It's so much easier to just pay people a decent wage, include it in the cost of things and then not have the pressure of tipping.
That, and tipping is akin to having paid servants. i.e. "if you do a good job, and if I feel like it, I might give you some of my wad of cash. Or not, sucker.".
(Of course, I do tip because the servers rely on it, I just don't like it)
Why should service providers be subject to arbitrary decisions of random customers?
A service has a price. Either it is provided adequately and you are happy with it in which case you pay the full damn price for it and move on with your life.
Or there's a specific problem in which case you can complain specifically and ask for a discount or refund/partial refund.
From a business perspective tipping can also be seen as an admission of failure and weakness. In the sense that the business is admitting that the quality of the service is so variable that it calls for a variable judgement of its value. Like maybe you get a crappy waiter and you don't tip, maybe you get an excellent one and now you must leave a good tip.
It is also "lazy" because it dumps the responsibility to the consumer. "Just judge how well we do and tip accordingly".
Instead as a consumer I want to have certainty and confidence that a given service provided by a business has a predictable and consistent level of quality.
And also as a consumer I want the employees to not be subject to my arbitrary personal judgement on a day to day basis. If there's a particular problem I may complain, otherwise just move on with your life.
Personally I go with a $5 minimum, more if I am a bother or there for over an hour. Though, this makes me look like a jerk when people drag me to fancy restaurants, and a saint at coffee/fast food places.
So white, wealthy looking people will generally get better service by virtue of being white and wealthy looking. Doesn't matter if they skimp on the tip.
It's very racist and classist in practice.
I live in London. I generally pay the service charge. Once out of every hundred times I eat out, I ask them to remove the service charge as I spent ten minutes trying to get someone's attention to order, rather than talk to my dining companions.
Service doesn't make a huge different for transport though. It's either on time, clean, and takes proper route or not.
There were certainly places I worked where any credit card tips were declared for tax whilst cash tips weren't. This is one reason why staff preferred cash. Similarly in some places cash was distributed by shift whereas cards were distributed monthly based on hours worked.
As a final point, the idea of tipping the person directly is not consistent with anywhere i've ever worked. Even when distributing at the end of a shift, everyone would have put tips in the jar to be shared between staff.
Let's call a spade a spade. It's for tax evasion purposes. That's the reason that the IRS assumes that you make 15% tips on everything if you're a server. (Otherwise people would never report it and to caught the large amount would never be recovered)
I'm skeptical of even that. There are lots of jobs with a large range of quality in industries with no tipping, and the market ends up working fine as a way for the best to rise to the top. You wouldn't tip your lawyer or a freelance developer.
Why are some industries different?
What shop do you know of where they'll let you choose food, take a bite and then pay what you feel it's worth? Hmm, this donut's a bit stale, I'm not prepared to pay anything for it thanks Mr.Tesco.
Sometimes I buy fruit and it goes bad too fast. That's life. Sometimes you get a shitty waiter, that's life, but now you get to unilaterally decide you'll get that service for free? Because there's a significant minority of people who will always find fault just so that they don't have to pay.
You go to the customer service desk, say "This doughnut is stale" show your receipt along with the partly eaten doughnut, then get a full refund or exchange as you prefer.
If you're doing it daily the rules will change. :)
> this donut's a bit stale, I'm not prepared to pay anything for it thanks Mr.Tesco.
This is irrelevant. See quote from comment you're replying to.
> Sometimes you get a shitty waiter, that's life, but now you get to unilaterally decide you'll get that service for free?
No, the waiter still gets paid.
I've gotten burned a few times when buying bags of things like potatoes and onions and not seeing a bad one in the middle that had started to infect the others. Never had a problem returning. Aldi even gives money back plus a new item
Tipping also seems to lead into a more in-your-face service. A waiter might find tips go up if he/she draws attention to her work, starts conversations and offers all kinds of extras. In the end you can't argue that the service wasn't outstanding, but life would have been better for everyone involved if he/she just put the food on the table.
Tipping hides the true cost of services by forcing the customer's guilt on the ability of the employee to make a worthwhile wage.
No tipping restaurants have to have higher prices and the hyper-price-conscious consumer will defer to the cheaper ones. You could make a quality argument, but on equal terms the no tipping restaurant will lose. It is because it has not hidden its true cost of goods and services like the tipping resultants.
But you are right, it is also preferred to hide some of the costs. But, sometimes you get a place that includes taxes on the price. Very refreshing.
