Ranting On Tips, Service Fees, And Other Hidden Costs

Slate - Cabs in New York City used to accept payment exclusively in cash, and tipping was governed by informal norms. Then they installed touchscreens that display advertorial content and also facilitate credit card payment. When you pay with a card, you can manually enter a tip number or you can select one of three default options, and Joshua Gross notes that the defaults make an enormous difference: During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%. Those three buttons resulted in $144,146,165 of additional tips. Per year. Those are some very valuable buttons. 

This tipping of cab-drivers thing has always driven me nuts.  You know what my tip for the cab driver is? Rounding to the nearest $5 in whatever I'm paying him. If I owe $22.15, he gets $25...that's it.  Yea, on occasion if its like $24 and change, I'll toss in a couple of singles, but otherwise, what am I tipping for? I don't tip bus drivers and subway conductors, do I?

I hired this guy to drive me from point A to Point B. You've agreed to charge me a set rate...that's what you're getting paid. If that's not enough then work to raise the rates. Plain and simple. Short of defying the laws of time and space and teleporting me to my destination, there's not much a cab driver can do to make me go out of my way to tip them extra...they're certainly not making up for it with their conversation skills. 

In fact, I think that'd be a good rule for our society as a whole going forward, just charge me what you think is fair. Don't make me sit here and think about how much the service I just bought from you should cost, I'm already paying you, you do the work. And don't hide or re categorize charges as fees or whatever bullshit term you want to come up with, just tell me the frigen price. Bottom line it for me. 

Like I stayed at Foxwoods a couple months back...the listed room price was one price, the final bill was another entirely, with random tax charges, and something called a resort fee! Honestly guys, what the fuck is that?! How is that not part of the room fee? Is it optional? If I agree not to go to the pool or get massage or something because I'll be spending the next 24 hours drinking and gambling can I get out of it? No. No, I can't. So put it up front in the original charge. Fucking crooks. 

There's plenty more. Delivery charges for takeout food...safe to say if you're charging me for delivery, I'm not tipping your driver more than $2, and that's just because I feel like a dick when I go to the door and don't give him anything. But to me the delivery charge is the tip. I don't feel so much as I'm being taken here, as this needs to get more publicity and become a social norm. I feel like not enough people pay attention to this. People, if you're charged a delivery charge, its the same thing as when a restaurant automatically includes 20% gratuity for large parties. You're under no obligation from that point forward.

Lets keep going. Meals tax on snacks. What the hell guys. If I buy a snickers bar downstairs at our cafe, I shouldn't be charged 6.25% more than if I buy it upstairs in the vending machine. Same goes for my Vitamin Water-Zero. This is just asinine. Same company, same building, different room, different charges. 

Rolling right along...Convenience charges when buying tickets online, when I PRINT THE TICKETS MYSELF...my ink, my paper, your convenience. I get it if I'm having them mailed to me, hell, I'd get it if I picked them up at the box office since that requires you have staff present. I will never for the life of me understand how the fuck these guys get away with charging me for printing my own tickets. This is the most confounding racket going today. And they get you both ways, coming and going! Because if you decide you're going to turn around sell your ticket, say on stub-hub, you get hit with a selling charge. A percentage of your profits...So not only did you pay above face value for your tickets, but now, when you go to sell them, you have virtually no chance of recouping your money, because even if you charge the $10 or so above face value that you paid for your tickets (because of the fucking inconvenience fee), you've still go to give back a portion of those profits for stub hub acting as your broker. IT'S ALL A SCAM...You cannot win when it comes to buying event tickets. 

That's all I got for now, but this could easily become a regular installment. Bottom line, all I want is for places to just start pricing things for what they actually cost, no more hidden fees, no more service charges after the fact, and make those goddamn convenience fees illegal. I'm not cheap, I'm perfectly happy paying what I owe, I just like to know what that is.

Foxwoods Running Diary

3 weeks ago: The group e-mail….Ughh. Nothing has cemented the fact that we’re adults and quickly going over the hill more than the fact that we had to plan out a guys day involving a two hour trip, 3 weeks in advance…in fact nothing makes me feel older and less cool than just saying guys day, but that’s just where we’re at I guess. Between the self realization of where I’m at in life and the genuine excitement about the upcoming trip I don’t think I could have experienced more highs and lows in a single e-mail chain…The e-mail chain also gave us this beauty of a quote, after discussing the prices of the rooms (which are outlandish):

Do the Native Americans running Foxwoods have any idea what the hotel prices are in the rest of the world? Vegas isn't that expensive and that’s in the middle of a major city. Foxwoods is in the middle of a depressing reservation.

