to give back, the manager apologized and said if we ever came back they would buy us a drink. I am certain nobody from our group that attended that night will ever be returning.