Yea but customers don't get to decide how much employees are paid.
What would really happen is that people who normally get tips would just lose income. Their pay will probably go up, but not enough to cover it. Waitresses make much more than regular unskilled labors.
Customers lose because we end up paying more, but it's at least going to a real person working for a living.
This is very true. My sister and I waited tables in college and each averaged $20-$25/hour in just tips. Adding on the ~$5 wage, we each made enough to graduate with no debt (we both went to a state university). We did not work at very high end restaurants (we each worked at the same two at the same time).
If our employers decided to go no-tip, we would have very quickly quit and found new positions, because there's no way our employers would have paid waitstaff $20+/hr. No-tip would be a pay decrease for most of the waitstaff I've known.
With 100% of the amount over the minimum ("the bill") going to the staff, not the ownership.
There's sharp disagreement among the patrons on whether to keep servers in rags or riches. Some of this comes down whether the particular customer sees the restaurant as 'good for a plate food' versus 'a part of the neightborhhod'. We allow people the option of choosing which they see it as.
More info here: https://www.gov.uk/tips-at-work/tips-and-tax
Neither of these seem easier than "convince the public to toss in a few extra dollars when they use a lowly paid service".
I see "make sure that all working people are paid fairly" as a very difficult problem, and tipping as a moderately effective hack that's easier to implement than the cleaner fix of higher minimum wage of basic income.
US Federal law states minimum wage is only $2.13/hr for someone that makes $30/month in tips (instead of normal minimum $7.25) [1]. If they don't make $30 in tips the employer must make up the difference.
At 30 hours/week (and 4.3 weeks/month), $30/month works out to $0.23/hr, so the effective minimum wage is still only $2.36/hr.
Some states are quite a bit higher (eg Hawaii is $7/hr), and in some (eg, Alaska, California) the minimum wage is the same regardless of tips.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
They get, at worst, normal minimum wage.
It feels like that because that's what it is - American tipping culture has its roots in slavery.
>Lynn suggests that wealthy Americans traveling abroad to Europe witnessed tipping and brought the aristocratic custom back with them to “show off,” or prove their elevated education and class.
[1]: http://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/08/history-of-tipping.html
> Restaurants and rail operators, notably Pullman, embraced tipping primarily, Jayaraman says, because it enabled them to save money by hiring newly freed slaves to work for tips alone. Plenty of Americans frowned upon the practice, and a union-led movement begat bans on tipping in several states. The fervor spread to Europe, too, before fizzling in the United States—by 1926, the state tipping bans had been repealed.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/restaurants-t...
[0] I did once got into a very friendly chat with the "owner of the world's second tallest yacht" (checked it on wikipedia; totally legit) and was memorable enough that I was curious if he tipped. He didn't.
> ...
> I was curious if he tipped. He didn't.
I'm afraid you just dismantled your own argument with your footnote.
That does not sound very logical.
This is the problem with tipping - there is ALWAYS room for abuse. I don't understand why you'd be at ease for not being "put on the spot" to tip, when the driver or company still knows afterwards. The facts haven't changed; they still know whether you tip, and any "consequences" for not tipping will still be in play. You're playing a mind game with yourself if you think that adding a few hours of buffer between service and tip is any different than tipping on the spot.
This is why, all employees - regardless of the company and its industry - should not be tipped. Pay your staff a proper wage, and fire people who do not provide good service. The very concept of tipping is ridiculous. It serves no other reason than to satisfy employers' lowballing of wage, while inducing anxiety to their customers.
> When you tip, is the driver individually informed?
No, not directly. Yes, indirectly. You get a ride summary at the end of the day. Backtracking who tipped what takes effort. Even so, sometimes people tip when they open their app back up (or through the email) which can present a lag... I've gotten "x tip from day y" additions to my ride summary days or even weeks later.
Bottom line: If you have 15-20 rides a day you're not going to check unless it was memorable. Over the course of a year and half I checked maybe five times. Once, when I drove the guy who owned the world's second tallest yacht. Another time, when I drove a group of stanford students from north beach back to campus. One of the passengers threw up in the car four times (but I was super prepared with emesis bags), so I saved the guy who ordered the lyft the $150 cleanup fee. He tipped me $20.