HA! This is going to be hilarious.

This past Friday night: “Hun I need to go to bed early, I’m leaving for Foxwoods in the morning.” Jesus Christ, CW. What the hell is wrong with you? Ok, truth be told, we were leaving at an hour earlier than I actually get up for work during the week, but still, I’m just embarrassed for myself.

Saturday Morning: Alarm set for 7 am, woke up at 6 to take a nervous/anxious shit, never got back to sleep. I was like a kid on Christmas whose parents told him he couldn’t get out of bed until the whole house was ready to get up. A couple of the guys arrive for the carpool and we all openly wonder why we’re heading down so early. Good question.

8 AM: We pick up one more member of the traveling band of 20something heading on 40 year olds, and we’re on our way…After a quick trip to Dunkin, of course, because lets face it, America Runs on Dunkin (good enough for a sponsorship? No, ok, moving on). About 15 minutes down the road we get a text from the final member of our party, he’s already at Foxwoods. We all joke about how quickly he’ll lose his money waiting for us…30 minutes later we have our answer.

10 AM: We arrive. Though it wasn’t on purpose, this was totally perfect because that’s when Foxwoods starts serving alcohol. I know what you’re thinking, what kind of degenerates are these guys? Relax, we got our vitamin C too, the first few rounds were Screw Drivers and Vodka Crans…we’re not animals. Also, this after hearing Adele come over the speakers, "She just bellows...I liked her til I saw her." It's so true.

10:45 AM: WE’RE ALL LOSING. Already…Check-in to the hotel isn’t even until 3PM, yet we’re all openly discussing whether or not it’s too late to cancel the reservations and just go home later in the afternoon. This is bad. Again, why the hell did we get here so early? We’re staying the whole night, was there any need for me to be washing down breakfast with Screw Drivers while watching some smug faced Asian lady just utterly dominate us at blackjack?

11:15 AM: The group disbands, a few go to grind it out in poker, myself and another take a walk in hopes of slowing our losses…I also debate calling my bank to raise my daily ATM limit, ugh. After circling a few games my friend takes a seat…At the Monopoly themed slot machine…Which…Was…AWESOME! Sure we had no idea why we won or lost on any given spin, all we cared about was riding around the board game, going from train station to train station and trying to hit boardwalk…One side note, they don’t pay you when you pass go, which seems a bit sacreligios.

12:30 PM: I register for a poker tournament…I gave up poker about 4 years ago, just wasn’t exciting enough for me…If I’m going to lose my money I want it to be fast and vicious, that’s why I play BlackJack and Roulette. Today, however, I’ve decided if I’m going to stem the losses and make it through the afternoon I may need a slower paced game, so I sign up. Me against 120 others, I figure I’ll last a couple of hours at which point it’ll be lunch time and almost time to check in.

1:05 PM: Pocket Aces baby! I just doubled up...I completely forgot about the rush of pocket aces.

1:07 PM: Pocket ACES AGAIN! I just doubled up…again. Twice in two hands. The rest of the table straight up hates my guts…the guy I just knocked out made fun of my haircut, which would under normal circumstances bother me, but he was a bald-o so I’m sensing jealousy. I’m now in it to win it, which is astounding because, again, I haven’t played poker in at least 4 years.

3:00 PM: Just had a hilarious exchange with some degenerate poker player next to me, he clearly spends his days in the poker room, he was waxing poetic about what a cruel game “she is” and commiserating with me on the various odds of what we just witnessed happening…Apparently because I have a large amount of chips in front of me and am for the most part stone faced, preferring to pay more attention to the 6 or 7 drinks I’ve accumulated than my opponenents, people have begun to revere and respect me. They have no idea that I’ve long since forgotten about calculating odds…I’m just playing by feel and whatever spur of the moment bets come into my head… if they only knew.

4:00 PM: Made it to the final table…this is hilarious. I clearly suck, but I don’t think they’re on to me yet…I just bet less than the minimum, had to be corrected by the dealer, and my opponent still folded. When will my charade end? Side note, there’s a guy wearing a San Francisco 49ers at, and a graphic T-shirt starring Yoda, they complement each other as well as you’d think…these types of people litter Foxwoods, or as one friend put it, “Foxwoods is just full of New Hampshire type people.”

4:30 PM: I’m all in…and Lose. 6th place, it was a great run and a nice payout, I’m now winning for the day, which is a minor miracle.

5:00 PM: I eat for the first time today...8 or 9 drinks in and I’m subsisting off an egg sandwich and a slice of pizza for the day. I have no idea why the normal rules of nutrition and digestion cease to exist when in casino’s but I feel like a million bucks.

