Higher sticker prices have made some people stingier in recent years, a new Bankrate survey finds. “They’re no longer appreciating service industry workers as much.”

People are a little bit stingier in barber chairs and Ubers than they were just a few years ago.

The shares of adults who say they always tip their hair stylists, servers at sit-down restaurants and food delivery people have each fallen 8 percentage points since 2021, according to a Bankrate survey released Wednesday. That rate slipped 7 percentage points for taxi and ride-hail drivers over the same period.

Three years ago, the economy was reopening from the pandemic and inflation was higher than it is now, but so was concern for front-line workers.

At the time, three-quarters of consumers reported always tipping restaurant servers, but today just two-thirds do. Despite modest upticks since last year, barely more than half of people now count themselves reliable tippers of hairdressers (55%) and food delivery drivers (51%), while only 41% say the same when it comes to ordering a ride.

The survey reflects Americans’ growing ease bypassing ubiquitous tipping prompts, from coffeeshops to airport terminals in the post-Covid economy, especially as sticker prices have risen. While consumer spending has held remarkably steady, many households are feeling the squeeze from persistent inflation and tightening their belts accordingly. Some of that newfound caution may be factoring into when, where and how much people tip.

  • cheeseandrice@lemm.ee
    76·
    6 months ago

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen this written about so -

    The reason these tipping prompts are so egregiously inescapable now is that those point of sales systems are handed out by Clover and the like when the business starts using them for POS and inventory and credit card processing.

    For each CC transaction, the business pays something like 2-3% of the transaction and so the CC processor becomes incentivized to make that transaction amount higher. That’s how we got here. You’re being guilted into tipping a shitty tech company.

    Carry cash. Pay cash whenever possible. That’s how you avoid that screen.

    • Neato@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      16·
      6 months ago

      Is clover getting money for cc transactions? I thought it was the cc companies charging that fee.

      • bagelberger@lemmy.world
        17·
        6 months ago

        Point of sale companies like Clover charge a fee and the credit card company gets a cut of that. The rest is for the point of sale’s services.

        • otter@lemmy.zipEnglish
          6·
          6 months ago

          Credit Card companies (ie MasterCard or Visa) typically have a flat per transaction fee that is very small (like fractional cent small). The processors are the ones that take the percentage cut (PoS and your bank). It’s been a bit since the last time I looked into it, so things could be a bit different, but I would be surprised if it was.

      • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        6 months ago

        Clover or whoever also gets money for letting whoever use their system. They get an upfront fee then a percent of sales.

      • noisefree@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 months ago

        These used to be separate things, but now most of the older POS systems have been bought by the processors or, with the “newer” systems, were in the business of processing from the get go. It’s all very incestuous.