Pizza Express, stop thieving staff tips!

To: Richard Hodgson, CEO Pizza Express

2,969
of 3,000 signatures

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Pizza Express is cheating staff of their fair tips. The 8% ‘admin fee’ it deducts from credit card tips should be scrapped with 100% of tips going to staff– no deductions, no excuses.

Why is this important?

Pizza Express rightly prides itself on bringing great pizza to Britain – 50 years ago this year. Today, with over 400 restaurants across the UK, business is booming.

We think you’ll agree that one of the keys to your success is your staff –friendly and hardworking they deserve to be treated with respect.

But many are questioning why Pizza Express is taking a slice of their tips. Most Pizza Express staff are paid the national minimum wage of £6.50 p/h – barely enough to survive on. They are heavily reliant on tips simply to make ends meet.

It’s why we are urging Pizza Express to scrap the 8% ‘admin fee’ it deducts from customer credit card tips simply to process them through the payroll. You claim not to profit from the fee, but our Pizza Express members estimate that the company could be pocketing a cool £1 million. It can’t cost that much to transfer credit card tips into workers’ pay packets.

We say that the only fair tips policy is one where 100% of customer tips go to the staff with no deductions by the employer. And the public agrees; backed up by two recent newspaper polls. In the Metro 92% of respondents said that 100% of tips should go to staff, in the Daily Telegraph 85% agreed.

There can be no excuses for your unfair tips policy. Very few of Pizza Express’ high street rivals charge a fee for processing credit card tips. The Restaurant Group, owners of Chiquito and Garfunkels, dropped its 10% ‘admin charge’ a few years ago. If they can do it, why can’t Pizza Express?

Act today to scrap the 8% admin fee on credit card tips. With Pizza Express celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, there really is no better time to show your staff you care. Until you do we will continue to call on customers to tip in cash.

Hat tip Going to Work

Elephant Insurance: Seriously rotten and completely rubbish car insurance

This is I admit a bit of a rant but not that off message.  Every day in our society, we come across the message again and again, about how efficient and well run the private sector is since it is by led by “profit” when compared with the supposedly “inefficient” and producer interest driven public sector. Why is this so?

When everyone I speak to on this subject has at least one horrendous horror story to tell of being ripped off by a private Bank, Insurance company or utility.  

My tail of woe with Elephant started last year when I (stupidly) took out a car insurance policy with them. I had maximum no claims bonus but within a few months my car had been written off after being rear ended while parked and then my new car was bashed into at work by contractors.  

The whole Claim experience was pretty dire and completely rubbish. Be warned!  Firstly the car replacement service that they were suppose to provide while I was waiting for things to be sorted out were just incompetent. Phone calls were never answered and my replacement cars turned up very late and whenever it suited them. They didn’t turn up to collect the car at the end either which meant that the claim for my excess was held up for months while solicitors argued about the car hire fees. No one in Elephant seemed to give a damn about what was happening. 

You felt you were totally by yourself. I made complaints and told several Elephant employees that I do not want anything to do with such an incompetent company in the future. They apologised and assured me that my contract will end. Despite this they then stole £731 from my credit card account for a new policy. I of course complained and they agreed to cancel my policy and refund my £731. Of course they didn’t do what they had promised to do and they ignored all my complaints. I had to get my credit card company to refund my account. End of matter?

No, don’t be silly. Elephant now ignore the emails that they sent accepting they will refund my account and took £355 out of my account for breach of contract??? Needless to say they did not warn me that they will be doing this nor did they send my any receipt for doing so.  

Now, I know that no company or service is perfect and mistakes can happen. But what interests me is what happens when things go wrong? Is there a will to acknowledge what has gone wrong and make amends? Or is this rotten service just deliberate since rubbish companies such as Elephant and parent company Admiral make money out of exploiting customers in such ways? 

Do the the senior executives of this Company make their obscene bonuses not from providing decent services to customers but from the practice of deliberately ripping people off?  I am forced to conclude that they do. So the next time you see some silly tabloid headline about public services, just remember how simply c**p private services can be. They don’t give a damn about their customers they only want to exploit their competitive advantage to fleece you. This is red raw Capitalism folks – don’t you just love it!