Honestly, a perceptive driver will be able to tell if you tip within the first few moments of your entering the car. There are socioeconomic trends. I once picked up a valet at a fancy restaurant in San Diego. We chatted about who tips and who doesn't. Soccer moms in their minivans tip. Tesla and Porche drivers almost never tip. Are you picking up someone working in the service industry? They're almost guaranteed tippers. Is someone a lyft/uber driver? Almost guaranteed to tip too.
> The next time you get the same driver, are they in a position to remember that you were a bad tipper on the last trip?
Yes, but it's unrealistic. Over the course of a year and a half approximately 10,000 distinct people rode in my car. Only about 10-15% of my rides had a tip. Do you think I knew exactly which 10% were tippers?
> Even if the driver isn't made aware of your individual tipping history, surely the company as a whole is tracking this information and building a (negative) profile for you. Do they charge you more on subsequent rides to compensate for your perceived poor history?
They won't charge you more on subsequent rides.
This is an interesting point, and reminds me in a way of the Bristol Pound (and other "community currencies") which are essentially the same as regular Pounds Sterling, but are only accepted by locally-owned businesses within a local geographical area (more specifically: anyone can accept them, but only locals can ever exchange them back to Pounds Sterling, at a pegged 1:1 rate). Local branches of mutli-national corporations, and public (listed) companies, cannot participate.
Local residents can open an account in Bristol Pounds, and pay their local taxes in them. Some locals can be paid their salary in them.
The stated goal (and this has apparently worked quite well) is a localised economic stimulus, by encouraging residents to spend at local small businesses, and those businesses in turn to seek local suppliers, etc. This sees the money doing a few more rounds locally before being sucked away to a multinational.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/07/the-innovat...
Frankly, I just don't understand tipping. I still tip better than most people (20-30%) because I can afford it and know that their employer is fucking them over big time. Were I a millionaire, I'd probably stop tipping altogether as a sign of protest. It's strange how we justify either side of the coin.
I've often thought that it would be better to have a simple thumb up/down for quality control and then a separate above-and-beyond option for recognising exceptional service, but that requires friction on the latter option to make it work properly. Initially I was thinking just requiring a minimum comment length would work, but having to tip e.g. $1 might be a good alternative to that.
On the other hand even with the uneven distribution of ratings, now median driver is of lower quality, you can really tell the difference between a 5.0 (really 4.95+ driver) and 4.8 driver; and a 4.8 driver and a 4.5-4.6 driver. I was a perfect 5.0 (100 consecutive perfect ratings) only twice during my career as a driver, but damn it felt good. Usually I hovered around 4.92-4.97, which can look like a 5.0 to the passenger.
There is an interesting feedback effect that a lot of drivers don't understand. If a passenger sees that your rating is lower, then they will be more in tuned to the defects in the experience you deliver; If they see that your rating is higher, they will overlook some of the problems. Moreover, if you see that your rating is low, you're more likely to have a generally negative disposition and project an attitude that is going to make it harder to get back up there. Psychological management is a key part of the driver experience. I once counseled a young driver who was distraught that he was a 4.6 average driver, leading to a generally negative attitude to his passengers (and probably some good passengers saw his score and cancelled on him too) and I told him that he needed to either break out of a negative cycle or quit driving.
i miss in app tipping too.
i really wish lyft was available in my area.
Any driver who aggressively solicits for tips automatically gets a low rating and a note from me.
Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
If Uber is going to implicitly make tipping a requirement to not feel like a jerk (as with Lyft), but without copying Lyft's ability to tip from the app, suddenly Lyft looks a lot less unattractive by comparison. Now that I know this is starting to become a concern at all, I would switch to Lyft immediately if they just added a setting for a default auto-tip that would be factored into fare estimates.
I really don't understand this aggressive, cutthroat effort to compete on price at the expense of their drivers; I can't be in the minority in considering price a secondary concern to the overall UX, so long as it isn't unreasonably inflated like taxi fares. Is it possible that the underlying model of ridesharing isn't actually particularly more efficient than the taxi industry, and that Uber/Lyft rates will naturally converge with taxi rates over time as they gradually stop subsidising rides and/or underpaying drivers?
I wonder if you used Lyft a long time ago, because I don't even notice the tip screen until next day sometimes. When I leave the car, my phone is in my pocket, or I'm already doing something else on it, so I do not see the tip screen until I happen to open the app next time. Dismissing the tip screen is a single tap with or without leaving a tip, so it's never been a usability concern for me.
