From a UK perspective,
Originally posted by: ElFenix
1) they charge you again for a refill. wtf?
They charge by the cup, if they did it free refil style they'd just multiply the price by the average number of cups drank, give or take. Either you can get annoyed for paying per refil, or you can get annoyed by paying a refil-inclusive price when you only want one cup.
Originally posted by: ElFenix
2) they charge you if you want more than two ketchup packets.
I can only think of American-owned fast food places and those natty supermarket food 'things' that do that, though last time I was in a McD's (years ago) there was a tray where you help yourself anyway. Anywhere half decent will pass you the bottle of Heinz if you ask for ketchup, and anywhere decent will look slightly offended by you wanting to ruin their food with it.
Originally posted by: ElFenix
3) if you ask for water they charge you $5 for a bottle of evian. are we in the fscking 3rd world where the water will kill you? no.
Only in a nightclub which is trying too hard to appear exclusive will you be charged anything like that, but yes bottled water is generally expensive.
Over the entire process of getting that bottled water to you the overheads are similar to drinks with supposably more expensive ingredients. The actual raw ingredients of Coke and other soft drinks are a miniscule fraction of the end price, and only in a few places is bottled the normal way to drink water, so the mass scale economy isnt there.
If you're buying food ask for a jug of tapwater, they'll bring over a jug with lemon and ice if required and charge you nothing for it.
Originally posted by: ElFenix
4) the bars won't keep your credit card open as a tab. everyone on the planet drinks more when they only have to say their name in exchange for a drink. this is a really big problem because of 5, below.
Yeah not many places do this, in the UK if they did there would probably be some outcry about people opening tabs and getting too drunk because they've not been following what they're spending, or being amazed a few weeks later when sober and the £70 bill comes through.
It's very unusual to pay by credit card for anything small here, it's all cash until you get to around £10. The only time you'd pay by card is if you were doing rounds with a large group, or more likely using bank card and you'd use cashback because you forgot to go to the cashmachine (autoteller or whatever it's called over there).
Originally posted by: ElFenix
5) credit card minimums. it's the 21st century, and backwards europe still carries cash around? worse yet, the smaller demoninations are all in inconvenient heavy coins that trick you into thinking the 4 pounds 50 p that you just paid for a sandwich in a plastic box at sainsbury's wasn't that much.
The cc companies charge something like 30p for each transaction, which is normally absorbed by the seller. Little wonder small shops are unwilling to pay that when their margin is even less. Almost everywhere will let you pay by CC if you really want, but would add the 30p surcharge and be assuming that you would not want to.
for the lazy:
1 British Pound = 1.83902 US Dollar
1 US Dollar (USD) = 0.54377 British Pound (GBP)
(though i think it's usually more like £1 = $1.4 to 1.6)