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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

#81

Post by anal_reactor »

Karupan wrote: post #7

I dread the day I have to eat at US restaurants, or even get something delivered. Part of the reason is cultural: I’ve never lived in a country where a tip is mandatory and you’ll be called out if you don’t. The other reason being it involves a degree of social pressure and shame, if one doesn’t tip enough. Both don’t sit well with me. But I can attest that if I’m forced to tip, I’ll not return to that establishment.

Exactly why I'll never visit twice any establishment that asks me for a tip. If I ever go eat in a restaurant, it's because I want to have less stress in my life, not because I want to put myself in a shitty situation where not only I need to be up to date with current social norms (which has always been a difficulty of mine), but I also need to do things that go against my beliefs (tipping is a scam akin to TicketMaster "€100 ticket + €20 shipping fee + €30 convenience fee + €35 what are you going to do about this fee + €15 fee won't make a difference = €200 vs advertised €100"). As a result, whenever I visit a restaurant, the thing I remember the most is not the food nor the ambience, but the moment of tipping when the waiter begs me for a tip like a Syrian refugee begs for water. This is not a problem in my country because thankfully begging isn't as common here, but when I was travelling I was once asked for a tip during a hotel breakfast, which BTW was shitty.

Also, tipping is a monument to human stupidity. Apparently, people would rather pay €10 + 20% tip than €12 with no tip, because the former feels cheaper, even though it's a stupid way to organize pricing.

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

#82

Post by woodruffw »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #14
woodruffw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it's uncommon to be called out for not leaving a tip, at least on the East Coast of the US. At worst, you might get a nasty look depending on the context (unlikely at a cafe, maybe at a nice restaurant with good service).

You run the risk of people spitting in your food if they recognize you when you return.

Why do you think that's even remotely common?

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

#83

Post by do_not_redeem »

bdangubic wrote: post #51
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…

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? :)

An interesting thought experiment: what if a store let you pay by bank wire (let's say $20 fee)

Would you stick to your guns and say that cash users have to subsidize expensive wire fees? Or is that too much, and the fairness ends at subsidizing the expensive credit card fees? If so, why the distinction? If you could pay by bitcoin, should cash users pay the bitcoin transaction fees too? :)

Also, do you really think 3% is a fair tax on the entire economy that we should be giving to the duopoly of MC/Visa, when they only charge 0.3% in most of the rest of the world? The only reason they charge so much here is because they can get away with gouging due to our non-functional regulatory environment. I don't know why so many people accept 3% as a law of nature or something when the cost of handling cash is far less than that.

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

#84

Post by bdangubic »

TheDong wrote: post #75
bdangubic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? :)

Electricity and so on are already included independently of the payment method. Yes, the store should be charging enough to its customers that it can afford electricity, and if it can't afford electricity, it should increase its prices. It's not worth trying to account electricity use per-customer though, obviously, and it typically won't really vary by customer much anyway. Credit card fees on the other hand do vary…

none of this makes sense of course

if you want electricity, you call electric company, turn it on and you get a bill for usage.

you want the priviledge of using visa at your store, you call them and get it all setup and and then you get a bill for this.

it is cost of doing business and you can’t pass that shit off to customers

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

#85

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

rootusrootus wrote: post #57
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.

On paper, this is true. In effect, however, it often is not.

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

#86

Post by abeppu »

Not the main topic, but the article is in part on how people respond to changing normative pressures so I think it's fair: I'm surprised at the low level of information in this article given that it's written by the original researchers! In many other fields I would have expected greater specificity and care from academics presenting their work to a lay audience. For example they say "our results were clear" but then only describe the direction of the effect -- they give no numbers about magnitude or significance! And following the link to their paper ... it seems pretty bad?

Study 1a was done at a single brewpub, which uses 2 POS systems from the same provider, one counter-based and one hand-held. They say nothing about what kinds of customers or transactions get the hand-held (presumably table-side?) POS system instead of the counter-based one. Are these different group sizes? Different seating areas? Food vs not? It's not a random assignment? So (a) it's hard to know whether the effect is real in the one business they measured with or if it's just that different kinds of customers are more or less likely to return and (b) it's hard to know whether this actually generalizes to other businesses. What was the effect size? During a 1 year period, customers whose first visit used a handheld POS had 1.1 subsequent visits vs 1.46 for customers whose first visit (within the period) used a counter-based POS. They're grouping people by their first visit in the period, as if that's going to be determinative of how they think about the business, but they don't know which customers were actually new (i.e. one month before the captured period, did you go and use a hand-held POS and then in the 3rd month of their period you went and used a counter-based POS? You're in the counter-based group.)

All the rest of the 'studies' in their paper are market-research surveys.

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

#87

Post by voisin »

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…

> 2. Charge more for the credit card paying customers, and they can avoid this extra payment by paying with cash.

Things may have changed in intervening years but about 20 years ago I owned some quick serve restaurant franchises, and the credit card companies banned charging a fee to customers for use of credit cards - there was essentially a most favoured nations clause in the agreement. If you were caught doing this they would terminate your service permanently.

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

#88

Post by qingcharles »

Karupan wrote: post #7

I dread the day I have to eat at US restaurants, or even get something delivered. Part of the reason is cultural: I’ve never lived in a country where a tip is mandatory and you’ll be called out if you don’t. The other reason being it involves a degree of social pressure and shame, if one doesn’t tip enough. Both don’t sit well with me. But I can attest that if I’m forced to tip, I’ll not return to that establishment.

I've lived here for a long time, but this stuff still gives me anxiety. I get you are supposed to tip in restaurants, but I'm unsure which other services need tipping. Is it required to tip, for instance, the HVAC repairman? Are you supposed to tip mechanics? Do native Americans have a spidey sense for which people need tipping that I just need to become sensitized to?

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

#89

Post by bdangubic »

do_not_redeem wrote: post #83
bdangubic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? :)

An interesting thought experiment: what if a store let you pay by bank wire (let's say $20 fee) Would you stick to your guns and say that cash users have to subsidize expensive wire fees? Or is that too much, and the fairness ends at subsidizing the expensive credit card fees? If so, why the distinction? If you could pay by bitcoin, should cash users pay the bitcoin transaction fees too? :) Also, do you really think…

if paying by bank wire costs $198 and you want to offer it as a method of payment - it is on YOU.

amazing people here don’t understand that there is a cost of running a business. you don’t want to pay Visa 11% - don’t. you don’t want to pay apple 30% - don’t make ios apps. it is that simple mate

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

#90

Post by PlunderBunny »

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.

Those particular Visa terms of service eventually got shot down in New Zealand - now many POS terminals/cashiers will tell you that there’s an additional charge for credit cards [0]

(Also, no tipping in New Zealand, except for a few restaurants close enough to the cruise ships that they think their customers won’t know any better).

0. https://www.cab.org.nz/article/KB00000071

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