I'd rather take care of the tip right away (or as soon as I have a chance) than have to remember to do it well after the fact, but in either case I'd much prefer to not have to remember it at all and just be done with the whole thing the second I step out the car. (There's also the rating thing with both Uber and Lyft, but at least that's faster and I wouldn't really feel bad if I were to forget about it.)
That, and as I sort of implied earlier the honesty/inclusiveness of the fare estimates is a concern, in that whereas a $10 estimate in Uber means exactly what it says with Lyft I have to remember to do some additional math on top of that.
(These probably sound like the epitome of "first world problems"; I'm not saying that Lyft isn't good, or even that it's dramatically worse than Uber for me — just that their competitive landscape is such that even minor usability issues like these are currently costing them my business.)
I usually use Lyft, and one reason is that I get the option to tip the driver.
I like Lyft's model where the driver doesn't know how much you tipped, but knows how much in tips he gets at the end of the day in aggregate... it reinforces positive service while removing any friction to tip or not.
Do drivers really expect people using a cashless system to... carry cash? I actually had one driver accepts tips using stripe.
I've refused to pay for, and reported to their company, 4 separate drivers in the past 2 years for this practice. I have to assume that the companies somehow don't care that their drivers are going rogue, or else this wouldn't be happening so frequently. Where is the threat of dismissal, or even better, prosecution? Same thing goes for unlicensed taxi drivers moonlighting with a friend's car - taxi drivers here are required to hang their licensed ID on the side window, and the frequency with which you find someone driving "off the books" is downright reprehensible.
The worst part is, I feel my personal safety is at risk every time I report these criminals. They are likely to know it was me, and they know where I live. It's irresponsible, potentially dangerous, and unacceptable to permit them to operate in this way.
Our taxi companies are hook, line, and sinker in the pockets of our government. We have a history of corruption here, and taxi companies are definitely part of the equation.
At least in SF, I'm pretty sure the standard deal is that the drivers pay for the cab regardless of what they get in fares. Cabs were a cash business for a hundred years, after all.
I think the deal with credit card machines in the cabs is that the cab companies see it as a revenue source. I know cab drivers grumble about the cost of using them. It makes sense to me that Stripe is cheaper for the cab drivers.
Never give your actual address. Pick a house number a few down. Especially if getting picked up to go to the airport. Some rogue/criminal taxi/uber/lyft drivers will ask questions about your trip to determine if your home will be vacant and for how long to pass the info onto someone else who will come by to burglarize your house.
A cab driver using a much cheaper service vs. the rent-seeking credit card processing they are mandated by law to use? That's a morally correct action. The immoral action (imo) is to continue to feed into the fraud that you yourself identified earlier in the thread.
I have very little problem with a cab driver doing this, just as I have very little problem with you reporting it for the reasons you mention.
And having a rather interesting early start to my career - I assure you "native" citizens get away with this kind of crap all the time.
What percentage of the population do you think scrutinizes every credit card statement line-by-line? Many people would not notice an unauthorized charge on their card. It's merely a matter of scale: some people will notice a single unauthorized charge for $5, while others won't even notice $500. Credit card fraud is rampant, and any company that willingly allows its employees to get away with it should be shut down. My experience shows that my city's taxi companies consider credit card fraud as something that doesn't even register on their radar. Drivers that operate in this manner should be criminally charged. It's not just fraud to the taxi company - it is a criminal act of theft for the customers.
You think the company doesn't have access to the meter records for fares if keeping a percentage is part of the deal? If the driver keeps 100% of the cash, why pay 7% for a credit card?
I know in Chicago most of the drivers who rent their cab by the hour/day/week prefer to use square because the fees are lower and they get paid in a week or less, not the couple months the cab company takes to pay them, if they ever do.
That seems entirely reasonable. If I were paying the bill in a restaurant and a member of staff insisted I paid using some personal transfer service, I'd probably refuse too unless I was able to confirm that it was legitimate.
you're also breaking the law if you walk out of a cab without paying.
Difficult to argue that's the case if no opportunity was offered to pay legitimately.
How funny, that as I leave such a taxi, not one of these drivers have risen their voice about my refusal to pay. One of them tried to retract by pulling out the official keypad, and by then I was already exiting the car as he shrugged his indignation. They are the ones in the legal wrong, and they know it.
In general though, I've found Uber experiences to vary significantly by region. In Salt Lake, I usually sit in the front seat, drivers are chatty, and the whole thing feels like "someone giving you a ride". In NYC, by contrast, I mostly sit in the back (a lot of the time the driver will block off the front passenger seat), drivers don't tend to talk, and the whole thing feels like a cab ride.
