We've been too polite.
The card machine arrives with a tip already added, while the bar staff make eye contact and you pretend it's normal. It's not normal. A discretionary service charge can be removed by law, but most of us don't because making a scene at the bar is the most British thing imaginable.
Excuse Me is the scene. Quietly, publicly, on a list anyone can search.
How it works
- Anyone can file a report. Pub name, postcode (optional), the date. That's it.
- Reports go live straight away. Anyone can flag one as bogus; once a few people have, it disappears for moderation.
- We don't store your IP — only a hashed token used to stop a single person filing the same report twenty times.
- We use Google Analytics to see which pages get read. It sets its own cookies and sends usage data to Google; it never sees your name, your postcode or anything you type into a report or nomination.
- If you run a pub on the register and a report is wrong, get in touch. If it's right, the easiest way off is to stop doing it.
The Hall of Saints
If we're going to complain, we should also remember to clap. The Hall of Saints is the positive side of the register — pubs that get it right. Honest prices on the menu, fair pours, no surprises at the card machine.
Nominate yours here. One sentence is enough.
Doesn't the money go to staff now?
Since October 2024 it does — the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act requires every penny of tips and service charges to be passed on to staff, in full. That's a genuinely good law, and it isn't the complaint.
The complaint is consent. A tip you decide to leave is generosity. A charge that appears on the card machine while eye contact is being made is a price rise nobody was willing to chalk on the board. If a pub needs to charge more, it should charge more — up front, where you can see it before you order.
We're not alone in thinking this. When the Guardian looked at tip creep in August 2026, even the etiquette expert said there's no reason to tip at the bar of a pub — and that pressing "no" is fine, done briskly and confidently. We'd only add: you shouldn't have to.
About half-pints
We used to also flag pubs that charged more per unit for a half than a pint. After looking into it: this is extremely common, and the pubs' usual defence — that a half costs almost as much to pour, serve and wash up as a pint — is at least partly true.
What matters more, in our view, is whether the price is on the menu before you order. If it's posted up front, you can choose. If it's not, you've been done.
So we've narrowed focus to the one practice the customer genuinely can't see coming: the service charge that appears on the card machine without warning.
If half-pints feel disproportionate at a pub you've been to, push back at the till. That's the only price-correction mechanism that actually works.
Be fair
We want behaviour to change, not feuds. Don't file revenge reports. Don't name staff. Stick to what actually happened. Disproportionate reports get hidden. Patterns get the spotlight.
And while we're at it
Take your empties back to the bar when you leave. Clears the table, saves the staff a trip, and keeps the kind of pubs we like in business. The Hall of Saints starts with the customer.