Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#171

Post by simonh » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:25 AM UTC

EnderWT wrote: post #120

The biggest part of the story to me is that Amazon is not paying a single cent in fines. They are only paying the amount owed to the drivers. It's a shame a company can get away with this without facing a penalty.

he FTC chairman said this about the ruling, and it looks like they are pushing forward with punitive measures as well:

> Today’s order provides substantial redress to the families victimized by Amazon’s anticompetitive deception. However, this cannot be the only action we take to protect workers and families from dominant middlemen. ...

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#172

Post by imnotlost » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:27 AM UTC

The con is strong in America, always was, always will be. Just read about wage theft, it's sickening.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#173

Post by t-writescode » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:30 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #169

helmholtz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about the people who have actively just been shortchanged out of 61.7M USD in tips? Surely that' the topic here?

what tips though? Who tips an Amazon delivery person?

Amazon Prime Now has a 'tip' section with a recommended amount of money to give the driver. It works out to about 10% of the price, I think, generally?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#174

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:31 AM UTC

I never use the tipping option in delivery/taxi apps because I don't trust them. Prefer to give a tip directly when I can otherwise not.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#175

Post by reader_mode » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:32 AM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #112

imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

Tips are fundamentally broken. If you didn't know about tips, and someone offered you a job and said, "I'll pay you crap wages, but you can ask the customers for more money. Don't worry, they'll pay or their friends won't like them," you'd think it was a scam because it's such an obviously terrible deal. Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service. I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I'v…

>I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I've got very limited and potentially misleading information about what a reasonable expectation is. I've got no idea what small crises my server had to deal with, or how other customers are treating him.

That's ridiculous. If you're not qualified to judge the value of service to yourself then your probably not qualified for a lot of spending decisions in your life.

Reasonable expectation ? If you're a reasonable person you'll have reasonable expectation and it's really easy to notice when someone makes the experience more pleasant.

And if a car mechanic returned your car smelling like shit would you not be mad because he had digestion issues ?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#176

Post by Garlef » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:33 AM UTC

Amazon revenue 2019:

280.5 billion USD

Still they feel that they need to steal

0.062 billion USD

from their employees? Why?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#177

Post by ryoshu » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:34 AM UTC

ARandomerDude wrote: post #153

ben509 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tips are fundamentally broken. If you didn't know about tips, and someone offered you a job and said, "I'll pay you crap wages, but you can ask the customers for more money. Don't worry, they'll pay or their friends won't like them," you'd think it was a scam because it's such an obviously terrible deal. Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service. I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I'v…

You're absolutely right, given the premise that we tip to incentivize good service. In reality, we tip so businesses can advertise an $18 meal for $14.99.

Exactly. We aren't necessarily pushing the payroll onto the customer, we're discounting the cost of a dish at the expense of the server. And to the parent's post, that's an arbitrary decision that sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't for the person making half of minimum wage.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#178

Post by ComodoHacker » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:40 AM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #168

kortilla wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. No it’s not. You would not tip any less if you knew there were other people at the restaurant who had no intention of tipping. It’s strictly a lost potential income to the server when they land a cheap customer. It may not actually cost them anythi…

It is. Prices for basic services are lower in tipping cultures, ceteris paribus, since staff wages are a component of price, and staff wages are lower in a tipping culture since they make part of their income from tipping. Hence, the cheap customer benefits to the maximum in a tipping culture since the prices they're paying are artificially lower as they've been subsidised by tippers. That's why it's a transfer of we…

When you s/cheap customer/poor customer/ the whole thing sounds slightly different.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#179

Post by ddingus » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

helmholtz wrote: post #156

baby wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No tips = no theft and people actually get paid a wage that allows them to live well.

But what about the people who have actively just been shortchanged out of 61.7M USD in tips? Surely that' the topic here?

Are they to be compensated? Appears so.

A related topic might be all the people suffering the same theft while working for much smaller players.

From there, it moves pretty rapidly to, "get rid of tips and pay a wage that funds people existing reasonably and showing up for work" rather than start a fairly expensive and difficult enforcement effort.

Maybe the idea of just avoiding all this mess to prevent what did happen, and what is happening to a ton of people is popular because it is relevant?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#180

Post by imgabe » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

Noos wrote: post #140

imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restaurant has to pay is $2.13 an hour if they make enough tips to earn an effective wage of over $7.25 an hr in a week. That's $290 a week for 40 hours of work pretax. For a tech comparison look at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It probably is closer to the $2.13 minimum w…

Seven US states do not allow tips to count towards the minimum wage. These places, as far as I know, still have restaurants. Not to mention most of the rest of the world.

https://www.minimum-wage.org/tipped

Figure out what your expenses are, and make sure you charge enough to cover them, plus profit. If you can't manage to do that you shouldn't be running a restaurant or any other business. It's not rocket science.