Hacker News Reader

Comment by bpicolo | Hacker News Reader

Why not just raise the prices a bit again? Now I'm worried I'll get down-starred for not tipping on Uber, which is just kind of annoying. I feel like not requiring a tip is Uber's biggest differentiator

View on HN

You answered your own question. Why raise prices and risk losing customers when they can just use widely accepted social pressure to coerce you into subsidizing their cost of doing business for free?

It's not like they're fooling anyone though...regular users of uber will know the average outlay from using an uber is $X, whether it's through the fares charged or a lower fare plus expected tip. I would much rather have a higher fare than the stress of figuring out how much to tip. I could just decide on a tip to always give, but what about those times when the service is really shitty? Do I "get back" at them by leaving no tip? Isn't that the whole purpose of the tipping process? But that makes me feel like a shitty person, and the cognitive outlay in thinking about all of this is just annoying.

I'm gonna guess they'll keep the tips secret until many hours after the journey (and when both driver and passenger have left star ratings). They might even aggregate tips for the week/month.

That way, if you leave no tip, it can't come back and bite you.

But it will come back to bite me in a psychological way. I don't want to feel like the sort of person who doesn't tip when tipping is expected, I want to use a service where I don't have to think about tipping and can feel like a decent person. If that service has to cost more then so be it.

It would make drivers experience worse if they aggregated tips over weeks/months. This is primarily due to the "cash me out" feature where drivers may cash out a shift immediately upon completion.

That is the best and most fair solution. You only find out your tip AFTER you've rated the passenger.

This is the reason I refused to use Amazon Fresh. I'd rather pay higher subscription prices like with Prime as opposed to tipping every delivery. Even if it's optional, just the existence of the tipping feature adds social pressure.

Last I checked for Amazon Prime Now, drivers are only aware of their tips in aggregate, so leaving $0 is putting pressure on Amazon to pay their drivers more. It's kindof shitty, and I don't use the service often, but if Amazon is going to give me an option on who is going to foot the bill for the driver, I will pass on that every time.

I'm aware of that, and personally it doesn't matter. It only lessens the social pressure. It doesn't eliminate it.

Yeah, exactly. This doesn't cost them anything. If they add a button to add 10%/15%/20%, people will still just tap that instead of try to hail a cab.

For the same reason Uber originally went with the tip-free model for their service?

I can only assume that was when they could more easily afford to do so.

Nothing to do with affording, and everything to do with the latent demand from people who don't want to have to think about or handle tipping when getting a ride, which was (at least a big part of) their original appeal.

I actually think it was the attract customers.

Widely despised social pressure.

Doesn't matter if it's despised as long as it's accepted.

Edit: To be clear, I am speaking from Uber's perspective.

I despise how little drivers are paid. This is also accepted. What's your point?

My point is Uber doesn't care about what you despise so long as it serves their bottom line.

Right—but clearly they do.

Uber is going to use tipping as excuse to lower payouts to drivers.

If drivers get 80% of the fare now, they'll get 70% of the fare in a couple months because Uber will argue that drivers get tips now, which more than compensate for that loss.

fyi this is what Lyft is already doing

Right Lyft already do this but there is no pressure because you don't have to tip right away. You get off and think about it.

I was a Lyft driver for one summer. Also Lyft supposely paid more.

Uber never encourage tipping and they didn't care about their driver at all. Their CEO was on the record for this.

I chose Lyft because they were more friendly and they didn't treat their worker like dirt.

I wouldn't ride an Uber or work for uber unless I really really have to. Most of the time I use Lyft for rides.

It's a crap managed company, threat their female co worker like Donald's locker room talk.

They threat their worker like crap. They did some really unfair things against Lyft. Including massive call on Lyft rides and then canceling it. They spy on their rival Lyft drivers. And they tried to steal Google's autonomous car tech.

They got greedy with their expansion too.

" Riders will be asked whether they would like to leave a tip when rating their driver at the end of a trip." So exactly same as Lyft. Also do not forget Lyft would not exist without uber doing most of the "shady" work they did to get around and eventually change regulations which helped ride-sharing companies to operate .

And hell, Lyft has done plenty of shady stuff, too. They're just quiet about it and have a better PR department, and have branded themselves in a much more sympathetic way.

I don't know if their PR department is better, I think it is just that Lyft got lucky that the media, pundits, and commenters like us tend use "Uber" as a catchall for ride-sharing. Maybe it's a "first to market" curse for Uber.

