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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

Somehow the "tip culture" is spreading over here too, especially in touristy areas, even the POS terminals now ask you for a tip.

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I often tip generously, but never when they start out expecting one. If the terminal asks for a tip, I don't tip.

It's widespread here in Ireland. POS terminals have 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% tip options with a tiny and hard to reach dismiss button.

I doubt whoever thinks installing this US software on UK/Irish POS terminals has done their homework. Its simply one way to piss off the customers and embarrass the staff.

Dismiss button? From what I've seen, it's a "Custom" button, where you then have to explicitly type in 0.

Just walk away and dispute the charge if it ends up being higher than the menu price.

It is because you are leaving money on the table if you don't ask for more money. The hyper maximizing money is what needs to stop.

The only way its going to stop is if there are consequences for asking too much.

Interesting. What POS terminals are common there? I am curious about culture spreading through technology defaults and wonder if it's effectively driven by whatever Square chose and whomever else decided to ape the incumbent or whatever.

There's a bunch of them, but the tip offers are usually on the newer touchscreen (probably android based) ones.

The old ones (never seen the tip option on those... for now): https://www.simple-shop.si/en/pos-terminal-tcpip-en and eg https://www.unicreditbank.si/si/podjetja/upravljanje-z-denar...

The new ones: https://www.sumup.com/sl-si/karticni-citalec-terminal/ and https://besteron.com/si/pos-terminali/ (both support tips) + many other in similar designs (full front touchscreen)

I don't think square supports slovenia for now, but POS vedors add the tip option, and our restaurant owners enable it, because it doesn't cost them anything, any many (especially foreign) guests "feel bad" for choosing the zero on the screen.

Thank you.

You them everywhere. Most insane are the bars where you have to walk up from your seating to the bar to order, the bartender plops the drinks on the bar and immediately moves on to another customer, and the terminal still displays default tip amounts and you have to do custom → €0. What the hell am I tipping you for?

At this point I'm waiting for supermarket self-checkout to add a default tip amount.

Self service checkout in some airport shops do have tip option already, unfortunately

Hahaha, I was surprised by one of those in Newark/EWR. I can't believe it's real haha. Who gets the tip? I just tipped the self-service worker in cash ;)

I've seen this (UK), albeit "round up to £x.00 and donate the change to charity", which <supermarket> will use to announce "We've donated £X million to charity".

Ah, the charity donations.

Esso petrol stations routinely ask for this, and the staff member ALWAYS clicks the 'no' button before you can offer your card.

Source: Somebody who drives around the UK a lot for work.

B&Q are on the naughty list too (and the cashier also frequently clicks the 'no' button).

Interestingly I haven't seen the charity thing seen here in Germany for a while. I guess its because they all are asking if you have a customer loyalty card now (sometimes for both the chain-specific one and wider programs) and there is only so much they can ask for before the cost from lower throughput becomes significant.

It's configurable on any terminal that supports it — obviously the terminal is designed so it can be used in a restaurant, or for paying in a shop, or paying a fee to the government. (To give an example of where even Americans don't tip.)

I'm not American, but from what I've heard about the wait times at the DMV, I'm sure many would love the option to tip 20% for faster service.

Then they would be shortsighted because before no time you would need to tip 20% minimum to get even the quality of service you get now.

It would be pretty neat to actually have the thing funded through a revenue neutral ticketing scheme. i.e. you just auction off tickets for 4 week blocks. That will allow people who are time-sensitive to appropriately select, and if you make more than you need you can just rebate participants proportional to their spend. Might be a pretty good way to allocate the scarce resource.

The cynic in me would say that's just allowing market forces to set the price by supply/demand.

But obviously, a government service should give fair and proper service to everyone.

Because from the restaurant's POV it seems like free money. If no one tips, they perceive no harm. If someone tips, then free money.

It's also more money to the company providing the payment system so they are incentivized to tell every restaurant to turn on tips.

I hate it. I don't know how to fight it except to try to start a movement big enough that everyone who goes to such a restaurant gives it 1 star and not not return, until it becomes unacceptable for business to do it. Like many things that is unlikely to happen without some major awareness campaign.

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