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‘Pure greed:’ Etiquette expert explains why tipping has gotten out of control
(www.clickorlando.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Wtf is the point of this. Even if they wanted to save on labor costs of wait staff and everything why not just use your own card instead of trading it for a temporary card.
It's like this pizza place I went to recently. They had a little arcade so I went to put some quarters in and realized I had to go buy tokens at a machine first. It wasn't Dave and Busters or anything, just a hole in the wall with a few games in a corner. I didn't buy any tokens. Same with laundromats that now want you to buy tokens ahead of time.
There isn't a single business anymore that isn't trying to just blatantly scam you out of your money. They used to at least be more subtle about it.
It's the same on cruise ships. What it does is turn everything into a microtransaction so you're all "oh, that's not so much" at every decision point and therefore spending more than you would normally.
It doesn't work on me, because oh holy shit the first time was a hard lesson. I went on a cruise back in the early 90s when this was a thing, and the balance I thought I had at the end of the cruise was nothing compared to the balance I did have. It took me months to pay off.
So now whenever a place pulls that card swap I end up tightening the sphincter and spending next to nothing. I won't even go if I know they're going to do that, because honestly it's just no fun.
Give me a fucking menu with the correct fucking prices, pay your staff a fucking liveable wage, bill me at the end, I will pay and then tip my servers in cash because that's the only way I can be sure MY waitstaff actually got any of it, and let's call it a day.
You're comparing weeks of spending to a couple hours at a bar though, I'm not sure if that's really comparable.
There's a couple other reasons that apply as well:
"Weeks," lol. No. It was three days. And that was absolutely the point of it: to get you to spend more money on alcohol, spending that you would NOT have done if every drink had been a separate transaction.
Also, I think you're confused on the card transaction part of things: the merchant back is only charging for credit card transactions, not for cash, and card transaction fees are a miniscule amount of each charge that varies per card issuer. 6-7% Mastercard and Visa, up to 14% American Express IIRC.
For example, 7% of $100 is still $7, whether that is charged ten times for $10 each, or once for $100.
The drinks are already priced accordingly, and of any establishment that sells alcohol, the alcohol already has the highest markup of anything else sold: most of that bottle is pure profit, making up for the rest of the house and whatever loss leaders they have to get people in.
Just buying just ONE extra overpriced drink more than wipes out an entire day of single merchant bank card fees for that customer. It's not the huge gouge you think it is.
And that's where your theory falls apart. There is ZERO loss to merchants for cash paying customers; rather, the loss to merchants is for credit card paying customers. The merchant makes more keeping the cash payers OFF the credit card interchange altogether.
So there is literally ZERO benefit to a merchant to pull the cash customers onto the store card, unless it's to get them to spend more.
it divorces the act of spending from actual money, so you spend more. like buying gems in a mobile game. also saves on credit card transaction fees.
That's among the reasons why I carry cash for small purchases.
It feels more real when I can see actual physical money going out of my wallet.
Instead of 7 small transactions (and higher fees) it’s one big transaction.
Because they get charged less by the bank for lower quantity of bigger transactions, instead of high number of small transactions. Also allows for people who have cash but no card to use the system.
They don't want to handle coins essentially. Going to the bank to exchange coins for cash every day is a huge part of the labor cost, so they make you use tokens that not only allows them to get rid of that but also essentially charge you seignorage.