It's kind of like how tech shuttles get labeled "Google Buses" even though Facebook, Yahoo, Linkedin, Microsoft, etc, also have hundreds of buses. But colloquially, all white busses are "Google Buses"

I'd expect the driver software to let the driver rate the passenger before being shown the tip amount. Often times, I'll tip lyft drivers the next day or even the next time I open the lyft app.

The way Uber works now is it incentivizes the driver to give you a poor rating if you don't tip. By including the tip functionality in the app, and preventing the driver from seeing the tip before you are rated, it will remove this incentive.

I don't like tipping either but Uber had to do this and I'm confident the data showed it.

I used to tip in cash to avoid the bad rating especially if I am travelling to airport and have heavy luggage. I hate carrying cash and this is a very welcoming change. Anything that would make them look less evil(Although i don't think they are any worse than most companies.) is a good PR move.

I have literally never given an Uber driver a tip -- and have used them for many, many airport trips, and overall have easily taken more than a thousand rides since I joined in early 2012 -- and my rating is currently 4.87.

Perhaps you live in a market where Uber drivers are aggressive about asking for tips, though, which is not the case in SF.

They will probably take some "handling fee" on the value of the tips.

It'll form an income stream.

The article says they aren't (just like Lyft doesn't):

>Uber won’t take any part of the tips given drivers.[1]

IIRC, it would also be legally dubious to do so.

[1] And for the record, I prefer this phrasing to the more common "Drivers keep 100% of tips", which is not true unless they're evading taxes.

I'm a bit jaded on this subject, but even not-profit dollars contribute to revenue dollars, which helps secure future funding. So not "not any part of the tips", just a complicated hedging game on those tips.

What makes you think your lack of tip doesn't impact your rating now? The few Uber drivers I know expect a tip.

> The few Uber drivers I know expect a tip.

I think this varies a lot by city. I don't know if you're in San Francisco, but it's never been my experience here that drivers expect a tip. But when I fly down to Las Vegas nearly all the Ubers I've taken have notes taped up in the back stating the driver expects to be tipped (in cash).

"all the Ubers I've taken have notes taped up in the back stating the driver expects to be tipped (in cash)."

It would annoy me to no end, and I would be surprised if Uber would have been cool with that before now.

When was this? I spent a week in Vegas in March and according to my records, 27 Uber trips. I don't recall seeing anything like that, at all.

I spent a week there in december, and I saw a few that did have signs like that.

I suspect a lot of that has to do with culture. Consider how differently you might expect these three people who are expecting a tip to behave: an Italian from New Jersey, a middle class hipster in LA, and an illegal immigrant driving under an Uber account they share with a legal worker.

I'm more curious what happens when they walk into a bar...

it absolutely does. Since the last rate cuts I rate lower for no tip. at 1.80/mile and 30c/ minute I felt I was paid fairly. at 1.55/mile it was still okay. At .85/ mile. no, there should be a tip.

I have never left a tip with an Uber driver, I've taken around 30 rides, 5 star rating.

Of course, you'll get rated lower if you don't tip. You'll probably get 1 star every time. I would much prefer they just raise the prices a bit.

I'd doubt they can see if you didn't tip before you rated them. That would be incredibly stupid.

If you're a frequent customer of a certain driver and consistently don't tip then I can see some problems there.

can the driver see your tip before rating? that would be quite the design flaw

Not sure. You're probably right that they don't. It still feels crummy, though.

I deleted Uber and installed Lyft after riding in a car in Portland where the driver had discreetly tucked a dollar bill in the console as a tacit cue to tip. I hate tipping. I avoid situations where I have to tip, or get pressured to tip.

I don't get your point. With lyft you are explicitly asked to tip. But delete uber anyways because of one bad driver; sounds like a fair argument. /s

Note that deleting the app isn't enough. You should also explicitly close your Uber account.

And does a user's rating matter?

Yes,to an extent. I do not pick up low rated riders. You have to ne a real asshole to not maintain a decent rating as a rider. 4.70 is my cut off during the day. After midnight, I do not pick up anyone under a 4.8

I think ultimately this is a good thing. If this gives drivers a bigger incentive to use Uber, that will translate to more drivers on the road, and lower surge pricing for riders.

Drivers will rate first before seeing tipping information.

What if they had a default auto-tip you could set? And then if you had an exceptionally good or bad ride you could adjust for that case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com