Ideally, more hotels would follow the example of the Elysian Chicago and Fairmont Banff, by paying their frontline employees a decent wage and banning tipping. But, for the most part, tipping is still a part of the American hotel experience.
So what’s wrong with tipping with cash?
The folks behind a site called Where’s My Tip? seem to think that cash is inferior. Their site pitches “tip cards” — business-cards with a code and a link on them.
The tipper gives the card to the person they’re tipping. The recipient goes to the site to “claim” their tip — by suggesting a tip amount — and eventually receive the tipper’s cash via Paypal.
(sample card, from their site:)
The person paying the tips has to pay $39.95 a year for the privilege of managing their tips this way. And if you expend the first 50 cards, replacements cost 50 cents each.
Okay, I see the expense account angle here. A paper trail of tips paid is easier on the accounting department than a list of non-receipted petty cash expenses. Okay. Fair enough.
And I get the “exact change” angle. Yes, it sucks having to keep small bills at the ready.
But…
But other than those two minor inconveniences, how on earth is this better than cash? For the tipper, maintaining an account like this costs more than the tips, requires a stack of cards to keep separately, and makes you go online to manage the payment after the fact. Time elapses, and you may not remember who was who during your last trip.
For the tippee, it’s even worse: it adds a delay in payment and forces you to name your own price for the tip. It makes your income dependent on an after-the-fact renegotiation. How awkward! What if you bid too high? Too low? Will they counteroffer? Will they even pay at all? That stress (and time) shouldn’t be a part of your job. It’s the tipper’s responsibility, period.
Maybe the model is salvageable, and these are just kinks to be worked out. There’s a nugget of a problem here that deserves attention, after all, but I’m not sure this is the solution.
So, what do you think? Are tip cards the wave of the future? Is this a clever innovation? Does it need tweaking, or should it be relegated to the dustbin of history? Vote in the poll, hit the comments, and speak your mind.
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April 6th, 2010 at 9:49 am
The only theoretical advantage to something like this might be where you are checking into a hotel overseas. The problem is always that you get your foreign currency at an airport ATM, usually in larger bills. If you’re lucky, you might get some small bills as change when you pay your taxi — but often not, because taxis in many countries are just tipped by rounding up the tab. Then you have to remember to ask for change from at the registration counter if you are going to tip the bellhop. After a 12 hour flight, that’s sometimes easy to forget. (That said, I’d be surprised if this works overseas, and, even if it did, I wouldn’t necessarily trust the security.)
April 6th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
This seems to solve a non-existent problem… A few too many ‘maybe if’ this happened, I wouldn’t be able to tip..
How many people would actually *pay money* for the privilege to *tip* while they travel? And then even more money for the silly cards?
I think this will quickly go away again.
April 6th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Servers like getting tips in cash because they get the money directly. When you tip on a credit card, the server has to wait to receive the tip.
This service is totally unnecessary. What if the server doesn’t have a PayPal account? The poor guy or gal has been running around a restaurant for hours, serving people who are generally needy and ungrateful, and now he or she has to go through a lengthy process just to get their tip?? How mean.
April 6th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I think this is a really bad idea. It fundamentally assumes that everyone has ready access to the internet and has a paypal account. Internet “usage” is 76.2 % in N. America, and even lower throughout the rest of the world. (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)
April 6th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
As I write this, one person — one! — has opted for “brilliant!”
Come on, fess up!
April 6th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
In my mind, this is a solution in search of a problem. I’ll pass, personally…
April 10th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
This is brilliant. I am going to create my own stash of cards with random code numbers. Who said this doesn’t solve a problem.
(yes, I am joking)
May 19th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Mark, Thanks for writing about Where’s My Tip. Sorry that I’m only seeing this over a month after it was written.
As your poll suggests, its definitely not for everyone. My goal was to alleviate some of the “pain” I experience in traveling as I rarely carry cash. Some research suggests the trend of going “cashless” continues to grow.
Your post and the comments point out some things I need to work on to make the service more user friendly.
I also need to make it more clear on the site that we encourage tipping with cash if you’ve got it. One comment referred to tipping servers and this is not for that…put those tips on the same card as your meal.
Thanks again for the honest review and suggestions. Time to get to work