In fact, I would guess that many Uber drivers in NYC are/were taxi drivers.
I've stopped taking Uber for this reason for those "marginal" trips where I might be tempted for the convenience vs. public transit. I see tip begging no different than being asked for change on subway, and if I have to potentially deal with it either way I'll just take the cheaper option.
I had a guy who implied that he'd like a positive rating. Only one out of many.
I realize that EB and SF drivers probably stick to their preferred areas. I'm not disputing your experience, only adding my own.
As they say at Goldman Sachs
"Always carry cash. Keep some in your front pocket."
EDIT: Following some comments here, I feel I need to add that I'm in Canada where 15% is considered "normal".
Uber traditionally operates on the service-included model. That was very well established before some drivers agitated for a change. Since then, Uber has adopted an inconsistent policy [https://help.uber.com/h/f7385bf5-1748-4fd0-a57f-3d9b62facc45]. In this condition, I don't believe users have any moral obligation to tip. Drivers should also have very wide expectations about whether or how much tip they will receive.
If drivers are unhappy with their Uber comp, they can drive for Lyft or on their own account or whatever. There is no need for riders to condescend to intervene in these labor disputes by bestowing tips, and in fact doing so may encourage the kind of abuse that inevitably follows the establishment of customary tipping (minimum wage exemptions and pressure for laborers to evade taxes).
Is this a joke? Not only is it not universal, it's not even customary. The agreement you have with the restaurant is this: you sit down, are served, eat food, and pay. Baseline service is free, that's what you're paying the restaurant for. If the person waiting on me has a problem with me not tipping, they're welcome to take their wage issue up with their employer. I can only say this as someone who supports fair wages for service industries though. I believe a lower minimum wage for restaurant/bar services is a problem. But absolutely under no circumstance will I provide a compulsory tip. It's not my job to pay the employees.
There is a secondary agreement you have with the waiting staff: if you go above and beyond your job description to provide excellent service, you may be rewarded as recognition. Even then, many countries believe that excellence to be part of the job, so tips are not accepted.
Tip if you're provided with above standard service, don't if you're not. What's hard about that?
This is thoroughly false. It is so customary in the US that it has been baked into the minimum wage laws: in general, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, but for waitstaff and some other "tipped" jobs, the minimum wage is less than a third of that, at $2.13. The whole system is completely appalling, but that doesn't change the fact that in a lot of places the waitstaff is effectively subcontracted out and paid for by the patrons rather than by the nominal employer.
While I'm sure most restaurants stay legal, there's a non-zero number of restaurants with owners that don't make up the missing pay and let workers end up making less than minimum wage, but the workers don't complain because they're truly desperate for work, or their local government won't do anything about it.
Now I'm remembering the Amy's Baking Company episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where one of the owners, Samy, admitted that he takes all the tips his wait staff make, despite being illegal (Source: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm)
I feel a good first start would be to get rid of the tipped-job-exception from the Federal minimum wage law and set it a fixed minimum regardless of job classification.
In the United States, pay for tipped employees is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which among other things requires that they always be paid a minimum wage.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm
If anyone is claiming that a particular restaurant violates the law by paying lower than minimum wage to their servers, then that's the problem right there, not anything to do with tipping or tipping culture. If anyone is not being paid minimum wages they are owed, the US Department of Labor will be happy to intervene:
And yes, it's illegal to fire someone over reporting, but it happens all the time. And it takes time for a lawsuit to go through, so you've gotta find work somewhere else in the meantime. And now you have to also take time to sue your old company. When you're barely afloat, it's not worth rocking the boat because you might drown.
That's reality for a lot of people. You can't just say, "this is the law so it's not happening."
Taxi drivers get $1 no matter the fare. The gall of that industry to even ask...
And even the slightest infraction of protocol and I leave 0.
I used to overtip all the time. I got absolutely nothing of value for doing it, so forget it.
I'll tip 30% at like an Ihop when my bill is 11 bucks because "total tips" is what matters.
I am started to feel very extorted by this so I've reduced my tips in response and reduced my frequency of going to establishments that guilt me into leaving tips.
(Usually if the food is over priced I don't bother with percentages.)
The fact that you thought I was getting an ego boost from tipping is the reason tipping exist, giving people an illusion of power/status.