5:45 PM: We watch a couple of our friends depressingly grind it out at a poker table…I mean depressingly. The mood in the Foxwoods pokerroom is always somewhere between a funeral and a doctors office where you’re waiting for your possibly life altering diagnosis. It’s just a weird place. No one is happy, even when you’re winning. They really need to do something about that…It could be because you feel like you’re sitting in a basement with low ceilings and no natural light…and that’s because that’s exactly where you are sitting, in the basement of Foxwoods.

6:30 PM: We head out in search of Bowling and get wait listed. We go to wait in some ultra-swanky lounge, real high class shit, and surprisingly I’m not asked to change my shirt…I forgot to mention, I’ve been wearing an official “I Love The Alt-Tab” shirt all day. No one has asked what it means, which is almost as depressing as the fact that I’m still the only one to have purchased one of these beauty’s. Anyway, the hostess must assume it’s some kind of hipster cool shirt you’d buy in Urban Outfitters, it’s the only possible explanation.

8:00 PM: We’re on fire at the bowling alley. I’m fairly certain our threesome would take down any other group out there…Also, the bowling alley just parlayed Puddle of Mud into MmmBoppp…Where the fuck am I?

9:00 PM: After thoroughly dominating the lanes we decide to kill a half hour playing…The boxing arcade game that measures the impact of your punch! Ok, I’m a bit relieved, maybe we’re not as over the hill as I previously thought. We’re still fairly childish.

10:00 PM: We head to the room to commiserate on our days wins and losses and get ready to go out for the night.

10:30 PM: We’re waiting in line at some club that the likes of Deena and Snooky surely inhabit. There is an old man in line (Like 60 years old or so) eating ice cream and looking all the girls up and down. Again he’s in line. He has no intentions of entering, he just figures it’s a great front row seat. He’s a bit creepy, but hey, you have to respect his honesty.

11:00 PM : Standard $40 round…My friends and I are now openly debating whether or not a couple of females that are seemingly doing laps are real life prostitutes or just hooking for beer, I say there’s not much of a difference. There is a liberal amount of animal print outfits in here…It looks like the Jersey Shore threw up.

12:15 AM: One of the guys just uttered this gem of a quote: “I gotta go, I need to go play war.” I’m still chuckling.

12:30 AM: I just ordered a bottle of water at the bar, that’s my cue to go. I leave in search of my War playing friend. I find him at the most depressing table imagineable. Just four down on their luck guys, all betting on whether their card will be higher than the dealers. There is 0 excitement. I tell my friend I’m taking a lap in search of a cheap Blackjack table, when I return 3 minutes later, he’s already gone. When I finally find him he tells me he went all in and lost…I just can’t. I don’t know whether to laugh or console him on his loss, but I’m definitely closer to laughing, because it was War.

12:45 AM: I try to convince him to accompany me back on the 15 minute walk from MGM to Foxwoods (why don’t they have more moving sidewalk in that goddamn corridor?), he passes. I spend an unusual amount of time just staring at the escalator trying to decide if its worth the journey. My friend apparently sees this and finds it hilarious.

1:00 AM: I’ve made it, and no, there aren’t any cheap blackjack tables left. I now have to walk all the way back. I stop for pizza on the way to break up the trip…consumption totals for the day are something like 20 or so drinks, two slices of pizza, and an egg sandwich…I’m really taking stock of my decision making.

1:30 AM: I make it back to the room. The others soon follow. My War playing friend lets out another beauty: “On my last hand of war, when I was on tilt…” No one has ever uttered that sentence before in their lives. Another friend just got cleaned out in roulette, which sucks, but was hilarious for all of us. Apparently he thought he was playing at the $5 dollar table, only to realize after a few bets that it was the $25 minimum table, to which he uttered: “Why didn’t they stop me?” Which was also hilarious, because casino’s so often have a habit of stopping people from making bets beyond their financial means…I’m starting to think it’s a good thing I wasn’t able to find a cheap Blackjack table…everyone that gambled after 12 AM lost.

2:15 AM: After some hilarious stories and jokes which remind me why we bother to take these trips (it’s certainly not for the money) my friend builds a fort on the floor as his bed…because there’s five of us in one room…Yea, we’re not quite over the hill yet, not many 40 year olds splitting a room 5 ways.

10:00 AM: We depart to the motto of the trip, and, if the marketing people at Foxwoods had any brains, what should be the Foxwoods slogan: “Easiest Drive Down, Worst Drive Back.” Yup.