Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

workingwa.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 718 posts

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#541

Post by glangdale »

manigandham wrote: post #516
MisterTea wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a minimum I'm going to be tipping in cash. Do the right thing. Take a stand for human decency and make a compromise by closing your instacart account now . Absorb the inconvenience and do your own shopping. And make sure to tell instacart to (insert profanity of choice) if you can while closing your account. That behaviour is low down and dirty. Shady craigs list used car dealer level stuff. I just walked three…

Good for you, but arbitrary moral judgements against everyone else never goes well. Walking miles to gather food and water is the reality for billions of people. Using Instacart is a luxury in the first place, but having everyone close their account only hurts the very people you seem to be for. In case you missed it in the article, there is a workaround so that your tips are correctly considered, or you can always p…

If Instacart closes down because of this kind of shitty behavior, people may learn a thing or two, and the next company in this space might decide that wage theft is not going to be part of their competitive advantage.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#542

Post by thejerz »

This is why I never tip on Prime Now, Instacart, Uber, Lyft, or Postmates: I don't trust them. Show me whatever the price is, and based on that I'll decide whether to use your service today. I'm not interested in voluntarily giving your business money.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#543

Post by glangdale »

xref wrote: post #493
sneak wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to be tipping in cash to begin with. Anyone doing unskilled labor and getting tips is not likely in a position to be able to afford the income tax on those tips. Always tip in cash.

Breezing past your suggestion that workers should do some tax fraud, not reporting your tips also lowers your social security earnings which is going to lower your payouts as well.

... it's been a while since I've been in the USA, but isn't the Earned Income Tax Credit still a thing? That might also show up if you're not earning that much...

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#544

Post by parthdesai »

afterburner wrote: post #287
muppetman wrote: post #127

It's funny (to me, anyway) that this sort of things affects only America (and I guess Canada?) This odd culture you have there of tipping and how it's so tightly integrated into your society. As a non-American I had to read the article a few times to understand what the problem was - I thought this was just how tipping worked in the US. I always read of service workers who only manage to "stay afloat" by the tips the…

Yes, and Canada. Expected tip amounts have also been going up, I assume now because companies/restaurants want to hide a price rise behind it.

hide a price rise?

Food prices have gone up since increase in minimum wage last year, and default tip option is 18% at majority of the places. Oh and that 18% counts the 13% tax, so you are tipping more than 18%.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#545

Post by richardfeynman »

blaisio wrote: post #535

Wow. I'm cancelling my instacart account immediately. They've made so many mistakes in the past, but I liked their app. But this crosses the line by a mile. When I give someone a tip, it's not because I chose to pay more for an order just for fun, it's because I want the worker to get extra. They don't get to charge me a service fee, and ask me to tip, and then not give the worker my service fee. That's just crazy.

I'm also pretty sure that they say that 100% of the tip goes to the driver when you place an order.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#546

Post by foobiekr »

tedivm wrote: post #10

There's a related blog post up on Medium by this same group (Working Washington) where they placed the same order, once with tip and once without, so people could directly compare. From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I'm a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I'm going…

Doordash too, apparently:

https://notipdoordash.com/

I've tipped a lot on Doordash. I feel ripped off.

My company regularly used Doordash for years and made a point of tipping on orders. Crazy.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#547

Post by jeremyjh »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #473
B-Con wrote: post #32

> That's right: the customer's tip doesn't get added to the worker's check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker. My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0] Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money i…

They don't actually withhold the tip. The sentence you quoted is being sloppy. If the tip was $50, the worker would get the full $50. The problem is that they use the tip as an excuse to pay basically nothing. It's not acting like a real tip.

This is a distinction without a difference. There is no practical difference between paying less "because tip" and not paying the tip. The legal system is not staffed by robots, either. I don't see how they can defend a class action regardless of what words they've written on a TOS.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#548

Post by CryptoPunk »

Klinky wrote: post #410
CryptoPunk wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all customers/workers feel the same way about every business practice, so it's not fair to appropriate their decision-making power by monopolizing it through one regulatory agency or union that they may not support. People are entitled to their individual choices. If it's too much information to process, they can individually choose someone they delegate their decision making to. One way they do this is to trust…

Relying on certifications is laughable. Things like "Organic", "Fair Trade", and "Cage Free" do not always mean what you think they mean. Even what constitutes products like peanut butter is up for dispute by those trying to sell a cheapened product as the real thing[1]. Even in tech you have paper CCNA who don't know anything, but have a piece of paper saying they're certified. You're also saying in this case it is…

It's not at all laughable. It is as effective as the organizations people create and choose to follow.

There's nothing that makes giving an entity like a union or regulatory agency a monopoly that makes it more competent. There's no advantage in monopolizing a market under one quality assessor.

We essentially did that with credit ratings, by creating a special class of credit ratings agencies, that only three firms fall under, and making regulatory requirements requiring participants to receive a passing rating from one of them to be allowed to engage in various market activities.

The result in a non-competitive credit ratings industry with profit margins of approximately 40%, meaning they're extracting a massive amount of economic rent.

>>You're also saying in this case it is theft, and should be handled by the legal system, which in part is legislated by labor regulations.

I'm not endorsing those aspects of the legal system that prohibit contractually agreed terms. Only tort should be punished by the legal system.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#549

Post by jld »

richardfeynman wrote: post #545
blaisio wrote: post #535

Wow. I'm cancelling my instacart account immediately. They've made so many mistakes in the past, but I liked their app. But this crosses the line by a mile. When I give someone a tip, it's not because I chose to pay more for an order just for fun, it's because I want the worker to get extra. They don't get to charge me a service fee, and ask me to tip, and then not give the worker my service fee. That's just crazy.

I'm also pretty sure that they say that 100% of the tip goes to the driver when you place an order.

They probably think the money is fungible.

“We gave the driver 100% of the $10 from your tip, and withheld our $10 from their wages.”

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#550

Post by lowercased »

jandrese wrote: post #355
wetpaste wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a service industry job in texas that payed me around 2.50 an hour (iirc) and as long as I made enough in tips to cover minimum wage they didn't have to pay actual minimum wage. It's immoral as fuck to steal tips. I don't care if it's legal. If I'm a customer tipping the person a certain amount I want to make sure it's actually helping that person and not just lining the pockets of their employer, that's absurd.

This always seemed crazy to me. Basically the employer pays only a pittance and then stops paying until your tips exceed minimum wage. They're basically stealing the tips between $2.50 and whatever the minimum wage is in your area.

tipping encoded in to law in general seems crazy to me. many (most?) other countries don't have this ritual, and seem to do just fine. I've dined out in many other countries outside the US, and service is generally good regardless of whether tipping is involved/expected or not. And in the US, I don't feel my normal service is all that much better because someone is thinking I might tip an extra dollar or two on an $8 lunch.
Post reply on HN