This kind of thinking is precisely what's wrong with tipping in the first place.
Let's break out of our echo chamber a bit. In the US, tipping isn't "paying more than required," it's basic manners. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how businesses are to blame, but the vast majority of society, who have no big beef with tipping culture, will find you cheap rather than discerning.
Edit: here are some supporting links.
15-20% suggested with 20%+ recognized as a minority opinion and for extra good service: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/travel/experts-guide-to-tippin...
The highest tipping state averages 17% and the lowest averages 15%: https://qz.com/189458/the-united-states-of-tipping/
Canada minimum wage: https://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/minwage.p...
Liquor Servers Minimum Wage $9.90/hour
You can definitely get away with 15% at places where you don't regularly eat. I do 20% at regular places where the waiter will remember me for sure and I don't want them to get the idea that I don't like them.
20% extra on top for doing your job shouldn't be expected.
This is called paying them, and occurs even in the absense of tips. Tips give people the second option of not subsidizing the corporation; were tips removed, everyone would be forced to subsidize equally. This is to the business' disadvantage only because some people are willing to pay more when it is in the form of a tip then the corporation could ask the rest of their market to pay.
You think of Uber as the employer, and yourself as a mere customer, but it is just as apt to think of yourself as the employer and the driver as your employee. If we do so, the money Uber gives the driver, as well as any tips you provide, become the employee's wage. From here we see you are paying them an unlivable wage, and should be scolded the same as any employer doing the same.
Naturally, without everyone doing the same, they would not notice the effect. However this does not constitute justification for not doing your part.
The only parties that take advantage of the driver are Uber and yourself; if Uber is unwilling to take up the mantle of proper pay then the responsibility falls on you. The question becomes: does the driver have a right to be payed properly? Or, in other words, if the driver is willing to work for a lower pay, do you have a responsibility to pay them more? Some would argue that it's a free market, and that if they don't like the pay, they should find a different job. If you believe in a minimum wage however, you should make sure that all those under your service recieve a reasonable wage.
Of course, scrolling down the thread just shows that waaay too many HNers live in their own bubble pretending to be Mr. Pink with their mightier-than-thousplaining that justifies their miserliness.
No matter how disruptive moving livery to cashless may have been, the truth remains: Uber's current business model is classic leveraging of unorganized labor in order to take advantage of a race to the bottom among drivers. Of course, this wouldn't be sustainable for a second absent Valley VC's willingness to subsidize this mirage until customers are hooked, regulators are left feckless, and then like clockwork, rates are raised with none for the drivers.
It'd be unethical, absent this sort of business being an accepted part of the marketplace. It's called hospitality, and it is driven by tipping. There's absolutely nothing new or justifiable about the type of thinking on this thread. Pool/Line are down to $2.50 for 15-20 minute rides. If you enjoy bragging about avoiding the social contract inherent in tipping economies, you are no different than Susan Fowler's HR encounters: looking the other way as Kalanick rips off those whose livelihood he actively suppresses.
Wait, so you are saying I should start a charity compensating those poor souls who are getting tortured by Kalanick out of my own pocket? The contract for _this_ service is literally "no tip expected or required". We're not in Roman slavery times, if the drivers can't sustain working for Uber, maybe they can find something else to do in this currently great economy of ours - most of those who I talked to are new to Ubering anyway. They are not like, say, teachers who get career training to do specialized and meaningful work, the drivers utilize the most common skill to take advantage of a commercial opportunity. If this commercial opportunity is not viable in their situation, how is that my fault?
Tipping is in no way necessary to ensure good service -- a fair wage is.
The driver gets paid for distance from the first pickup to the last dropoff. If an extra fare hops in and out along the way, that's almost zero extra revenue for the driver. Thus, if you're taking a popular route, the app can charge you very little and still turn a profit.
If uber implements tipping, it might be exploitable by the drivers e.g you don't tip me ill give you low rating kind of thing. There is an issue where drivers supposedly make little money, but thats up for the company to solve.
Personally I use uber quite a lot in London, and I am asking most uber drivers on how they find the job etc. The vast majority of them reply that they can work whenever they want and its flexible so they like it. On the money side of things they claim that if you work properly and don't rent a car, you could be making around £2-3k a month, which is above the minimum salary in the UK and London. So I think uber drivers are mostly unhappy that they are under self-employment instead of fully employed by Uber etc. Although I can't see a company that would give you the flexibility to work as much as you want and when you want and having to pay for your holidays etc. Its more of an issue of the Gov fixing up some self-employment rights rather than uber itself (my opinion).
