SST on Service Charge

Sushiya is one of my favourite restaurants at One Utama and also one of my favourite Japanese restaurants. The food is delicious but expensive. Since we seldom go to One Utama, I tend to dine there when we are there.

One day, after I got home from dining there, I discovered that their bill was incorrect: they applied SST on the service charge, which shouldn't be the case. So, I lodged complaint with KPDN via ezAdu since there was action taken the last time concerning Nichiya Ramen although admittedly for different reason.

Later, a KPDN officer called me with regard to this complaint. Despite praising me for doing the right thing, he said that SST-related issues were under Malaysia Customs Dept's jurisdiction, not theirs. I mistakenly told him that I successfully lodged similar complaint earlier this year but he still advised me to approach Customs.

I tried to google to get the correct contact to lodge complaint with Customs but all of them were for retailers/companies, not ordinary folks. Their general hotline didn't seem to work: either it was engaged or no one picked up. Hence, I gave up and resolved to double check Sushiya's bill the next time we dined there, before we leave the premise.

So I was pleasantly surprised that weeks later, another KPDN officer called me that they had investigated Sushiya and got them to correc the billing system. He also asked whether the restaurant had called me to offer voucher, which they didn't. He then offered to press them on this but I said that there was no need to trouble himself as the discrepancy was a small amount. I was more concerned about the impact on many more customers in future and he fully agreed with that, praising me for my civic consciousness. I in turn expressed my appreciation for KPDN's service.

Almost immediately after that call, a Sushiya's staff (should be someone with some authority because later the waitress refered to him as "boss", called, apologised, offered voucher and told me how to get it. That was then followed by a call from an apologetic waitrress. After dealing with a little more administration matter, vouchers were issued about 2 weeks later that was a little more than the total cost of our last meal there. Unexpected.

The next time we dined there, we had these:

Yum! :) We had to foot out just a little more than the value of the vouchers.

I also learned from the waitress that there were other customers who complained to them about similar error in their bills. When I noted that they didn't make such calculation mistake in all previous times we were there, the waitrress said that when the billing system was adjusted to account for the increase in SST from 6% to 8% for alcohol (thank you Malaysia government for this complication), somehow the error was introducted.