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Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

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Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#51

Post by bdangubic »

TheDong wrote: post #17
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six months ago I was at a burrito place and saw as I was paying that there was a new 3% fee for paying with a credit card. I have not gone back there since. Asking $11 for a burrito was already iffy and by then I'd started to curtail fast food purchases. I can't even imagine paying an 18-20% fee that isn't meant to be the entirety of the tip.

A 3% fee for a card makes perfect sense to me. That's not far off from what the merchant is losing for credit card customers, so their options are: 1. Charge the same for credit cards as cash, and make cash paying customers effectively pay more, thus applying a regressive tax to the poor (who are less likely to have credit cards) 2. Charge more for the credit card paying customers, and they can avoid this extra payme…

3% is the cost of doing business.

you wanna charge customers for electricity too? what’s that - like 1% more? uniform / apron cleaning - 0.12%? anything else? :)

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#52

Post by FireBeyond »

acdha wrote: post #20
xscott wrote: post #6

The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo. This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip…

Check your local laws about that - in some cities you can report those non-tip charges since as they are basically fraud.

Doubtful. If they were on the bill that you were presented before handing over your card, you're assumed to have read and accepted the charges before payment.

The only exception would be if it was misrepresented as a tip, or tax (Telcos used to do that one, phrasing their fees as taxes, to the point that "you are not allowed to call a charge a tax unless that charge in its entirety is going to a governmental entity").

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#53

Post by [deleted] »

xscott wrote: post #6

The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo. This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip…

[deleted]

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#54

Post by Teever »

acdha wrote: post #20
xscott wrote: post #6

The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo. This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip…

Check your local laws about that - in some cities you can report those non-tip charges since as they are basically fraud.

I live in a place where owners aren't legally required to pay their employees tips and I too consider it fraud if the jar or machine describes the voluntary surcharge as a tip because a reasonable person would consider a tip to be something that is paid out to staff.

It's really tiring to know that there's no legal recourse for what is obvious and normalized fraud when law enforcement receives budget increases year after year.

Whatwouldyousayyoudhere.gif

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#55

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

TheDong wrote: post #17
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six months ago I was at a burrito place and saw as I was paying that there was a new 3% fee for paying with a credit card. I have not gone back there since. Asking $11 for a burrito was already iffy and by then I'd started to curtail fast food purchases. I can't even imagine paying an 18-20% fee that isn't meant to be the entirety of the tip.

A 3% fee for a card makes perfect sense to me. That's not far off from what the merchant is losing for credit card customers, so their options are: 1. Charge the same for credit cards as cash, and make cash paying customers effectively pay more, thus applying a regressive tax to the poor (who are less likely to have credit cards) 2. Charge more for the credit card paying customers, and they can avoid this extra payme…

It's not whether the behavior is logical or justified. It's that fast food is no longer worth the price you're expected to pay for it. Regardless of whether it's credit card fees or labor costs or energy costs causing prices to go up, the economics of fast food no longer make sense for the customer.

But also I don't understand why a cash customer paying the same price as a credit card customer should be considered paying more. The customer only cares how much they have to pay, they don't care about or feel entitled to a constant profit margin.

Would a customer paying cash ever switch to credit card just because they've learned the business profits more from the cash sale? No, of course not.

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#56

Post by bdangubic »

Buttons840 wrote: post #42
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six months ago I was at a burrito place and saw as I was paying that there was a new 3% fee for paying with a credit card. I have not gone back there since. Asking $11 for a burrito was already iffy and by then I'd started to curtail fast food purchases. I can't even imagine paying an 18-20% fee that isn't meant to be the entirety of the tip.

The Visa terms of service forbid charging extra for payments using a Visa. Other credit cards have similar terms I think.

exactly. you’d get banned from visa and then you may as well close the shop

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#57

Post by rootusrootus »

britzkopf wrote: post #47

In Canada, there is no longer any special wage below the minimum for servers. They receive the same minimum as many other blue collar workers. It's over, there is no longer any reasonable argument for tipping servers but not a whole host of other low wage earners.

There is effectively no special below-minimum wage in the US either. The servers have to be paid at least minimum wage, with tips or not.

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#58

Post by FireBeyond »

rootusrootus wrote: post #32
TheDong wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 3% fee for a card makes perfect sense to me. That's not far off from what the merchant is losing for credit card customers, so their options are: 1. Charge the same for credit cards as cash, and make cash paying customers effectively pay more, thus applying a regressive tax to the poor (who are less likely to have credit cards) 2. Charge more for the credit card paying customers, and they can avoid this extra payme…

If you charge 3% just to credit card users, they are now subsidizing the cash customers. I am guessing you are assuming the cost of cash handling to be zero.

Not to mention, as someone who spent a few years in that industry, in many cases those cash customers are not getting reported to the IRS, or local authorities for sales tax.

So they could already be "saving" up to 10% or more on cash customers...

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#59

Post by acdha »

dismalaf wrote: post #3

Tipping is a tough problem: if you pay customer facing employees more, you'll need to raise prices. If your competitors still have a tipping expectation, their menu prices will be lower. And let's be real, most customers aren't savvy enough to think about that ahead of time, which is why most restaurants that have attempting no-tipping systems in North America have failed (or reverted back to accepting tips). There's…

Most people do think about pricing - not to the penny, sure, but you have to be really rich not to have an idea about roughly where going out will fit in your budget. There are two reasons why tipping is popular: restaurant owners think it motivates employees to flatter/put up with customers and/or allows them to skim some extra income, and there’s a certain type of diner who loves the power imbalance (e.g. every guy who sexually harasses waitresses loves pushing to see how much they can get away with, or the demanding people who calibrate their behavior just below the level where someone’s going to decide that the chance of a tip isn’t worth it).

The first group likes to tell high-income service workers that their pay will go down without tipping, which is fairly effective at finding people to be the media front saying workers don’t want to get rid of tipping instead of the other 90% who are guaranteed to benefit.

Re: Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return

#60

Post by dataflow »

rabuse wrote: post #4

I'll never tip on those things if it's not your typical tipped position, like a bartender, waitress, etc. Pay your employees.

What do you do for coffee shops? Or restaurants that ask for payment & tip first, then bring you your food, and don't do anything else?
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