Edit: I'm asking seriously, why is not tipping a justification for keeping Uber? Tipping sucks, sure, but it's part of a lot of service jobs in the states that you just accept.
I don't think most people "just" accept it. I think they accept it, with extreme reservations, often with a sense of anxiety around social pressure & guilt. So I think you underestimate how much sway a service that doesn't expect/require tips might have over one that does.
Having said, that, for me, it's a combination of things. I actually don't object to Lyft's tipping culture (and like you point out, tipping is implemented as close to perfectly as possible on their platform). I use Lyft when it seems to make sense (and tip, often ~20% for shorter rides), but often I find myself seeing a 6 minute estimated wait from Lyft while Uber is saying 2 minutes. I tend to walk a lot when I can, so most of the time I use Uber/Lyft when I'm running late or don't have the time to walk, so 2 vs. 6 actually matters. Or I request a Lyft, get matched with a driver, and see an estimate for a 3 minute arrival, which stays saying "3 minutes" for 10 minutes before I cancel and go back to Uber, and a car arrives to pick me up 2 minutes later. Or there was the time where Android Pay just stopped working in the Lyft app for two weeks.
I'm really unhappy with Uber's behavior as a company (and use it less where practical), but they just offer a better product, regardless of their stance on tipping.
If you're struggling to make rent, maybe you should consider doing something like Upwork or Gigster then? Or even a full time job?
Either your startup is succeeding: you've raised enough venture capital to support yourself, or you're making enough revenue to be ramen profitable (I didn't quite interpret your post that way, though).
Or you are wasting time and energy on something that just isn't going anywhere where you should be making it a fun side project alongside a full time job instead of a VERY risky 10:1 all-in bet.
Most people besides the local SF Peter Pan Syndrome millennial dreamer crowd here would consider it to be very irresponsible to gamble away your time and savings on a stagnant business like that.
There's also plenty of great places to start a business that aren't the Bay Area and actually have reasonable costs of living, friendlier regulations, and less taxes (shout out to Pittsburgh!). I'd stay off the hive mind hamster wheel here that you HAVE to be in the most expensive place to live on the planet, or else you're living in Siberia (to borrow the literal smug wording of a Google employee friend justifying their renting at age 35 situation).
Get a job, do it well, and make your startup work in the extra hours. If you can't find the time, you're not meant to be starting anything up.
"Honey Badger does not give a sh*t, if it's hungry, it's hungry"
You'll get a lot of "warm" courtship interest from investors who actually are just scoping out the field, so to speak, and you'll run into ones who have cold feet and back out at the last minute (I even had an outstanding term sheet get withdrawn once).
Just be careful. Investors are often very two-faced.
1: Google LiDAR suit 2: sexual harassment 3: driver exploitation 4: local regulation
Though you'll notice the most recent problems are higher in the list, indicating short public memory/outrage.
Unless Johnny Cab suddenly starts asking for Bitcoin...
Uber is betting the farm on being able to solve this in the next couple of years or however much financial runway they have left. Good luck, but I don't see how.
> I would rather pay more for each fare
Yup, I'm merely one data point, but my POV is hardly unique.
It is a tragedy of recent generations that people cannot even handle a simple decision of to "tip or not to tip" by themselves without going to some amount of "pressure".
We are indeed, a generation of sheep, who cannot be expected to make a simple decision all by themselves.
Uber's model feels like it's trying to make the human driver into a robot. Until we have actual robot drivers, I prefer a system that has the tipping built in, e.g. Lyft.
More like the thought of being expected to fork over extra cash for a standard transaction above what I already expected to pay up front. The problem is that the idea behind tipping has been abused. The onus needs to be on the business owner.
People who refuse to tip are trying to prevent this abuse. Asking for employees to get a fair wage for the work they do should not be dismaying.
What's dismaying is how many people in this thread don't even want to have to think about how the person driving them is a human being, often just trying to make ends meet.
The problem is, this argument could be applied to all minimum wage workers.
Should I tip the cashier at McDonald's or Wal-mart? They're not making a living wage and are probably struggling to make ends meet. How about the guy that pumps my gas (I live in Oregon where it is generally illegal to pump your own gas)?
And that's what really gets me about our tipping culture in the USA. We're so inconsistent about who we think we should tip. It's completely arbitrary.